Turbo Cancer: Day 107 - September 26, 2022
Brain Development
On this day, last year, my mom wrote:
Faye came yesterday. Good visit. Kristi still suffering and silent. I pray for her and for the wisdom to say the right thing.
Felt good. Strong. Lumpy hurts. Blow hole leaks.
Today—cardiologist
Steven is at peace.
“Make us concerned only to do your will, my God, the rest is insignificant.” - J Cormody.
Addiction is a disease accompanied by a stigma. Like cancer, addiction overtakes and destroys the body from within. Like cancer, addiction is the body destroying itself. Like cancer, addiction is the final result of the progressive accumulation of toxic substances in the body.
We are able to perceive cancer as an attack on the body that is beyond the patient’s control.
With addiction, we blame the addict.
However, in 2022, more young Americans died of addiction than of cancer.
In 2022, Fentanyl overdose was the top-ranking cause of death of eighteen through forty-five year olds. In the modern western society, addiction is a common and pervasive disease.
It is a true epidemic.
Fentanyl dealers are mass murderers.
Those who have the power to control our borders but, instead, give access to our children to cartels, who smuggle Fentanyl into our country, are mass murderers.
They are killing our children.
In the year in which my son died of Fentanyl poisoning, one hundred thousand young Americans died with that exact cause. One hundred thousand mothers received a phone call saying that their child had been found, dead and alone.
One hundred thousand mothers - grieving, alone.
And fathers. And grandmothers. And grandfathers. And brothers. And sisters. And uncles and aunts and cousins and friends.
Grieving.
Alone.
When my son got sick, I was ashamed. When I lost Steven, eleven years earlier, I mourned that loss quietly. By the time he died, I had become accustomed to keeping all of my pain to myself.
When Steven died, several well-meaning people sent me messages that said things like: “There was nothing you could have done. He made his choice.”
That made me so angry.
How could people believe that anyone would choose the life of an addict?
Why would he choose to suffer and then, ultimately, to die, painfully, in a public bathroom, with no one there to hold his hand?
Steven was a child when addiction overtook his body and his mind. Have we actually, as a society, accepted the premise that children have the capacity to make life-altering decisions about their body and their health?
Really?
Isn’t that what parents are for?
What I have come to understand is that the first five years of life are critical for proper brain development. It is during that time that the human ability to handle strong emotion is developed. It is during the first five years that children learn how to navigate conflict and how to collaborate with others. During the first five years, children develop both empathy and self-esteem.
Trauma interferes with development. When a young person experiences upheaval, extreme stress, or intense shock, his emotional development stops. A brain that does not develop properly, socially and emotionally, for the first five years, never develops properly. Victims of early childhood trauma do not acquire the ability to self-regulate or to delay gratification. As adults, they are emotional toddlers in a big body.
They will not realize the potential with which they were born.
I know that Steven’s problems stem from the experience that he had in his early years. I was young, and I didn’t know the things that I know now. There were choices that I made that caused instability in his life. In addition, he was hurt by outside forces, beyond my control.
When Steven was very young, there was a time when his world was unpredictable. That is scary for a little boy. Unfortunately, this coincided with a time when I was unpredictable. I was unable to think outside of myself and provide him with the support and strength that he needed.
When the foundation of a human beings’s development is broken, an entire person is destroyed. When, as a society, we fail to provide children with security, with time for innocence, and with unconditional love, we annihilate an entire generation of human spirit.
We are, currently, actively annihilating an entire generation of human spirit.
Somehow, as a whole, we don’t appear to feel it. One would think that the world would be grieving for these poor, innocent, lost, boys and girls.
One would think that all of the adults would be trying, desperately, to save them.
Before it’s too late.
As adults, we hold the responsibility of protecting children from evil. We are tasked with protecting innocence from malevolence. Children’s brains cannot recognize the difference between the truth and a lie. They cannot differentiate between reality and fantasy.
Defending the innocence of childhood is the purpose of adulthood.
And in that, we have failed. In that, we continue to fail.
Western society has failed to protect its children from dark and evil forces.
Western society has failed to preserve empathy.
Western society worships money and fame.
Western society promotes materialism.
Western society revolves around one central credo: Self-fulfillment and pleasure take precedence over love for one another. Put yourself first, second, and third.
By definition, western society is satanic. As a result, our children are being sacrificed.
(Our parents are being sacrificed, as well).
You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. - Ayn Rand
On average, the brain finishes developing at the age of twenty-seven. The last cognitive ability to develop is the ability to reason. It is, therefore, logical to assume that humans are unable to make sound, informed decisions until the age of twenty-seven.
My son was fully addicted to drugs by the age of seventeen. His brain never had the chance to develop. It is not possible that addiction is something he chose. Addiction was chosen for him.
He was a beautiful, intelligent, loving boy, filled with bright potential. However, he had a weakness. He had an emptiness. Just as is happening to hundreds of thousands young people every year, his weakness was exploited. Drugs, initially, promised to replace his feeling of emptiness with pleasure and joy.
We, as adults, know that that promise was a lie. Children, however, cannot tell the difference between fantasy and reality. They do not have the capacity to recognize what is the truth and what is a lie.
They trust in adults to guide them. That is what parents are for.
Our children are not protected. They are manipulated, and destroyed before they have the opportunity to develop. Their mind is intentionally misguided, before they develop the capacity to make sound and informed decisions.
Childhood has been, and continues to be, under attack.
I am Steven’s mother. He was my responsibility. I had promised to protect him from harm, and I failed. I accept that I am at fault for the demise of my son. I will carry that failure within my spirit, until the end of time.
But in that failure, I am not alone.
Our children are dying a death of despair, in huge numbers.
War - Violence - Addiction - Self Mutilation - Suicide
We are failing to make sound decisions that take their future into consideration.
We, as a society, are actively, knowingly, failing our children.
We are allowing the self-destruction of the human race.
Perhaps, as a result of trauma, our collective brain has failed to develop properly.
This is what terrifies me about the covid trauma as well. So many murders due to democide, no one is talking about it. People are acting out and society is falling apart.
We just had 5 deaths due to a stabbing in Sydney and it has been a week of official mourning - government fully on board. What about the 40,000 murdered by the government the past couple of years? We are straining to the breaking point, and as you say Kristi, our collective brain is sick, so sick from trauma.
God Bless you in your writing.
The opioid epidemic has been going on for awhile. Pharma knew that opioids cause addictions but they paid doctors to prescribe them indiscriminately and the doctors obliged. I did a search on cases of opioid fraud and there have been many cases of doctors, pharmacists and nurses convicted of fraudulent prescription and distribution of opioids. It was the medical community that is responsible for your son’s addiction and death. I also heard that some people have a genetic disposition to getting addicted after taking prescribed opioids although I don’t have the study.
My brother came home from work and found his daughter had died in bed. While driving she had been rear ended by some kids joy riding. This started her journey of back pain and eventually was put on extremely strong pain meds by a “pain” doctor that eventually killed her leaving her 3 year old daughter. It’s heartbreaking. 💔 😓