My only brother-in-law (Tony's younger brother), who was my dear friend and whom I admired for his intelligence and creativity, overdosed on drugs. He died at the age of 30.
I briefly wrote about this tragic event in my book "Grace under Pressure." It caught the attention of the VP of Publications, and the next thing I knew, she was asking me to write a book on drug abuse. It is urgent, she explained, because it is the president's pet project. We need a book that can help people resist or crush the scourge of illegal substances.
Understanding the drug menace is borderline impossible; I didn't know where to begin. I started by interviewing people at random: psychologists, medical doctors, parents of drug users, drug users, rehab volunteers, youth pastors, pastors involved in rehab, lapsed and recovering users, and finally, the officers tasked by the president to take charge of the war against drug: the Philippine National Police.
Now bursting with scribbles of both my thoughts and my interviewees', my notebook bled from heartaches, guilt, and what-should-have-been.
In the end, I realized that, unless grace suddenly releases a user from the grip of drugs, addiction cannot be solved. Not even with the relentless brutal killing of carriers and users in our country today.
One of the PNP officers I talked to was emphatic, "The one and only way you can stop drugs from victimizing people is to stop the threat from closing in.” It's akin to erecting an impenetrable steel barrier as protection, because once these substances flow into the victim’s veins, he could be hooked for good, and the success of rehab centers is dismal.
"Have you given up, Sir?" I asked.
"Never," he said. "But those are the facts."
A drug barrier is built in the home, not in jails or rehab centers, by parents—not by the police or the government. And the construction should begin early: when the kids are old enough to understand gestures and listen to words.
Illegal drugs alter the brain, the psychologists and medical doctors I talked to stressed. A drug addict is no longer the person he was.
Ergo, before he malforms, he has to be kept as he was created, as he was meant to be by the Creator—right in the home. Proverbs 22:6 (NKJV), “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."
This nugget of wisdom is just one of many that parents can use to build a fortress for their children. The best parenting book ever written, the Bible, has all the principles we need to drug-proof our children.
In No Means No, after a barrage of research, I went back to Scripture. I mined these principles, and demonstrated them through experiences shared by various people who so generously opened their hearts—for readers to be encouraged and blessed.
(No Means No will be launched at the Manila International Book Fair on 13 September 2018, 4 PM, MOA SMX.)
2 comments:
Great writing, great book!
Thank you Sis Susan.
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