Our culture is awash in drugs and alcohol addiction, with Kentucky at the top of the list of abusers...sad to have to say. By now, you can tell by my columns that my family has not been spared the syndrome of addiction. Some were affected as long ago as 1900, by

the prescrition pad when morphine first came on the American scene.

Some of our big city newspapers have said of late that the supply will continue as long as there is a demand. And they have various editorials about the reasons for the demand.

We all have our opinions on that...and I have not hidden my thoughts and opinions on it in recent columns. I contend that much of it began at the prescription pad...and has created many innocent victims who never intended to become addicts.

Now Kentuckians are being deceived (one more time) by the deceivers who come here setting up methadone clinics, driving expensive cars, knowing full-well that methadone is just one more addictive drug. Do they laugh all the way to the bank. Or what?

Then there is the generic version of oxycontin, that showed up on the black market in Eastern Kentucky before it made its way into the pharmacies. Now what? Innocent people have lost control of their lives!

How did the demand for these addictive drugs begin here in Eastern Kentucky? I say, "At the prescription pad." Should a drug as addictive as `oxy' be prescribed for pain that could be handled with a less pervasive drug? The answer is obvious!

Throwing government money at the drug problem is not apt to solve the problem as long as the outfits are run like other government bureaucracies . If you call them, you get a recording for half an hour. When you finally get a living person, they have no solutions or

suggestions. Just vaguearies! They refer you to another agency that just refers you to yet another agency...and their salary just keeps coming!

So we keep losing young people nearly every week to an overdose of drugs. Our culture is in denial. We are `good time Charlies' that cannot stand to face reality. The reality is: Our children are dying at a rapid rate here in Kentucky! We must get our head out of the sand and get a handle on it. We must not allow them to be put on yet another addictive

drug! We must not enable them to continue with their self-destruction! If it takes jail. So be it.

Too many Kentucky families are coming to ruin and going into emotional and financial bankruptcy because of these prescription drugs. And nobody seems to want to ask any questions. Believe it or not, there are unscrupulous doctors (working alongside the good ones) out there! Face it! And there are all kinds of other crooks just waiting on the sidelines to finish the job. Their eyes are dollar $signs$.

`Hillbilly heroin' (Oxy) and suchlike are not the only drugs on the streets just waiting to destroy our children and grandchildren. The problem has reached epidemic proportions hereabouts. Addicts are driven by cravings that are maddening and cannot be controlled without legitimate medical help. So where do we go from here? Certainly not to the methadone clinics!

It would help us personally, to go to Al-Anon and meet with folks who have like problems, and try to learn to get through `one day at a time'. Branches of my family have tasted the horrors of dealing with addicts of one kind or another. With hearts breaking! And few people are willing to step forward to offer a helping hand. Much less, a consoling word. Many stand back and look and never say a word. Or just whisper behind their

hands. Hoping you never find out that their family has a similar problem.

Go to Al-Anon where people with like problems fellowship together and give morale support to families and friends of addicts. They teach you to stop wasting precious time and energy trying to figure out WHY the loved one drinks or takes drugs. And why the

addict has no consideration for the family or his/her own well-being. Or his/her obligations. Or their reputation.

An addict is a sick person who suffers from a disease and a compulsion to self-destruct... and there is no use wasting energy being angry with them . No more than you would be angry with someone who has cancer or some other terminal illness. At Al-Anon, you learn to make your own life more livable and to stop blaming yourself. And to stop

being an enabler.

Al-Anon teaches you to pray for the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the power to change the things you can....and the ability to distinguish the difference.