Or people that have an understanding and may have seen others suffer ...
Whilst not on a totally personal footing, I have seen the consequences of people at work who have suffered from their use of drugs or drink.
One bloke actually saw fit to give up a well paid job as a result of taking drugs, he moved away to live with his parents.
We had another bloke who had lied about his medical records when he was employed (the only way our employer could terminate his contract and sack him). Whether he was constantly stoned, I don't know, but he would sit inside the tooling he was building and needing to clean it down would fill it with thinners, literally soaking himself in flammable liquid. He would even eat plastic bonding fillers just to see what they tasted like and the whole time he was either sleeping rough in the subways close to the factory or in the factory toilet cubicles.
We have a bloke in his mid to late thirties who is an alcoholic, he has had previous councelling from the firm and has just spent a fortnight in hospital due to organ failure. In fact we have several alcoholics of various degrees who all work together so are probably feeding off each other as for some it has become necessity whils tothers just see it as acceptable.
One work colleague who works in my department, is highly unstable due to past drug abuse. He suffers from high states of paranoia, he also likes a good drink. This bloke has a 16 yr old daughter who is singing in a girl group. The other night he went to see them perform and yet he felt he had the need to get completely off his face from drink at the performance, he failed to turn up for work the next day and never woke until midmorning.
We have another bloke who literally is now permanently on another planet. He now talks to himself, he'll go and have a lay down on the locker room floor during the middle of the shift and have a sleep, even though he has been caught doing so several times in the past.
We have two other blokes who will have several spliffs throughout the course of a working day ontop of what they will smoke outside of work. They are so hooked on them, they are miserable as sin within minutes of finishing a spliff and are already craving the next.
I've seen more than my liking of drink and drug abuse and I still don't understand it. It's not as if they have come from a world of having nothing and are in a position of havin gto steel for it or anything like that but they are all in a position of having destroyed or given up on a part of their lives which for some has only affected their own lives for others it is affecting their families, friends and work aquaintances.
Forgive me if I have little or any understanding or compassion for anything like drink or drug abuse when it's hard enough coming to terms with the death of my mother from ovarian cancer aged 68, or the recent death of a work colleague age 53 from bowel cancer.
