It was a great joy for our Global Interfaith WASH Alliance to host a roundtable consultation with the United Nations Technology Innovation Labs, Alliance India, Global Fund and United Religions Initiative here at Parmarth Niketan on engaging faith leaders, faith based communities and faith actors against drug and alcohol abuse, and to work to remove the stigma of addiction so that addicts can actually get access to good treatment and high standards of care.
People who use drugs are not bad people, wrong people or evil people. They are looking for the right thing, but in the wrong place! They are looking for something, some experience that is higher, deeper, more than the current physical situation they are in. They are looking to go beyond the circumstances of the current intersection of time and space in which they find themselves. That longing is actually a GREAT longing because it makes us realize that there IS something higher, deeper, more than just this current tangible situation. But drugs, of course, simply create more problems rather than solving them!
