Unleashed

An addiction theme, I thought to myself ~ to share what little I know about another chronic disease.

Using words of others that have gone before who taught lessons learned in the hardest of schools.

Siblings, parents, relatives and friends, and so many others, who only wanted to be normal, have died of this disease of addiction.

Each day, professionals care for folks that are caught,

that want out of a trap that they have come to know, love and hate.

I wonder ~ why do any of us try each day to beat back

a disease that we may never know from the inside?

Because each day ~ there is one ~ or maybe there’s two ~ or more

that say to us ‘I need help’ as though their needs we surely will know.

In our care are folks we have known for many a passing year,

at the beginning and sometimes through each relapse, each time struggling to stand.

If there was a wall of names to honour those that have gone before,

how wide and tall and long would it have to be?

What is this ‘disease’ that we speak of?

It is not in a bottle, a needle, a powder, or a ‘funny cigarette.

This ‘disease’ is in our very brains, bodies and souls.

The substance merely unleashes deep devastation.

“It’s probably weird to think about an addiction like it’s a sentient being,

but that’s how it feels. Like it’s something living inside you. Something

you can’t get rid of because killing it means killing you.”

~ Ellen Hopkins, Identical