SAVED FROM FATE (written for Libbie Combe, director of Florida M.A.M.A.--Mothers against Meth Amphetamine

Some people are born with a predisposition to seek out new experiences, sometimes at great risk to themselves. What constitues reality for others is not enough. They want something more: greater understandings; heightened sensual pleasures in music, art, and physical relations; enhanced cognizance and creative thinking, or a numbness --overall, an escape from the mundane, what is perceived as the drudgery of ordinary life.

Any illicit, mind-altering chemical that provides this escape is at first very positively reinforced. It is the "Aha--this is what I have been looking for" moment, a new-found friend whose exciting distractions suppress personal issues and seem to provide a way out. A harmful drug is like a deceitful and evil-hearted lover--seductive and full of promise in the beginning, but one who ultimately takes everything and leaves nothing behind but despair and death.

Some people come into this world with a propensity toward this kind of destructive relationship with drugs. Only education, constructive counsel, and Divine intervention can save them from their fate.

J. Wallace