VIEWPOINT (cont.)
no — I would definitely become a gambling addict.
But I’ve known a few people in my life who got way too far into drugs and/or alcohol and I’ve seen what it did to them. The same was the case for the woman in the “Faces of Meth” photo gallery.
The first photo in the series is her high schol yearbook photo. She’s just your average nice-looking girl next door type.
The second photo is of her first mugshot, following an arrest at the age of 19 for a minor drug possession charge. She’s basically the same, but there’s a little bit of a rough edge to her look. The third photo shows her second arrest, just six months later, for another drug charge. It looks like she aged about five years during that brief period.
She manages to stay out of trouble for a couple of years apparently, but the next photo is just after her 21st birthday. It’s another mug shot, this time for not only drug possession but also a DUI. By this point, there’s a clear physical toll being taken on her by her drug use. She looks very withered and there’s obvious tooth decay, a common sign of meth use.
It goes on and on like this for several more photos. I think there were 21 in all, and in each one not only do the photos show this young girl go from a bright vibrant teen to a haggard strung out addict, the charges escalate with each mug shot to include loitering, prostitution, vagrancy,
charges. I don’t know any of the details of her life outside of what the arrest reports say under the photos but by the time she’s 30, she looks 80 and the final photo notes that it was taken three months before she was found dead from a heroin overdose.
It doesn’t have to be drugs.
Life can be like that for a number of people who go chasing after any number of things: sex, money, power, food, new shiny things, you name it.
No one sets out to be a drug addict or a homeless person or an AIDS patient.
But all it takes is one step in the wrong direction to send you off toward a slippery slope. Ever tried to walk on a frozen parking lot or sidewalk? You get going in the way you want to go but if you try to turn around or change direction, your momentum keeps you moving the way you’re going.
Addiction can be like that.
Too much of a good thing is a bad thing… except cats. You can never have too many cats. OK, maybe even cats. But even something like being obsessed with being on your phone all the time can impact your well-being. And I don’t mean distracted driving… although that’s also bad. I mean “doom-scrolling” through Facebook or Twitter and just getting outraged or depressed about the state of the world. Again, it’s a slippery slope before you’re thinking about conspiracies or how the world is run by lizard people…
