Reflections
Say No to Drugs – Then What?

There is nothing more beautiful than blossoming youth emerging from childhood innocence into the adult world of responsibility and growing insight.

What is the widespread killer of our precious youth? Is it drug and alcohol abuse?  Or is it something else; something that lies beyond the external manifestations of being totally and utterly lost?

Adolescence is a difficult time of transition.  During this time, we reap the fruits of our labors spent on children in their early years.  If there was little or no stability, love or confidence based on morality in the early stages of life, then this potentially wonderful phase will resemble something like hell.

Young people often waver; hesitate as they approach adult life - afraid to take the final steps.  They look around themselves and see a vacuum of spirituality, bustling life clamoring after materialism, politicians who speak about peace but continually threaten their very existence. Life seems to be built on the edge of a cliff where everything seems artificial.

Short lived attempts at finding long lasting love and care, accompanied by struggle with no goal in sight, serves to deepen the spiritual hole into which they feel themselves falling.  So in this artificial context, happiness by means of drugs or confidence found at the end of a needle, does not seem so out of place. And we, standing in the midst of all their confusion; all their inability to find real happiness – boldly and with fortitude declare 'say no to drugs'.

Yet we dismantle the home that builds them to strength, we surround them with materialism and teach them to satisfy their desires while ignoring the needs of others and deny their very nature!  And then they discover the emptiness of this side of life and seek artificial comfort in drugs.

What is our responsibility?  Is it only to remind them of the dangers of taking drugs?  But what about offering them an alternative with which to satisfy their sinking, grasping miserable hearts?