Would you trust this junkie?

Tonight's post will be short, because I'm working on something else. I'm in charge of the service next Sunday at church. I could have chosen to do anything -- any topic, presented in any way -- poetry, a play, music .... anything. Yet I decided to give a sermon. And what topic did I choose? Trust.

Why the fuck did I think I knew anything about trust? It's one of the slipperiest, vaguest words in the English language. Go ahead. Try to say something about trust and see what happens.

So I'm doing battle with trust this weekend -- even knowing I have very little of it left to examine in my own life. A better topic might have been regret.

So if you have any thoughts on trust -- how to get it; how to keep it; how to lose it; how to repair it -- please send them my way.

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I'm not going to cop out tonight though, because I ran across this small TV station article titled "Wife: Husband's heroin addiction costs $300 a day."

And I thought, $300 a day! What the fuck? These people are in their late 20's. They were busted for drug possession in a hotel, but the place isn't a Hilton. It's not in a town that has a Hilton. And c'mon. These people are heroin junkies.

So again I say: $300 a day! And that's just what he spends? How the hell do they come up with $300 a day just for heroin? I did the math and it's mind-boggling.

$300/day = $2100/week = $9000/month = $108,000/year = more than a million dollars in less than 10 years!

Where the hell do a couple of heroin junkies get almost $110,000 a year just for heroin? You'd think they'd be too fucked up to earn a decent income, but apparently they can come up with serious cash when they need to. And that doesn't even count rent, food, utilities, vehicles, straws, scales, needles, bail .... I really want to know how they do it.

I'm going to apply logic to this problem: I do not make $110,000 per year. I want to make $110,000 per year. Heroin addicts make more than $110,000 per year; therefore I should become a heroin addict. I see no reason why the money couldn't keep coming in even after it pays for a fancy treatment program in Arizona. Those heroin addicts must know something I don't.

So I'm back to trust. Can the wife be trusted to tell the truth about her husband's heroin addiction? She's definitely an unreliable witness. The only thing trustworthy about addicts is that they will always lie. But even if his heroin addiction costs half what she claims, that's still $50,000 a year. On recreation.

I don't trust everything I read, but somewhere in there lies the truth. The guy spends a lot of money shooting poppies in his veins.

What a strange world.