Priest on drug use among young people: "The first joint is like inviting death for a coffee"
Priest Tudor Gheorghe, a social worker at the Youth Evaluation and Treatment Center at St. Stelian Hospital in the capital, has raised concerns about the increasingly frequent drug use among young people.
"The age has dropped to 10, with the most publicized case being 8 years old. We cannot say that the phenomenon of drug use is decreasing; it represents a mass phenomenon that we must fight against. We are not waging a war against this phenomenon; instead, we are engaged in a trench battle because we are treating the effects of drug use while also trying to do prevention and approach the unseen pain of patients with great professionalism and humanity", said priest Tudor Gheorghe.
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The first contact with young drug users is when they arrive at the hospital in withdrawal, he claims.
"I am both a charity priest and a social worker (...) and along with a team, we try to make efforts in this rehabilitation program and return to a normal life. We have methadone treatment. My contact with those in the national methadone program is known, but the front line is at the first hospitalization when they are in withdrawal. That's when I usually go to the ward, and we start socio-therapy work and spiritual therapy work. The latter has two sides: on one side is the patient, and on the other, the family. When they are hospitalized, the family comes, and I tell them that the Good Lord has created a moment of rest for you, so take a moment with yourself. Then they want to enter the program. Do you know what the life of a drug addict is like? From the morning dose to the evening dose. When they no longer have this preoccupation, they start to live again, integrate back into work, and begin to take care of their family and children", said Tudor Gheorghe.
Additionally, the priest also presented the risks of drug use among young people.
"The drug user has a hard life, a life of pain, and if some young people are curious to start using, I tell them that the first joint is like inviting death for a coffee. You get into an increasingly worse state, and drug use brings with it psychological and intellectual degradation, and the suffering of withdrawal is not enough. We must also know that many diseases are associated with drug use, such as hepatitis, HIV, which destroy", added Tudor Gheorghe, according to news.ro.
