Life Goes On And Other Annoying Realities

While I was traveling last month, a gem of an entertainer died.  Whitney Houston was just 48 years young when her addiction took her life.  Make no mistake, she died, somehow, because of her addiction to drugs and alcohol.  I was infinitely sad to hear this.  Not only did I really like and admire her work but the lost of another great artist, again to addiction, was such an avoidable tragedy.  Addiction is a disease, make no mistake, and Houston lost her battle with it.

Pisses me off to no end.  The loss of life is always wrong, especially when, unlike cancer, there was a measure of choice involved.  I get that addition is virulent and hard to beat, but the silencing of a voice as rare and beautiful as Houston’s makes the loss all that more poignant and bittersweet.  Like Michael Jackson, I am sure Houston’s family feel they failed her when in reality, she failed herself.

I read that Tony Bennett, astonishingly so, was quoted saying that we needed to legalize drugs the way they have in Amsterdam.  Sure, sure, just know that Amsterdam has one of the highest death rates from overdosing in the world.  If one wanted to see Houston OD in her 20s, legalizing drugs would have been a fine way to go.  So, I don’t know.  On one hand, I’d like to see drug dealers not crowd our prisons alongside rapists and violent offenders but on the other, I don’t think giving heroin addicts unfettered access to their drug of choice a really swift alternative.  You don’t let pedophiles on the playgrounds of America and you don’t tell diabetics to lock themselves up inside candy shops.  

I don’t have the answer, clearly, but I don’t think making drugs legal is going to solve the problem of addition.

Like cancer, we need a cure.