notebook 1 - 5g

Salt Lake seems to me as an ideal place to live. The quality of life can be really good even in the more humble areas, at least from my personal perspective. We like to measure this in terms of how we ourselves experience stability, opportunity and safety. However, not all social issues have to affect us directly before we care to get involved. Before that happens we should be aware of issues that can develop to be harmful, even if they never affect us directly. With homelessness for example, the problem can be quite obvious, it is looking at us in the eyes constantly reminding us that something went very wrong with a part of our society. However, with substance abuse, the symptoms and the people suffering from them can be hidden in plain sight for a long time. Because of social stigma and other understandable reasons, those who suffer from addiction to substances would hide this circumstance for as long as possible from society and loved ones, by the time the issue is noticed it can be very difficult to resolve and the further it goes the more it takes a hold of its victims. As of now, in the beginning of what seems to be this journey to get involved and try to figure out a way to contribute to the solution of a problem within our direct context, it would be very difficult and arrogant to suggest a quick fix for this epidemic, but regardless of that, I can tell that whatever the solution is, it starts with having a real concern for our loved ones or simply fellow humans when they fall for addiction in the form of substance abuse.

When we were assigned to choose a social issue to work for this class, a lot of us immediately thought of homelessness as the most important social concern of our context, and to be honest, I agree, it is devastating from every point of view. However, It is known that the issue of homelessness is directly related to addiction to substances of many kinds, and for that reason a lot of people decide to look down on them, and dismiss them as irresponsible and deserving of their fate. In my estimation, this comes from a deep misconception of the nature of the power addiction can have. To solve this issue it would be really helpful to make an effort to understand and try to work on substance abuse before it ends on homelessness. Nevertheless, that is not the only path substance abuse leads to, in many cases it can lead to other undesirable and terrible circumstances, such as prison, murder, theft, suicide, etc. Those of us who have experienced, loved ones and friends deal with this problem know how difficult it can be to see a special person transition into a state in which we can hardly recognize them anymore. In the process many times, they betray the trust of people they do care for and get abandoned by their families and friends, which only aggravates the problem situation and sends the victims further into the abyss. I hope that we as a society come to an understanding that finding a solution for the problem will benefit all of us. As for me, I will take this as more than an exercise in writing, and hopefully it will make me care more about others and inspire me to get involved with my community.