Posts tagged drug abuse

There are times throughout life when someone dies and we all feel we lost somebody who has touched our lives. Whitney was certainly one of those people. What happened Whitney? Was it drugs? Or was it something else? There are many people today, Valentine’s Day, who are without someone to love them. Some of these people have been emotionally, physically, or sexually abused. I hope this was not true for you.

We miss you and the smiles you brought to our faces when you sang. No one knows what happened to make you use drugs, but I know and treat many people who suffer from drug abuse. Many of them have been survivors of childhood sexual abuse. It is incredible how their lives were changed by this kind of violation. For them Valentine’s Day is usually a day of remembering feeling unloved and abused.

To all of you who have suffered at the hands of pedophiles and predators I wish you a Valentine’s Day of peace and healing.

If you’d like to read more on these issues please go to www.markdworkin.com

Whitney, I wish the same to you and hope that you are finally at peace.

Sometimes I can be a bit dense. I’ve been very upset about this spate of robberies at pharmacies near my house. At first I thought it was just an issue about addicted people needing to find ways to satisfy their cravings. I also didn’t like the idea that crime seem to be on the rise.

Dense, dense, dense! I also recently wrote about a friend who successfully committed suicide. It broke my heart. She was so depressed, and I had no idea. She also moved far away so we weren’t in touch. And she was just a friend, but a good one.

Part of her suicide was taking an overdose of pills. It never occurred to me that the pain I felt hearing about the robberies was connected to my friend. You see, the robbers were stealing pills. My friend died of taking pills. How could I be so dense?

Obviously I know the answer. As Stuart Smalley said in Saturday Night Live, “denial is not just a river that runs through Egypt.” I think this is the nature of things for all of us. When something so horrendous happens to us we go into a freeze, or traumatized state. Then things in the present that may remind us in any way shape or form about the trauma, will reactivate the painful emotions associated with.

Now I train people in trauma therapy, called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). I’m being pretty compassionate with myself, because I know how these things can go. “We are all more human than otherwise,” said the Great American psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan.

So please take a lesson from a guy who’s been in the mental health field for almost 40 years, has had experience in a lot of therapy, is an international lecturer, and an author. If I could go into denial, anyone can. If you ever find yourself in this kind of a situation please remember even those of us who try to have awareness of higher consciousness can be blind to what’s right in front of us.

If you’d like to read more on these issues please go to www.markdworkin.com

Namaste:

Mark