There was Jonathan. Fr Shay Cullen’s Reflections, 28 October 2016
by Fr Shay Cullen
Pope Francis with a recovering drug addict
St Francis of Assisi of the Providence of God Hospital, Rio de Janeiro, 24 July 2013 [Wikipedia]
There was Jonathan, a 16-year-old teenager. He was from a broken home where love no longer held together a family. There was poverty that kept food from the table and from the mouths of his brother and sisters.
Jonathan saw the last of his father as he stormed out of their shanty by the Pasig, drunk on cheap liquor to numb the pain of failure. He was a jobless man fired from his work by a corrupt boss and he had no food for his family. He was a useless, broken man, his dignity was taken away.
So Jonathan dropped out of school to find work. But there was no job without a high school diploma. There was nothing for him but to go to the local drug pusher and sell the illegal stuff for a profit.
A little of the crystal grains could give the body a lift from depression and misery, banish hunger in an empty stomach and alleviate the pain of the poor in dire and deprecated slums. Poverty is the best drug pusher of all time.
Jonathan was the distributer of the medication that could alienate the pain and suffering of some of the poverty-stricken and misery-filled people of the slums. Crystal meth, called shabu, brings a short-lived hour or so of happiness and total forgetfulness for many. It brings the spurt of energy to others so they could work longer and ease their body pain.
Full post here.
Also read The Philippine War on Drugs by Fr John Keenan.