Over the last several weeks, I have been doing my best to help an old friend deal with his adult child’s opiate addiction problems. This child is approaching middle age and my friend and I are well into our senior years.
Keeping opiate addicts alive is difficult enough, but effects of long-term drug use, especially when opiates have been mixed over years with hallucinogens, uppers, and downers of every type, mean the personality and mental functioning of this addict are destroyed or so severely damaged that the simplest of daily tasks become nearly impossible to accomplish.
Life for the addict has become a cycle of incarceration, hospitalization, and periods of living nearly independently, provided there are adequate public services and family support. In the mix, while the addict and support systems are teetering on the edge of disaster, have come the Northampton Police. They have become involved twice to help when the addict’s behavior overwhelmed the strength my friend could muster to meet the need.
The officers who responded were striking for their youth, professionalism, compassion and their extraordinary kindness and sensitivity. I know that this does not happen by accident. Someone made sure these young people were trained, oriented, and prepared for the terrible difficulty and delicacy of the situations they would face.
The Police Department as an institution has clearly made a commitment to seeing that its officers know the laws, the procedures and how to deal effectively with the people caught up in the miasma of drug-related destruction in order to provide whatever desperately needed help they can. As citizens of this community, we can be proud to be served by officers of such quality and thankful that somehow our community had the wisdom to provide them with the resources they need to do their jobs.
And, we should be even more thankful that these young people stepped forward, rising to the challenge of this most difficult work.
George Danziger
Florence