Everyone in this world is addicted to something. Whether it’s to make them happy or to take away the pain, there’s something for everyone. I have been addicted to good things like chocolate cupcakes and Cheerios, but I have been unfortunate enough to see many negative addictions in my life.

Both of my parents were alcoholics. Their addiction to drinking took control of them and they quickly become a shell of the person their families used to know and love. It changed them into completely different people and I doubt they even remember who they used to be. My mother went to college at seventeen. My parents were smart and they could have done so many amazing things and been the best parents anyone could have asked for; but that’s not what they chose. They chose the monster of addiction and didn’t become anything. They have risked their lives, strangers lives, people’s children’s lives, my life, for the sake of feeding their addiction.

I am sadly from a city that is number one in heroine and meth. People have killed, stolen, and gone to prison for life for their addictions. I’ve seen mothers standing on corners to get the tiniest bit of money. Children have come home to find their parents overdosed in the living room. People have overdosed in the bathrooms of their high schools from their addictions. I’ve seen the monster that is addictions and it snatches people away from their dreams, their families, and their friends. It isolates them until it’s all they can depend on and it’s all they have to numb the pain or make them happy anymore.

Addictions to things like this are not to be romanticized and you shouldn’t think you can “fix” someone with an addiction like this. My parents were in and out of rehab centers for years and never once did they stop and not to this day to they ever intend to. People have died going through withdrawals and they have hurt people who only wanted to help them. I have watched people I love struggle with the urges and their pain until it has taken everything from them. Unless someone with an addiction wants to get help, there will never be anything you can do to help him or her. And until people with these addictions realize how they affect the people closest to them and how much people really care about them, will they ask for help.

I’m tired of hearing about another high-school student overdosing in the bathroom, another mother killing her children when she’s high, another child getting taken from their parents like I was, or a child finding their parents dead. People should know the signs of addiction and make sure their friends know that they are loved and they can talk to them and never turn to things like that. The only addictions I want my friends to ever have is the same one I had to chocolate cupcakes.