Why does someone take drugs? Of course, it is to “get high”. You take drugs to feel good, to feel better about yourself and to stop feeling down and empty. Taking drugs is a misguided and dangerous form of self-medication. It is misguided because the more you use drugs the more sicker you actually become.
You think you’ll feel better and that life will just be one big party. But the end result is quite the contrary X the reality is that you start falling lower and lower in every area of your life. Because drugs alter your mind and give you a false sense of well-being, one unfortunately sees only its deadly effects once you are in real trouble. Drugs don’t heal you; they really only destroy your life.
If you feel like a hurt victim of circumstances and convince yourself that no-one truly understands your pain, and no-one has the right to intervene in your private life and tell you what to do, you may find yourself on a dead-end road. But the walls we build around ourselves to protect us most often become the prison we can’t escape from.
Knowing all the answers and thinking that we can learn from no-one else makes us go round and round in circles, never being set free. The realisation that you are trapped, that you are a slave to drugs and need help is the first step towards healing. Being a slave to drugs, you’ll need to deal with your deep inner pain and confusion, and open your hardened heart and become vulnerable and even broken before your loved ones and, importantly so, before the Living God. That is the entrance to the narrow gate where healing and true freedom and life is. You’ll need to break down those walls around you to be set free. Only a penetrating encounter with a Loving Christ can get to the root of one’s enslavement and set you free. It is never too late.
To speak to a Swartland LDAC (Local Drug Action Committee) counsellor at any time in complete confidentiality, please phone pastor Piet Smit at 073 447 2902 or Lydia Vrey at 072 626 7732
