Shackled by Deeds in My Jail Made of Choices
I have personally spent a great deal of time workingprofessionally with individuals who struggle with addictions,more specifically addictions to controlled substances. I havegiven presentations to many parent groups, school groups,government entities and addicts. I have taken occasion to picktheir brain so to speak in an effort to understand how onearrives at complete slavery to a particular drug. There is inevery case a string of choices, decisions that have led to otherdecisions, which in turn led to other decisions, each choicelocking them into a pattern of conduct difficult to break.
Let me be more specific and use the life of an actual person,who for our purposes well call Jim. Jim grew up in a typicalmiddle class Utah household and was raised by loving religiousparents who, no doubt did their best to give Jim the tools heneeded to make good decisions. Jim married a nice girl, and wasable as a young father to start his own business, which becamevery successful. Eventually Jim was able to build a big house ina nice neighborhood. He stayed active in church, in hischildrens lives, and was always attentive to his wife. Jim at apoint in his life made the choice to use methamphetamine. Nodoubt that this decision was reached through another string ofbad choices. The meth use at first seemed to help Jim cope withhis busy schedule. Each time Jim made the decision to use heforged another iron bar for his personal prison cell. With eachuse Jims dependence on the drug grew making the next choice touse or not use many times more difficult. In a short period oftime, his work began to suffer as his attentions turned towardhis new taskmaster. Jims loving wife struggled as she watchedher once loving and attentive husband become abusive to her andtheir children. She watched as he lost the business that
theyhad worked so hard to build up, then the house. Finally when theultimatum was given he chose the master that he was serving overhis family.
Jim spent the next couple of years in and out of jail as heracked up several felony charges for possession of Meth andtheft, having been reduced to steeling construction tools andpawning them to buy his next fix. Jims string of choicesculminated in a jail cell. The reason I know so much detailabout Jims life is because I read all of this in a suicideletter as I was investigating Jims death. Jim had hung himselfin his jail cell just one week before his release date. The lastsentence in the letter stated something like this ” I have nochoice but to kill myself, when I get out I will use again”.
Let us take a close look at Jims level of personal freedom.Before his decision to use meth, his options were almost withoutlimit. He could have decided to do a million different thingswith his life. Jims personal freedom left a myriad of doorsopen to him, including the most important, the opportunity toraise and have a positive impact on his children, not to mentionthe opportunity of a loving and lasting relationship with hiswife.
Perhaps you can see where I am going with this story. Each timeJim made that conscious decision to use he also gave up some ofhis personal freedom literally enslaving himself. Like asinister game of chess, the pieces of Jims life were given awaythe loss of each piece making it that much harder for him to winuntil Jims prison cell was complete and emotionally he wastrapped in a cell forged of a million choices. Unfortunately Jimused the only bit of freedom he felt he had left to perpetuateall of the other bad choices, he chose to give up.
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http://www.oinksolutions.blogspot.com/
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