THERE ARE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT THAN PEYTON MANNING
Well by now the defeat has settled in with the 20-18 to Peyton Manning’s Broncos but there will always be pain. That missed extra point came home to haunt the Patriots in the final play of the game. What could have been doesn’t matter. However, in the scope of all things football, we can all cheer on the Panthers and Cam Newton in the Super Bowl or put a clothespin on our collective noses and root for Peyton and root for the AFC.
We should remember though that football is just a game. Somebody wins, somebody loses and everyone lives to fight another day. However, in the game of life that we actually live, there are far more important issues to be recognized and defeated. As heroin finds its way into where we live, we need to be more than spectators like sports fans in their seats. We need to stand up and do something because we have a national health crisis on our hands. Drug addiction is a disease that has grown into a growing epidemic. It is an uncomfortable reality. While we try to reduce the number of drug-related deaths we need to put more than salve on those left behind wondering what more they or society could have done.
I am actually penning this commentary right inside Charlestown looking around me for just the right inspiration. All of us have known someone who is now dead from drug use or someone floating around us numb to their very own plight.
Back in December, the Boston Globe’s Brian MacQuarrie did an excellent piece about Charlestown’s second clinic which just opened and how it is tackling this deepening crisis right here in our neighborhood.
The piece starts off talking about Michael Cain having had to bury his 24-year-old son, now nearly seven months ago after a heroin overdose, a high school football hero who became another casualty of self-destructive addiction.
Today, Cain and others from within the town are working to fight this epidemic and fear that more will have the same fate as Cain’s young son. Charlestown has been hit hard by opioids and Cain, 51, is himself a recovering addict who is now active i n drug prevention and he believes most families in Charlestown have been affected by addiction either directly or indirectly.
Charlestown in 2015 had at least 25 nonfatal overdoses and three from this community had died of overdoses through mid-August.
Football for most of us died in Denver when we went down 20-18 but when it comes to drugs, there is no overtime. Once you die you are dead.
We must all become activists. We must not keep secrets. We must not play pretend. The stakes are high. The victims many of them our young people.
Spectators mourn those who died but activist are right in the fight making a difference between winning and losing and living or dying.
We all need to join those already in the fight. It will take a team effort to destroy the evil of opioids and addiction.
Together, all of us can work to defeat this enemy even if it just one person at a time.
Parents need to constantly be parents. Take care to educate your children on bad choices in life. Give them encouragement and give them love. Even then some kids can still end up dead but as long as we try we have hope. Never, never give up.
Michael Cain hasn’t and neither have many other parents out there praying to God their kids remain safe and alive.
As the Bible says, “Hope endures!”