People love to talk about “drug problems.” Almost nobody wants to talk about the pain underneath them. The truth is simple: Drugs are usually a solution, not the original problem.
People don’t wake up one day and decide to ruin their lives.
They use because their nervous systems are screaming.
They use because they grow up in chaos.
They use because they were never given another way to calm the noise.
You don’t fix it with jail cells. You fix it with safety, regulation skills, and real community.
The US Criminalized Trauma Instead of Treating It
Instead of asking, “How did you learn to cope this way?”, we turned trauma into crime.
We militarized poverty.
We poured billions into policing instead of mental health.
We punished symptoms and ignored causes.
We labeled entire communities as “dangerous” when they were filled with people who were in danger.
The War on Drugs didn’t fail. It succeeded at exactly what it was built to do: target the already wounded.
Trauma Shows Up in Every Home – Including Mine
Growing up in chaos shaped me and my sisters in completely different ways. Several of us ended up with CPTSD, but our coping branches split off:
- some overachieve
- some overwork
- some implode
- some go numb
- some fight
- some hide
- some feel too much
None of used illegal drugs = not because we were “stronger”, but because our nervous systems used different tools. Someone else’s system used illegal drugs. That’s not moral failure, it’s biology.
You Can’t Solve Trauma With Political Theater
Instead of healing trauma, we build entire industries around punishing the traumatized.
We build prisons, militarized police forces, surveillance, mandatory sentencing, and propaganda – everything except what actually works.
If we genuinely cared about ending addiction, we would invest in:
- stable housing
- early intervention
- trauma therapy
- community care
- safe family systems
- medical support
- connection
- regulation skills
Instead, we invested in fear.
Trauma is the Real Public Threat Crisis
Addiction is trauma.
Violence is trauma
Overworking is trauma
Numbness, shutdown, chaos – trauma
Most coping mechanisms are just pain wearing a mask.
When you understand that, the War on Drugs starts to looks silly. We are fighting our own national refusal to heal.
So What Is the Real Answer?
Community.
Connection.
Nervous – system repair.
People who show up.
People do not heal alone. They heal when someone finally says:
“You have been through enough. Let’s help you breathe again.”
Imagine treating addiction as heartbreak instead of a moral issue. As a wound instead of a crime. As a sign that someone has never had a safe place to land. That’s the country we should be building.
Final Thought
War on Drugs is a joke because it has never fought the enemy.
The real enemy is trauma. The real enemy is pain.The real enemy is being alone with something too big to deal with.
If we want a different future, we have to stop punishing the wounded and start helping them heal.
That’s the world I want to write into existence.
