ADDICTIONS SKYROCKETING

Addicted: 1. Dependent on as a habit; unable to do without. (addicted to
heroin, addicted to smoking).

The Oxford Dictionary

In early February the Medigas company went to the Ottawa home of a
56-year-old man and seized his oxygen tanks. They had reason to
believe that the occupant of the home was smoking while taking oxygen
and acted before a tragedy occurred. Wise, eh?

What company wants to see anybody become a human torch, blow up an
apartment building, and be served a liability suit into the bargain.
Yet time and again people with chronic respiratory problems dependent
on in-house oxygen therapy smoke while taking oxygen. Steve Armstrong,
division chief of fire prevention in Ottawa says that smokers have
been known to lay the oxygen tubes from their nostrils on their
shoulder while taking their next puff. As a result we have about three
or four deaths each year in Canada from such accidents.

Tim Pike, chief executive of Vital Aire, another oxygen supplier, says
he has heard of smokers who cut a hole in their oxygen masks so they
can puff away while breathing in oxygen. Insanity isn't it?

But what we're talking about here folks are people who are addicted,
they can't stop and they're so blind to sound rational and personal
safety precautions, all they're thinking about is themselves and their
next fix of nicotine, which makes you realize of course, the
incredible power that drugs have over us.

I've sat at the bedside of alcoholics dying from cirrhosis of the
liver and heard them ask for a shot, just one for the road. I've heard
dying men, smokers, whose lungs looked like dried prunes, gasp for a
puff of a weed, and I've realized that when you are looking death in
the eye, and it's your addiction that's put you on your death bed, yet
you still crave it, then that addiction has an incredibly powerful
hold over you.

Well the society we're living in is, I predict, about to become more
addicted. If you happen to be considering a new career for the days
ahead, then go into the field of psychology, psychiatry, mental health
care or addictions counseling, for I guarantee tomorrow's future
messed-up society is going to be lined up at the door of such health
care professionals. Part of this is due to the current economic
meltdown that is occurring globally.

Sharon Kirkey writing in last Wednesday's Ottawa Citizen in an article
entitled, Fear Fuels Depression in Economic Downturn, says, "The
deepening economic turmoil will bring a worsening of anxiety,
personality and mood disorders, experts believe."

Results of that? People will turn to drugs, alcohol, food, gambling,
workaholism, on line gaming, Internet porn, and other addictive
behaviors to anesthetize their inner pain.

Watch out, it's going to happen. It's already happening. In the last
few weeks Ottawa area high schools got a $1 million infusion to
initiate a drug counseling program.

The initial plan is to have addictions counselors on site for two days
a week in every high school.

It is estimated that as many as 15 per cent of high school students
have substance abuse problems according to the Centre For Addiction
And Mental Health.

Listen to how students see the problem. Says one, "School is boring,
we just leave, and we skip, and we go get drunk or get high."

Another chimes in and says, "We smoke weed, and we try other stuff,
and it just keeps escalating, until you know...," yes, you can finish
the sentence, "next thing we're doing coke."

Those kids at high school today represent Canada's future. Addictions
don't leave you readily. They stick to you like glue. You take them
with you into adulthood.

If we have 15 per cent of high school kids with addiction problems,
then unless they get help, they're carrying their addictions with them
right into adulthood. There's no doubt in my mind that tomorrow's
society will unquestionably be a more addicted one.

The pressures that are with us today show no sign of dissipating. The
world is becoming more and more a pressure cooker environment, and
when you take God out of the picture, as many in our generation have,
then you eliminate by choice the One who has the power to help you
break free from the stranglehold of addictive behavior.

I'm speaking by the way as a former nicotine addict who's father died
of lung cancer because of a nicotine addiction. I've rummaged through
garbage cans for cigarettes I've thrown away, picked up butts others
have discarded, I've followed my craving to wherever it would take
me.

I remember the day when I was so fed up with my problem I stood up in
a church service and asked the people to pray for me. That act of
humility, transparency and public confession, broke the back of the
addiction, and put me on the path to recovery. That was 39 years ago.

Jesus Christ heard the cry of a man who knew he didn't have the power
within himself to whack the thing, and He came in to help.

The same freedom from bondage that He gave me, He can give you. Make
no mistake about it.

Rev. Eric Strachan is the pastor of New Life Community Church