There have always been issues that concern me with teaching poetry and creative writing . The main event is positive thinking over negative feelings .
During the years I have spent talking poetry in primary schools I am glad to have had the opportunity to put in place the basic tools for creative writing . By the time students enter high school and beyond something happens .
Call it teenage madness or adolescence but I have seen too much anger out there with youtng adults in schools and on the streets .It's almost as if they have been abducted by aliens and had life threatening forms of mind control .
The temptation of hards drugs is probably the greatest threat young people hacve to deal with today .
I thought its beetr to light a candle than to curse the darkness . It is better to understand than to live in ignorance .
It is better to create a piece of poetry or another art form than to than to destroy a persons confidence .
It is better to encourage a talent than to smash a dream or be jealous of someones gift .
It is better to be sane than crazy .
It is better to stay off drugs than to become an addict .
As I started to dig around I uncovered lots of people out there who wanted to share with me there personal experiences of using drugs and what it did to them .
Like an elavator to a higher understanding I was able to see and understand the true picture behind a very clouded window into a place where drugs have confused and destroyed the minsds of many young innocent people .
Today ypoung people really need to express how they feel and I have seen the value of writing it down using the medium of poetry as a vehicle for that .
Their personal experiences are horrific .
But did the Doctor ever get a visit from a sick person ?
Is a healthy mind locked away in the darkness of fear and addiction ?
I do believe that creative writing and thinking are key to unlocking the doors of recovery .
Before I introduce you to some of the personal stories of some drug addicts I met and got to know here a just a few facts about life in the twentieth century .
The fact that more young people are being buried today from drug overdose than ever before is another sad fact behind the spiralling destruction of our moral fabric in society .
You know today we live in a world were hard drugs have become the dictator behind most of the problems in society . Don’t let anyone tell you that this untrue .
For most of our young people the new synthetic form of narcotic mixed with alcohol is a concoction I would call the death wish .
Drugs today have become easily available and are even offered free to attract new customers into the market place .
I have met and spoken to many people who admitted in their past they had used hash then LSD and progressed to other hallucinogenic drugs called trips, dots, acid and then introduced to the man made narcotics that have penetrated the and upset the chemical balance of their brain .
Its always when we realise that we are in trouble that we reach out for help .
The reality of drug abuse is that it kills .
To tackle the problem we need to stop our kids from going down that one way street . Life is too precious and our sanity must be protected above all else .
Here are some comments you might be interested in reading from people
Who were addicted to drugs but are now living free from their curse .
I have the permission to write the following comments and I have changed only their names for the purpose of their protection . Their personal testimonies are true .
It is their wish and mine that someone might benefit from their experience and by making these statements about drugs someone might just stop using
them .
Fred -
I decided to use drugs and I realised it was up to me and nobody else to get off them.
Mick -
At eighteen still living with my Mum and Dad I had kept my drug addiction a secret . No one knew how bad I was except me . I am one of the lucky few to go straight and if you are using drugs now take my advice and get some help There is help out there .
Paul-
I was brought up a Catholic and went to church regularly . God was a real person in my life and I feared nothing in life . I was introduced to smoking marijuana and at first it made me feel happy . I could not see that I was lead by an evil hand into a place of no return .
When at last I realised how evil drugs really were and how much I had changed I started to think about getting off drugs .
Chris-
I was happily engaged to be married . I had a good job and played sport every week .My future looked bright and I had the world at my feet . Confident and in control was I .Then I made some new friends who experimented with drugs . They told me how good it made them feel . I didn’t want to look like a wimp and so I started taking drugs to look cool and that’s really when my problems began . I broke off the engagement with my girlfriend .
Then I lost my job . My personality changed and so did my circle of friends . I had a new life a place that I now remember as being somewhere in a nightmare existence where my life was a daily living hell .
I ended up in a hospital and after ten years I was almost cured .
Up until a few years ago I was unable to talk to anybody about my experiences . Now with group therapy I feel the emotional scars are leaving .
There are some permanent I know will never heal and the sad thingf I guess is that there is no compensation for my drug related experience .
Tim-
When a group of friends recently offered me some drugs at a party I decided to try it . The feeling I had was so good that I wanted to have it again .
At first I started using drugs once at the weekend then it became a daily ritual for me . I soon discovered that the drugs I wanted were hard to get or so I was told and then I was offered other heavier drugs in their place .
After some time experimenting with hallucinagenoics I ended up injecting heroin . Daily drug use was now a normal way of life for me and I was now living a life where nothing made any sense . I was going insane and could do nothing about it . I was admitted into a psyche centre and after a year came out in one piece . For ten years I slowly recovered and now I feel my sanity has returned to where it once was before I experimented with drugs all those years ago .
Glen-
Started using hard narcotics and was enjoying the lifestyle .
As time went on I gradually lost my friends and family .
I lost weight and peace of mind .
I made some money because I started dealing in drugs .
When I lost my grip on reality I began therapy with a mental institution
in Sydney . I had almost lost my life to drugs but thanks to some good people who cared for me the effects from drugs have left me for good .
I have returned to life again and hope other people will listen to my story and never do what I did . Please keep off drugs .
Mack-
I started raking drugs when a fella at work offered them to me .
One day he lit up a joint in his car and I went for it .
It wasn’t long before I was hooked . I started making lots of contacts and buying lots of drugs . I thought I was the man . I even tried selling drugs to other people for a while . I made a lot of money for a while and things were going along really well out there until the day I nearly had an overdose .
Yea , that was the day I had shock treatment . After that I wanted off the helter skelter roller ride and as so I went cold turkey alone .
Suicidal I was eventually brought into a private Hospital . I was told that I had received the last rites in my bed but for some reason I survived .
Thank God I have bounced back to life.
I never knew I had so many relations and friends until I needed their help .
I even discovered these new prayers and saints .Novenas to St Jude the patron of hopeless cases and rosaries that were said with what I had called their penitentiary indulgencies . God knows constant prayers where being offered up on my behalf . I know they pulled me through .
Robert-
With nothing much happening in my life I was bored and thought taking drugs would make me popular . Sure thing I was in with the crowd for a while and even had a new circle of people who hung out with me .
We did drugs most nights and I was cool . In the end I realised that there was still nothing much happening in my life and wanted to stop taking these drugs But nobody told me how hard it was going to be .
I went through withdrawals and my crazy mind fell deep into depression .
I had a heavy course of electric shock treatment (ECT) followed up with a daily course of tranquillisers and sedatives . My mind had been hijacked by prescribed drugs and I somehow had returned to a normal life again where nothing much was happening nut that’s ok .
I am trying to forget the person I once was .
That is the difficult thing at times .
John-
During the time I experimented with drugs I thought I was a God .
I imagined I was super human . I never once thought I was mad .
Eventually when I started knocking on peoples doors to do as God had asked me to I was sent for some sessions with the local psychiatrist who diagnosed me as being a chronic paranoiac schizophrenic and I was sent into a mental Hospital for treatment . In fact I had become a guinea pig for a new project called deep sleep therapy . I wasn’t actually told that there had been some deaths and suicides connected with this new drug therapy .
When the hospital was closed down I was released into a hostile society
Where a very fragile me found new means of coping with normal life .
Hypnotherapy was a new method I found that helped me combat my
Stress and paranoia . The drugs that I had experimented with had triggered a chemical reaction within my brain and I was unable cope without medication
Of one kind or another . My psychosis was chronic and the diagnosis from every doctor who I had seen was the same . The only thing they could do was daily medication and weekly group therapy .
For thirteen years doctors had tried many different kinds of drugs on me.
My weight had tripled during this time .
One day I looked in the mirror and came face to face with someone I never wanted to see again . I was angry at what I had become but I channelled this into a determination to defeat the effects of what drugs had done to me .
I fell to my knees and asked for God to help me .
I began attending daily mass and praying very hard .
It suddenly came to me like a light through an old window .
As I knelt in prayer at the altar before a crucifix I said these words ,
God you created me . You know every hair on my head and have counted every bone in my body . You know me and have carved my name in the palm of your hand . Dear God you know my heart and my mind .
If you created me then it should be no problem to cure me . God help me to recover . Heal my broken nerves . Cure my troubled mind . God I am handing myself over to you completely. At that moment I could hear God say ,
My son why did you not come to me before this . Of course I will heal you .
From that day I never looked back .
I must tell you though I was so angry with myself because when I thought of
All the time I had wasted going to Doctors, psychiatrists , Hypnothereapists , councillors, group therapy , and the expense I went to getting medications that never once in all that time did I allow myself the thought ask God
for help .
It was all so simple and yet I never saw it , and so the day
I asked for Gods help was the day I quit all prescribed drugs and gave it over to God to have a go .
It was not an easy road however and many people have said that I should have weaned off my medication slowly but with Gods help and in his good time I have been able to win the battle . I am a new creation because of him and every day I thank God for making me whole .
I have spoken to some charities and groups about my experience and I tell everyone I owe a lot to God who pulled me through my nightmare .
Not only do I have a new life but I have a stronger faith and want to share all of that with other people . That’s why I began to give talks on how to beat drug addiction with faith alone I hope that by this teaching other too may find the answer . All the Doctors and psychiatrists who had once said I would never be able to have children or to marry because of my psychosis and stress factor have squashed their diagnoses of me . I have even had apologies from other doctors who once called me an impossible case . So the truth of it is none of them really knew how to deal with my problems and they resigned themselves to doping me up or sedating me heavily .
Jesus my saviour took me into his hands and I was cured .
With faith and hope we can conquer anything .
These are the true stories of people I know .
I hope that their words may be able to help some person who may be facing difficulties brought on by drugs in their life .
By Doctor Write
THE END
Originally Posted On Site: 2008-01-27 06:26:43
Last Login: 05.13.08
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