Well...He Brought It On Himself

This past Friday I had found out that someone I had been good friends with in school had past away at the age of 31.

There was a lot of mystery surrounding this death and everyone had their opinions. We had all seen our friend out at the local bars from time to time. He was about 40-50 pounds heavier than he was in school, sometimes looking for a ride, sometimes looking for money, always annihilated...and always by himself.

Right away everyone made the assumption that he drank/drugged himself to death. The comment was then made by someone..."well, he brought it on himself". See this is what gets me. Yes, if he did drink/drug himself to the point of death, it obviously was brought on by himself but can't these people understand that there was obviously some underlying factors?

Would his death become less upsetting if he caused his own death with drinking and drugging? I don't feel that way but I have a tendency to be able to empathize with about any situation that a person can be in. Obviously when he was younger he didn't dream that one day he would grow up to become a drug addict...things happen.

After attending the wake we then found out that yes, he did have a drug and alcohol problem for many years. He had recently checked into a rehab for this problem. He made it through the treatment and was out on his own. He then suffered a fatal heart attack. All of the tox screens came up negative. He was clean but his body couldn't handle the stress of that.

This is one of those situations where if you let yourself get carried away with the shoulda, woulda, coulda's... you would be in trouble.

I do wish that I had dealt with my own addiction earlier on so that when I did see him I didn't judge him as harshly as I did. I wish I was more understanding of what he was going through. But what I do feel good about is my reaction to his death when it was thought that he died as an active addict.

I didn't hold that against him saying he deserved what he got. Instead I felt awful for his mother and brothers, I thought about how glad I am to not be actively using drugs any longer so that the threat of me dying from drugs has been eliminated and my family never has to deal with that. Mostly I thought about how great it was to have gotten to know him before all of his drug problems. I knew the real person...not the addiction.