The faces of addiction are often hidden from us

By Lethbridge Herald on April 29, 2025.

Tad Mitsui
For The Herald

Can drug addiction be cured? I know it’s difficult. The following are the stories of three drug addicts I knew personally. They were good people.  I hope their stories can help you think more deeply and sympathetically about drug addiction. The first person is my grandfather. He was a veterinarian.  The next man was my professor of the Old Testament.  The last was an ordinary young man and was a member of my church.

I start with horses to introduce my grandfather.  Dr. Yukichi Takeda was a veterinary surgeon. Thinking of my own traumatic experience with a horse, it is not difficult to guess how one can become emotionally attached to horses. When I lived in Africa, one time I had to shoot my beloved horse.  rom that traumatic experience, I can guess how my grandfather became a drug addict.

My horse suffered acute pain from the twisted intestine.  orses can neither burp or vomit so when the intestine is blocked, it’s fatal for them. After several days and nights of my futile attempts to open the passage, the vet shook his head and handed me a .22 handgun and marked X between his eyes. The horse’s eyes met mine just before I pulled the trigger. He was a gentle old gelding. He taught my family how to ride. We loved him.  The trauma of the incident kept me awake many nights.

Dr. Yukichi Takeda was a veterinarian of a cavalry regiment. It was in Japan’s war against Russia in the early 1900s. He saw the horses killed in unimaginable cruel ways.  Grandpa was a dysfunctional man after the war. He failed in every enterprise he tried.  He was a drug addict.  I often saw him sitting with his back straight chanting Buddhist mantras. His den always smelled disinfectant. In wars, we do terrible things to animals. I watched a British drama series “All Creatures Great and Small” on the PBS-TV. In it a cavalry veterinarian was ordered to slaughter all the horses that survived the war to save the cost of transportation when WW I ended. Lethbridge Galt Museum Archives has a diary of an Alberta cowboy who went to fight in the Boer War. He wrote about 300 horses which were thrown overboard in a storm to reduce the load to save the boat.

Grandpa was still a drug addict when he died – in his eighties.

Another drug addict I knew was my professor at the Theological College. Dr. Zenta Watanabe became addicted to painkillers, probably morphine, in Germany where he was working on his doctorate. He told us that it was a pain killer for an appendix operation that did it. At the time, opium was a legally accepted recreational beverage like alcohol. Charles Dickens, Conan Doyle, Alexandre Dumas, and many other well known personalities were opium users. Dr. Watanabe beat the addiction. But “cold turkey” was so excruciating that he tried to kill himself a few times. He lived a productive life and became famous for his scholarship.

Johnny (Fictional name to protect the identity of the family) was a restless young man. As soon as Japanese Canadians were free to leave the internment camp, he came to Vancouver in 1949. But Vancouver was still a hostile place for the Japanese Canadians who had been labeled “Enemy Aliens” since 1942.  It would take several more years for other Japanese Canadians to return. Meantime Johnny got mixed up in the wrong crowd. By the time his family came back to the city to restart the family business, he was a drug addict. He joined the Japanese United Church with the family. He tried hard to get rid of the bad habit. Church friends gave lots of support in his hopeless effort. He died of an overdose at home.

When humans were hunter gatherers, they lived only on what they could gather or hunt. Today everything is available whatever we want because we can buy and or produce everything  anytime. We had to learn to stop consuming when we had enough.  If we don’t learn, all good things will turn deadly. Even sugar can kill you if you’re a diabetic and ignore the limit.  Obesity is the biggest killer today.  We eat too much.

There are many complementary foods and drinks to enrich our lives. Cola nut in West Africa is a part of their culture. It is a powerful stimulant and a part of the ritual to build up community. It’s like Qat (Khat) in the Arab world. They create euphoria and are harmless under control. It’s like alcohol which is a part of all celebrations. Yet they are addictive and can be harmful. We have to know how to enjoy it and when to stop.

We are no longer hunter gatherers. We are free to eat and drink whatever we want and whenever we want.  But freedom requires responsibility. We must know when to stop, which is the responsibility of the free. Total prohibition of Alcohol during the 1920’s was a total failure because it prohibited the exercise of freedom. As the result, organized crime skyrocketed.

Production and distribution of illegal substance thrived underground.They produced more deadly stuff because there was no rule underground. Everything we consume and enjoy can be harmful if we don’t exercise self-control. But criminalizing them never worked and never will. It’s human nature to resist when freedom is taken away.

We also have to recognize that drug abuse and addiction are much more widespread than we think.  Many addicted persons are hidden from the public. They are at home. Ministers of religion who from time to time conduct funerals for those deaths by overdose know how many hidden drug addicts there are.

God has granted us freedom. We must exercise it responsively.