I volunteer in my community and my church quite a bit because not only do I feel it is important to give back in some way but honestly? I feel just as good about it as the ones I am helping because I have been there in one way or another. Because of the type of volunteering I do, I run into a lot of people who have fallen on hard times and are fighting drug and alcohol addictions. Perhaps those addictions put them in the situations they find themselves in. Maybe they turned to the addictions to forget about their situations. The bottom line is, no matter how they got there, some of them are clearly addicted to drugs or alcohol.

I remember a few years back when a woman walked into the restaurant where I worked. She was hungry and obviously coming down from a high of some type. I fed her and paid for it. She sat there for several hours. I finally agreed to give her a ride to the mission in our city when I got off work. Some of the regular customers frowned on that but they knew me and knew it was just like me to do that.

The woman walked outside for a bit and soon a trooper came in that regularly had coffee and lunch as he patrolled the area. He said she had asked someone for money and started an argument and he had to talk to her and in the ensuing moments some heroin fell out of her shirt pocket. I was chastised by him and the regulars alike for what they thought could have been a bad situation for me.

Still, I thought long and hard about that woman. I called a friend who is a drug and alcohol counselor from my church. Something about her had touched me. She seemed isolated and alone and I knew she needed help. My friend was able to go and see her and part of her sentence was rehabilitation. She ended up grateful that she went to jail that night instead of to the mission because she had to stop cold turkey and then went straight from jail to drug treatment.

Our paths have not crossed during the time since but I did ask my friend about her the other day. As luck would have it, he had just heard from her. She had returned to her sister’s home, was still clean and going to support group meetings. She attends a different church than us with her sister.

 Our paths are all intertwined in some way, whether we stop in a restaurant in north Texas, volunteer in our communities or feel at the end of our ropes. Interaction does not have to be negative. There are wonderful programs here in Texas that will help someone to get off whatever drug he or she is addicted to. There are programs to help you. Take the first step. You can reach out for help without having to go through an arrest or getting to a point of desperation. That person you dimly remember? That is you. If you did not care, you would not be looking at sites that encourage getting help. That alone shows you are worth getting help and there are wonderful treatment programs that will be happy to help you get that help. Because people in Texas (and everywhere) care.