poison

Someone I care about is slowly poisoning himself.  As I've been observing this and struggling with it, it has occurred to me that poisoning is pretty much always a choice, isn't it?  We introduce a poison to our system, and we choose to ignore or maybe even accept the warning signs of the damage it will cause.  We learn to prefer the feeling of the poison inside of us than the feelings of being without the poison.

The thing is - that poison might be alcohol or drugs (street or prescription), but it might just as easily be negativity, pessimism, lying, or a number of other things.  At some point, the poison felt foreign to us.  It felt wrong, unnatural, out of place.....but we kept forcing it into our lives until it felt normal.  Then the pendulum swang in the other direction so that NOT having that poison ingested feels wrong, unnatural, out of place...

Unlike the poison of negativity or the poison of lying or cheating.....my friend's poison is going to kill him.  And before that, it is probably going to drive away every person who ever cared about him.  Which will probably make him feel alone and desperate and craving more poison. 

How do you make someone see that they are full of light and possibility and that they are covering it up with their poison?

I can't quite finish this blog entry because there is no tidy conclusion or summary.....I'm just sad about it and had to shoot it out there into the world.