Hi guys,
I hope someone here can correct me if I'm wrong in my thinking, as this topic is absolutely outside of my lanes & educated knowledge base.
As many of you know, I work as a civilian investigator for the Alberta Solicitor General's Office, the branch that oversee's many agencies of provincial law enforcement. (Corrections, Alberta Sheriff's, Provincial Peace Officers, Commercial Vehicle Enforcement, Conservation Enforcement, etc)
Recently it was brought to my attention that a Correctional Peace Officer, whose near-death is being kept quiet due to the circumstances, overdosed on opiates.
My initial impression and opinion (arrogant in hindsight, I fully admit) - was "Ugh, another druggie...great" and all of the opinions that come with that line of thinking. People who can't make a decision to stay clean, f**k up their lives, and we as a society feel a need to come to their rescue. Great.
Yet as we looked into his past, it turns out he wasn't a druggie at all. He was a hard working, nice, clean cut guy who had been with us for several years. After sustaining a serious & painful knee injury, his doctor had prescribed him opiate-based medication to help with the pain. This officer used the medication between surgeries, and continued to work without any red flags.
Several months later, the officer realized that when he tried to stop taking them and ween himself off, he couldn't. He went to his MD, who immediately took him off of the opiates as he had 'become addicted', and started to prescribe him something else instead to help him ween his addiction. Long story short, this was the beginning of a very quick spiral downwards, in which the officer eventually began using small doses of Meth to fulfill his addition to the opiates. He was embarrassed and ashamed of this, and kept it successfully hidden from his co-workers for several months.
Recently, and the reason we became aware of the situation, was there was a work related incident, which unfortunately unravelled quite a lot going on with this young man. My initial attitude was completely wrong, and as I dug deeper & deeper to build the file, I realized this wasn't the kind of person I thought he was, and my attitude is now a total 180' than what it was when I first started looking into this. (Looking at him now compared to how he looked when he started with us, is almost like looking at 2 different people)
*I don't really know why I'm writing this, other than it seems relevant to the discussion. And I don't know what my final point is, other than I guess I've recently been enlightened to the idea that not all of these druggies are druggies by choice - something I was arrogantly dismissive of in the past.