Today I saw two articles in my local daily honoring youth who had died of heroin overdoses. One was from a mother who wanted others to know her son was more than an addict, although heroin was the final definition of his 23 years on earth. He also loved baseball, his nephews and Friday night movies. He died on her couch at 3 am on Christmas morning, just 9 days into sobriety.

The other article was about a Catholic parish in Andover, MA. In a tribute to Kelly Johnson, an 18 year-old student who overdosed in January, 2015, the St. Augustine Parish planned to dedicate their holy week to her memory.

Is this a change in the way we look at heroin addicts? Could it mean more treatment options and less censure and shame?

Heroin has deeply affected my life, making surprise visits and swallowing whole human beings while I furiously blew the whistle from the sidelines. Time-OUT!

When I was a junior in college my best friend and room-mate became an addict just three months after she taught me how to smoke cigarettes on our beds in a BU dorm. Instead of visiting Friendly’s for an ice cream float or sunning herself on the beach like she did every other summer, she decided to try heroin over the summer of 1968.

By September she was the Madam of a drug den, selling drugs, turning tricks and sheltering homeless speed freaks, barbiturate addicts and junkies. When I moved into our apartment she proudly paraded her new boyfriend, a 40 year-old hardened grizzled heroin addict from a New Jersey ghetto who was shamelessly pimping her for their drugs. She spent her days lounging in a long purple nightgown ensemble, inhabiting flesh that resembled my beloved friend but was no longer the dwelling place of the girl I knew.

I was a midwestern kid from an upper middle-class Jewish family who had never seen anyone drunk, other than at our annual family Seder. When I woke up my first morning in my first apartment rushing to my Comparative Lit class, I stepped over two bodies passed out in my hallway. I ate my Raisin Bran at the small kitchen table of our fifth floor walk-up on Comm Ave with two people who had needles hanging out of their veins. Within nine days the police busted the apartment, my name on the search warrant because it appeared on the mailbox. I was fortunate to not be home at the time.

After being bailed out, my friend did not return to our apartment. She was unceremoniously corralled by two bewildered parents and carted away to her mid-Connecticut hometown. Her life of drugs went on for years that were punctuated by periods of heavy use, Methadone maintenance programs, stints in jail, ghetto shootings, domestic beatings, homelessness, rehabilitation and many many attempts at recovery. Today she is drug free. Her sister wrote to me 10 years ago and said her life had turned out just fine, in much the same way anyone who has repeatedly stared down the muzzle of a gun would find their life “fine” after it was holstered.

For months afterwards some of the speed freaks, barb addicts and runaways who had been staying in my apartment would occasionally resurface, looking for a place to crash for the night, a cup of tea or just a conversation. I always let them in and got to know many of them pretty well. It was my first time facing the conundrum of good people doing bad things. Until then I had been accustomed to categorizing people as good or bad, depending on their actions, but here was a whole new category. All of them were breaking many laws to support habits and yet I couldn’t see them as evil.

Addiction is one of the most difficult conditions to treat. I have seen too many people cook their talents, brains and capabilities up their veins. As a compassionate society it is good to take judgement out of addiction and understand it for the compelling, overwhelming and sickening condition that it is. Lend a hand, not a judgement.