Zero Balance by Dr. Juan Harrison

Zero Balance

When I worked in the military with drug addicts overseas years ago, I noticed a common thread.  Whether it was hash coming from Turkey or heroin from Southeast Asia, the guys would tell me how they started out on milder stuff like pain killers from Mama’s medicine cabinet or something at a party or maybe a few hits off a joint of marijuana somewhere.  The thing about drugs, alcohol, pornography is the issue of addiction.  A person never knows how their bodies or minds will react to something.  Some people may be able to try an unhealthy, unsafe habit for a short while, others not so much.  The second rule for addiction is that of diminishing returns.  Once a person is truly addicted, the problem is that it usually takes more and stronger substances to reach the euphoria high that a person wants to reach.  Guys coming back from overseas after Viet Nam and Cold War days found that the drugs they got overseas were much stronger and purer.  Once back in the states they found it took more money to get more drugs to reach the same level they had achieved during their military days.  For a lot of guys who had later issues with alcohol, they may have got their start with cheap, plentiful alcohol at the NCO Club or BX or Commissary.

So much of life is relative.  Not all bad habits have to be drug or alcohol related.  My wife had a friend who developed an obsession with shopping.  Before she knew it her bad money habit bled over into her husband’s business and almost cost her a marriage before she got control of her habit.  Most of us are content to build or buy a house and live in it twenty years or more.  Some folks seem to have this thing about building bigger and never being content with what they have.  Unfortunately, in our society today a lot of folks, and they’re not all young, have gotten caught up in keeping up with the Joneses.  Our old economy is putting some tough strain on our homes and marriages.

Looks like monkey see monkey do has caused our young ones to try and do everything in five years that took us a lifetime to accumulate or accomplish.  For a number of em, we’ve spoiled em and it’s a little tough on their fragile egos and desires to not have it all now.  A few of us may already have found ourselves, about 50% of us parents, helping them out or even having em move in with us for a spell.

I’ve said a million times there ain’t no free money.  I wish it weren’t so but it is. I don’t think it’s the Lord telling us go get it all now.  How did we get to the point in our lives when it seems things have taken over and our control of our lives.  We keep feeding that old materialism habit, but it still doesn’t make us happy for more than the shake of a lamb’s tail.  Too many of us have let the old Devil load us up with more junk related trouble than we can shake a stick at.  Maybe it’s time to draw a line and tell the old boogy man that we’re just fine with our old houses and furniture and tell him to take a hike.  There’s something nice when the credit card bill says zero balance.  

By Dr. Juan Harrison