Drug Addiction

In ministry, I have often dealt with substance abuse, or drug addiction. The focus "out there" is more often than not, it seems to me, on the damage that drugs do to oneself, or the laws that are contravened. In my experience, it is much bigger than that. The damage that substance abuse does to relationships and other lives -- not to speak of property -- is huge. Drug addicts do things both under the influence of drugs and in order to obtain drugs, which one sometimes couldn't dream up. OBSERVATION: Like many sins, the damage often seems to lie, not so much in the sin itself as in what surrounds it.