The Real 'Cost' of Addiction
I have been researching recent data related to drug overdose deaths, suicide rates, and crashes involving alcohol or drug impairment.
I need to prove that there is a real cost to addiction. Why?
I am hoping to find reasons for foundations, organizations, and grant funders to want to support what we are planning to do at Yahweh Warrior Lodge as we serve those caught in the world of addiction.
I can tell you that the data show that men die by suicide at higher rates than women and that rural men die at higher rates than men from the cities, interestingly. The vehicle crashes seem extra frightening. I am aware that many safe and sober drivers with families are sharing the road with the addicted, putting us all at risk at any time of the day or night.
I personally do not have to prove to myself or those closest to me the high cost of addiction, as we have lived it.
Sadly, many others have as well. I have spoken to many of you reading this now hearing your story of those you have lost to alcohol or drug related accidents, overdose or suicide. There are many who grew up with alcoholic parents, experienced abuse and fear or grew up without a parent or helped care for a severely handicapped parent related to an alcohol or drug-related accident. There are too many parents who have buried their children. Too many spouses who have buried their partner.
Many of us have gone to local coffee shops to see the photo that honors a beautiful barista who used to serve us coffee, no longer walking this earth because of drugs or alcohol.
This ‘cost’ list can be even longer if we truly want to discuss the immeasurable pain that addictions cause by adding jail and prison time, leaving families without their loved one, as they now have to ‘pay the price’ for their choices while addicted.
The children pay the highest cost when their parents battle addiction.
I am fully aware that many homes have drugs and alcohol, bringing parties, fights, police, ambulance visits, and drama that endanger children and keep the little ones awake and afraid.
These same children still have to get up and go to school the next morning often getting themselves ready while the adults are ‘sleeping’, if they are in the house at all. How can they learn much less stay awake in school when their nights are full of secrets and fear they can’t talk about. This is a hard and painful cost that I cannot find in any graph but is a very real cost that exists here in our communities.
Every percentage or number I read in the data I know represents a person with a name who has left loved ones behind to battle the pain, the grief, and the loss.
There is hope! It is only found through Jesus.
Yahweh Warrior Lodge, A Northwoods Training Ground, will offer a place of hope, healing, and safety. For those who are willing, they will discover the One who created them, the One who can save them, and bring true and lasting healing to their heart and restore what addiction has taken from them.
We desire to offer men up to a year and a half to be prepared for permanent, sober stability for themselves and their families. We want to offer this free of charge until they can work and start to pay it forward for others.
I am confident Yahweh Warrior Lodge will see men transformed! How?
Only God!
I know He will stir hearts within our Northwoods community to serve, volunteer and see His work through Yahweh Warrior Lodge as a worthy cause to get behind with prayer and with financial gifts.
I will continue to find the data to prove the need - if there remains doubt - that addiction does have a high and painful cost.
May God bless you as you journey this life with whatever pain, whatever story you have had to walk. Please know that you have been created for a purpose, made in the image of God and dearly loved!
SuAnne Vannatter
