Several of the people I respect and love the most have issues with various substances. They are still strong, brave, kind, wise.  Just human.  

A friend recommended a prescription for one of my other friends to help curtail the desire to drink.  I replied that’s probably the last thing desired.  We all need our crutches to get through.  If being honest, we all have them – just some are more accepted and even praised by society – career, relationship, kids, and even religion, actually especially this.

I suppose we need to carefully choose that crutch.  I offer the late writer David Foster Wallace’s insights as food for thought.  In the context of worship, but still applicable:

Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship… is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough.  It’s the truth.  Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant your cold skeleton in the ground.  Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay.  Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.  And so on.