Why so serious?

The day I had this patient, I knew I needed to share this story. One thing or another just continued to come up and for some reason I end up sharing it now.. I had my first day of clinical on the psychiatric ward about 2 months ago. My patient was 25 years old and had lived in a crack house all of his life, both parents were dependent on alcohol and cocaine. I’m surprised it took for him to hit 14 before he began drug use, being in that environment throughout the course of his life. He started out with marijuana and quickly moved up the ladder. By 17 he started selling crack... “I made 700 dollars in about 10 hours...”... within a couple months he was expelled for selling in school. He continued his ways experimenting with drugs through the next 7 years, which leads us to where we are now.

His addiction had taken him to a point that he was no longer making money and was unable to help out by taking care of his son. His girlfriend wasn’t speaking to him and he felt he no longer had a reason to live.

I felt the root cause of his issues stemmed from a lack of love from his family and peers throughout his life. Moving forward with this intuition, I just sat down with him and let him tell me every thing he had to say and release everything off his chest. I then slowly started to work, attempting to make him realize his addiction on a deeper level.

I started out asking him if he believed in God, knowing he’d say yes,(he was wearing a cross) I then asked him if he truly believed that God created everything(also, a yes). Then I asked if God was perfect; yes again!
“So then, if God is perfect and he created you then somewhere inside of you is a divine inner-self right? If you do believe that you put a piece of yourself in everything you create.”
“I guess so.”, he replied.
“Well then, why don’t we derive our happiness from the divine instead of the material? When we look for happiness in material form, we end up chasing one source of happiness to the next... whether it be drugs or diamonds, we’re in a constant state of unrest looking for the next ‘high’.”

He sat back for a moment and realized something he never realized before. He then continued to ask me about my beliefs about God and so on the rest of the day. However the point of this post is not to talk about how I was able to make someone realize the need for self-reflection, but yet to be able to show love to everyone. How often is it that we think “That dumb___ does drugs, what an _______ idiot!”? We must be able to take a step back and realize three things.

1. How can we love God if we can’t love His creation?
2. Malcolm X once said “Don't be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn't do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn't know what you know today.” We are all at different stages in our lives, we have gone through a variety of different experiences and so it is important to keep an open mind when dealing with people and their deepest of issues.
3. Lastly, in Sureh Fateha- we say “Maaliki Yawmid-diin” “[God] is the master of the day of judgement”... so who are we to judge?

As the day went on we had a group therapy session and my patient talked about how much he appreciated how the staff treated him. He explained how he never felt people cared for him the way that we were able to. My heart sank a bit and made me realize how blessed I was to have the childhood that I’ve had. No matter where you are in life, don’t forget how much a simple act of kindness can affect someone. It’s the easiest way to give that we often end up over looking. If anything just smile.