Drug Addiction

When I was 8 years old, my family and I moved from Sudan to Hamtramck, MI, a city surrounded by Detroit. Growing up, I knew plenty of people in my neighborhood who were heavy drug users. However, from a young age, I never knew that those individuals were using. It was obvious that they were acting strange, and showing abnormal behavior. My first encounter was with an older woman, who was shaking and excessively twitching. She was trying to light her cigarette, but I guess she couldn't even use her lighter properly. She walked up to me, handed me her lighter and asked me to light her cigarette for her. I did it, and all I remember was me walking away and thinking, "I wonder whats up with that lady, she's crazy." As I got older, these types of encounters became ordinary to me. The endless number of people who would walk down the street laughing to themselves, yelling absurd things to the neighbors, acting strange were not crazy. They were addicts. The other kids who were born and raised in the neighborhood knew this from a very young age. They had been exposed to it their entire lives, and for some, their own parents were victims of addiction. Soon enough, I knew who many of the sellers and users in the neighborhood were. By the age of 13, I could look at a person and tell whether or not they were drug users.

With all of this in mind, I think it is extremely important to talk about representation. Had I not grown up in that neighborhood and experienced the events that I have, I would have been like most people. Everything I would have known about drug addicts would have come from me watching TV shows. For many people, they choose to judge others based off of what they see in movies, social media, and so on. However, the fact of the matter is that ever single addict I have ever met in my entire life is nothing like what is portrayed on TV. In fact, many of them are extremely great people. Unfortunately, they made wrong decision(s) in life that led them towards addiction. It may have started off as a "one time" thing. They never imagined themselves becoming addicts, but it happened. Instead of judging them and referring to them as "crackheads," we should be encouraging them to seek help.