The Horrifying Lack of Compassion for Addicts

Last night, while mindlessly scrolling through my facebook feed I come across a local video gaining publicity. The video is of a woman, possibly overdosed in a car. The man taping her is violently shaking her, her neck bending back and forth while screaming “wake up you junkie fuck”, and complaining about this being in our back yards. He says he felt like he shouldn’t post this video, but he saved her life by calling the police. First off, this woman does for a fact have a seizure disorder, could she of been overdosed? Yes. She does have a story like mine, former drug addict that went through nursing school and currently works as a nurse. If I could tell you the horrifying things I saw commented on this post without any actual knowledge of the situation I would. People are commenting on her previous addiction, “I see a rolled up bill”, “you don’t narcan people for seizures”, “let natural selection take it’s course.” All I am thinking is, you degenerate lack of personal growth human beings, have no right to be commenting these things? I read a post about our souls being all connected, to teach us lessons of ourselves and to others. I truly believe this is a beautiful theory, that we run into others to help them. I started to think, maybe he was saying those things in the video out of fear.. but he is also taping this? Taping someone dying is not okay. The whole thing was not okay, if in fact that was a seizure her entire life could have been RUINED. Her job might disown her, her family might assume she relapsed and even if she did she is not a junkie fuck. She would need help. It’s completely normal for addicts to slip up, it’s sad and it sucks, but it’s reality. We fight something inside us daily that awaits the day it can take our lives. I feel empathy for this woman, I am grateful this never happened to me in active addiction. In all honestly I believe this man should be arrested for dehumanizing and abusing someone while overdosing or seizing. I am sickened by societies lack of empathy for addicts, struggling. That’s girl did a lot to change her life, and I am sick of seeing things like this. I would provide the link, but I do not want this video spread any further.

On a good note, yesterday at work my coworker stopped me just to say, “Goodnight Bri, you are a good person.” Those simple words radiated through me to today. After a long night of running back and forth trying to save people that weren’t breathing, myself and cleaning up c-diff and trying to help people that didn’t know the floor, while I didn’t either I felt defeated. I had contemplated leaving my job, as I thought about the dirty clothes I probably left in someones room, or the nourishments I forgot to pass last minute and had chuck do. Sometimes, that’s all we need, are a few words to keep us going.