It is very difficult for normal, well-adjusted people to understand why some take hard drugs. It is painful to watch healthy men and women eaten away by the chemicals that infest them. Eventually, they become empty shells of their former selves, dying both metaphorically and literally.
It is even harder to understand why some who have managed to become clean of drugs, who have seen the degradation that it causes and know that it is a blind alley, who then return to that seedy underworld and begin once again to pollute themselves.
There must be a reason. A reason beyond mere addiction. I believe that the reason that many take hard drugs is due to their an inability to face reality. For that is what drugs can do – they offer the benefit of removing, temporarily, the need to face reality.
A similar question is why some, who have seen at first hand the degradation of the soul that becoming a Jehovah’s Witness engenders, suddenly decide to return.
Is it that they cannot face reality? Do they seek an alternative reality?
For some, who may be socially inept, the Jehovah’s Witnesses offer a ready-made circle of pseudo-friends. It is a safe haven of people who can associate with you, and they have talk to you because you are part of the club (until you break the club rules).
And the Jehovah’s Witnesses offer bitter people the chance to get back at their enemies. ‘Our God is going to destroy you at Armageddon’ and ‘only we have the truth’. The Jehovah’s Witness religion, among other things, is a paradise for delusional and bitter paranoids.
Perhaps the most powerful reason for staying in or returning to the vomit that is the Jehovah’s Witness religion is that it provides a God who will sort out all your problems for you. You don’t have to think, you don’t have to worry, and you don’t have to face reality. Wait on Jehovah; he will sort it all out.
It is sad when people we have come to know and care for refuse to accept the truth. It is sad to watch them waste away inside. Like a powerful drug, the teachings of the Organisation infest the spirit, stripping away any decency, any humanity, until they become an automaton unable to speak or understand anything not sanctioned by the GB. They become trapped in a little bubble of alternative reality.
But we have to be aware that, for some, there is little we can do, except be there for them when they need us. Hopefully, one day, that spark of humanity within them will rise to the surface above the dross piled upon them by the Organisation. We should not judge if or when that might happen.
Wherever humanly possible, if or when that time comes, we should be there to offer our hand.