Today I went to pick up my three children at their father’s house. It was Super Bowl Sunday, 10 minutes before the game, and I was picking up my kids early because Dave, a chronic late-stage alcoholic, was drunk again.

His father was not in his right mind and was not happy about the early termination of his Super Bowl party. He swore at me in his loudest voice, yelled at me to get out of his house, and loomed over me, threatening to hit me. I am clearly a second-hand addict, an innocent person drastically affected by someone else’s addiction.

Dave’s mother was there, a quiet, refined woman of class. He soon found himself begging his 44-year-old son to let his grandson go and stop insulting his ex-daughter-in-law. Clearly, this peaceful soul is a second-hand addict, an innocent person drastically affected by someone else’s addiction.

My children were 14, 12 and 10 years old. They heard the threats and verbal attacks. My middle son was being forcibly held on his father’s lap. How would this and other similar events print on their growing brains? How would it affect their lives as adults? How would the constant onslaught of such negative role models affect your upbringing? So too, how would this parenting affect your children one day? Clearly, these three, and all of their children to come, are second-hand addicts – innocent people drastically affected by someone else’s addiction.

As I left the house, I called my ex-brother-in-law. I was afraid that when I left Dave would turn his uncontrollable anger on his 80-year-old mother. Now my brother and sister-in-law were missing the super bowl to take care of their mother. They don’t really like their brother these days. You can’t blame them, but it eats away at their souls. Clearly, they and their brothers and sisters are all second-hand addicts, innocent people drastically affected by someone else’s drinking.

Dave is out of work these days as he lost his when he could no longer function to do his job. So now we can add your abandoned boss to the list of second-hand addicts, not so drastically affected, but affected nonetheless.

Now we can get away from Dave and multiply all of these 20 or more people by the millions of addicts in the world to account for all their close family, employers, and friends.

Can we start to get an idea of ​​how many second-hand addicts there are in the world?

But wait, our list is not over yet. Now we need to add all the people who have been killed by a drunk driver. And we need to add all of your grieving family and friends. So the list gets longer. And we must add all the people who were ever assaulted, physically assaulted or even killed by someone who was high or needed money to get high. And we must add the family and friends who sat outside the Intensive Care Unit while they waited to see if their attacked loved ones survived. They are second-hand addicts, people drastically affected by someone else’s addiction.

And they don’t even know it.

And the list gets longer.

But our list is not over yet. Many of our addicted citizens find themselves homeless at some point. Therefore, we must add to our list of second-hand addicts all the people who work at the daunting task of helping them. And while we’re at it, we need to add in people working the desperate task of trying to find work for addicted people, only to see their efforts fail time and time again. Everyone is badly affected by someone else’s addiction.

And we need to add the people who pay for all these services, as well as those who pay for the jails packed with addicted people. We need to add you as a contributor to our list. Because you’re a second-hand junkie, and you don’t even know it.

This blog is designed to help those whose lives are drastically affected by someone else’s addiction. And it is designed to send the message to each of us that we are all greatly affected by the addicted people who live among us, whether we know it or not.

And I’m not sure exactly what we’ll do once we figure this out. The answer is certainly not to shame and blame addicted people, which will only make the problem worse.

But I know this …

To change something, you must first see it.

So I’m here, along with my blog posts, to help you see the problem.

So I invite you to continue reading.