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hat do you want for your birthday?\" friends of one middle-class fifteen-year old asked.

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\"Let\'s do crack,\" he said.

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Within a week this young teenager was smoking $50 worth of crack a day. Soon he was stealing money from his parents to support his habit. He began skipping school classes, and with friends began breaking into homes to steal cash, jewelry and anything that would sell.

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\"You are willing to do anything to get it,\" he said. \"We just had to get more.\"

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One couple I read about, who tried sniffing cocaine at a party eight years ago, developed a $250,000-a-year habit and ended up selling $80,000 worth of coke a month to support themselves. They came close to destroying themselves.¹

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According to Mark Gould, M.D., founder of the toll-free National Hotline for cocaine users and victims, \"An incredible twenty-two million Americans—one out of every ten—report that they have used cocaine at least once! Every day some 5,000 teenagers and adults try it for the first time!\"²

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\"Twelve million use it a least once a year; almost six million are current users. Young professionals are mortgaging their futures on it, lying and embezzling to assure one more high. Mothers-to-be are sacrificing their unborn babies for the powder\'s lean pleasure. In the streets, men kill, maim and rob to get another crack at crack. In five years, cocaine-related deaths and emergency-room visits have tripled.\"³

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Not long ago, heroin was the bondage of inner-city users, marijuana was smoked by rebellious middle-class youth, and cocaine was sniffed at high-society parties. Not any more.

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Men kill, maim and rob to
get another crack at crack.

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Doctors, airline pilots, lawyers, engineers and other highly skilled and professional people are now being caught in the trap of cocaine. The results are tragic. Babies are being born brain damaged. People are experiencing excruciating death, strokes and heart attacks. \"But the most chilling characteristic of the drug is the phenomenon called cocaine psychosis, in which people just go crazy.\"⁴

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Even more alarming is that cocaine \"has been boiled down to hard and mean little pellets of crack, giver of euphoria, taker of lives.\"⁵

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Crack, which is extremely addictive and extremely dangerous, has been described as a vicious cancer, a dread disease that is affecting all levels of society.

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The question is, when drugs are so extremely addictive and dangerous, why do people use them? Not only hard drugs but also other drugs such as analgesics, tranquilizers, cigarettes and alcohol? Experts point to a number of deep-seated causes behind the national craving for drugs.

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First. The unparalleled breakdown of family life and the emotional pain this causes are taking a huge toll on our society. People turn to drugs to escape their pain.

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Second. Our materialistic society, which measures success largely in terms of wealth and possessions, leaves little time for meeting our deeper emotional and spiritual needs.

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Third. Our culture has taught many of us to deny and repress our deeper emotions including the emotion of awe. This is the emotion that appreciates the beauty of nature, life and simple things, and puts sparkle into life. When this emotion is repressed, it leaves us feeling empty and bored with life. We then seek the lost sparkle in substitutes—such as fancy cars, houses, materialistic possessions, or alcohol and drugs.

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Fourth. The lack of community hospitality, effective communication among family members, intimacy, and commitment to one another, plus our being too busy, all add to our emotional emptiness. Many wives and children are left feeling lonely, frustrated and starving for meaningful companionship. Many turn to alcohol or drugs to escape their emptiness.

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Fifth. Our continued decline in moral standards has weakened restraint and inhibitions making it very easy to start on a downward path.

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Sixth. Another characteristic that has pervaded modern society is our desire for instant gratification of all our wants—including instant relief from pain. Drugs falsely promise a quick fix.

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Seventh. Above all, our society as a whole has forgotten God. Most of us claim to believe in him, but not enough for it to affect our lifestyle. Our society has focused almost all of its attention on technological and materialistic advancement. Consequently, we are close to being an emotionally and spiritually bankrupt society. The subsequent emptiness is overwhelming for the many who turn to drugs to anesthetize their inner pain.

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What, then, is the answer to the drug problem?

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1. Seek help. If you or a loved one have a drug problem, admit it and seek help immediately. Check with your minister, family doctor or local hospital. Support groups such as Cocaine Anonymous, AA or other \"Twelve Step\" programs can be life-savers. Admit the severity of the problem. Act immediately. Don\'t wait until it is too late.

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2. Accept responsibility for your problem. Nobody else can fix you. Only you can change yourself. Accept responsibility for doing just that.

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Cocaine \'has been boiled down to
hard and mean little pellets of crack,
giver of euphoria, taker of lives.\'

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3. Understand your emotional and spiritual needs and ensure that you get these needs met in wholesome ways.

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4. Build a network of supportive friendships. Disassociate with friends who are still involved with substance abuse. This is critical. Build a network of friends who are committed to wholesome living. Without doing this you will have little or no chance of overcoming your addiction.

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5. Maintain high moral and ethical standards. Without being rigid or legalistic, realize that God\'s moral laws, like his universal physical laws, are for our safety and survival. With God\'s help it is essential to begin to live in harmony with God\'s order.

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6. Realize that there is no such thing as instant peace or maturity. Peace comes from within. It comes from facing and resolving inner conflicts, learning to meet our needs in wholesome ways, developing our emotional and spiritual natures, taking good care of our bodies, and growing in every area of our life.

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7. Finally, turn to God for help. We happen to be spiritual beings with a need for God who can make a much better job of our lives than we can—if we genuinely want him to. As we commit and trust our lives to him, and ask him to face us with the truth about ourselves, he will help us accept and deal with our problems realistically. Jesus said, \"Do you want to be made whole?\" If so, commit and trust your life to Christ today and every day of your life. With his help and loving support from understanding people, and specialized professional or highly trained volunteer help, you can learn to say \"no\" to drugs.

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1. Readers\' Digest, January 1987, p. 35.
2. Psychology for Living, September 1986, p. 12.
3. Reader\'s Digest, January 1987, p.31.
4. Ibid, p. 32.
5. Time, September 1986, p. 31.

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