A Sad Thing

              I grew up in a different time than you did, most likely.  When I was conceived WWII had not been over long.  Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected President of the United  States of American the year I started first grade.  For most of my adolescent years dope was a soft drink, grass was just that, grass, and weed was anything that wasn't a flower, grass, tree or a vegetable that grew in your lawn.  Blacks and whites went to separate schools. 
     I remember taking a speech class in college one time and one fellow did his speech about a person he had meet and had made a recording of on cassette tape.  This person drew a great deal of interest from the other students so many years later after I lost my business and I was struggling financially and was single  and lonely and broke, I thought maybe I could find something interesting to write about that would not only garner me some attention but make me some money.  Writing a novel was difficult, writing a true story harder still, but selling it to the public was a skill I did not have.   But through the researching and writing of the book I learned a valuable lesson. 
    After I graduated high school I went off to college.  The Vietnam war was starting to affect young lives by then but it wasn't something I really paid much attention to.  It wasn't until my junior year when I transferred to a larger school that I got a close look at how the war was affecting people.  A few of the students were addicted to hard drugs like LSD and they acted really weird.  I didn't much care for the way it effected them so illegal drugs had no lure for me.  By the time I got my draft notice drugs were ingrained in the youth culture along with "free sex".  Terms like "Hippies" and " Helter Skelter" made the news along with the Black Panthers,  student protests and anti-war activists.  For the first time in history people know where Hanoi and Saigon were.  Real war was broadcasted right into our living room during the evening news. 
    The war finally ended but by then drugs and an antiestablishment mentality was firmly ingrained into our youth and it is a battle that is still being waged today.  Our youth know longer remembers where Hanoi is and there is no Saigon.  The Vietnam conflict has given way to many more conflicts and wars.  America has discovered that wars fought with guns and bombs is easier to win than wars fought with ideas.  And so it is with our domestic war: the War on Drugs.  We cannot eradicate the sources and there are just to many users to deal with.  eliminating the suppliers is the hardest battle of all. 
   Writing my book gave me a first hand look into the underground of the sellers and the hard core users.  To many of them drugs offered freedom:  cash to buy what one wanted, freedom to escape poverty and the hurt of being abused, and a chance to live life free of any ones control.   The saddest part is the harder one tries to gain freedom from ones past and to garner freedom for ones future, the more enslaved they  obey is your master.  Drugs do not offer freedom but only serve to enslave you.  The same with sin.  The saddest thing of all is the person who rejects Christ because they falsely believe following Christ is giving up freedom when following Christ is the only way out of slavery.