Drug and alcohol abusers have three choices

If you're habitually drinking and using drugs you have three choices: 1. Sober 2 Jail 3. Dead  

Let's look at all three:

 

1. Sober. Often you need to get tired of jail or come too close to No. 3, (dead) for the decision to embrace sobriety to kick in. You may need to lose your job, car, home, friends and family, but if you go on getting loaded that'll happen. It's hard to get sober and harder to stay that way. But of the three, it's your best choice for a future.

2. Jail. If you continue drinking and doing drugs you will, sooner or later, spend time in jail. You'll get a DUI or a simple possession or possession with intent to distribute. You could, of course, go all the way and kill someone while you're loaded. That's lots of jail. Losing your job and friends and family apply here, too, with the added feature of time spent in court, money for attorneys' fees, bail, fines, fees and court-ordered recompense to any victims.

3. Dead. Dead is permanent and usually caused by an accident like flipping your car over and over because you were driving loaded. Sometimes you kill friends or they die and you don't, which results in No. 2, Jail. A drug overdose gets you to No. 3, too. Usually an accident. Quieter but equally as tragic, there's more expense for your family: Funeral. Burial. Heartbreak.

How do I know? I've been there. I've sat up all night waiting for the telephone call or the deputy to knock on my door and tell me my child had been killed in a car crash or died of an overdose. I've been to Courtroom 10 to watch arraignments. I've talked to my child on a telephone through a thick glass partition in jail. I sat through two trials.

I stood in a courthouse men's room sweating and physically ill while a jury deliberated the future of my child.

My child is alive, sober and thriving one day at a time.

If you're drinking and doping you have three choices. Ken Thorley Newbury Park