What do you support?

Well, if you smoke crack I can answer that for you.

If I stand in front of the White House with a sign supporting the war or opposing the war, I am verbally expressing my support for a cause.

If I give money to cancer research, I am saying that I want to help those that spend countless hours trying to find a cure.

If I volunteer my time at my child's school, I am saying that I support education and want to help the under paid teachers that devote their time for my child.

Do I, or do you, or anyone for that matter do those things to make ourselves feel better? So we can pat our self on the back and say," look what I did?" Do we do it to get a tax break? Or are we doing it because we want to support what is important, morally good and truly important in the world? I would hope that at least for me, I do it expecting nothing in return so that others can benefit from it.

On the other hand....when I buy crack... I am expecting something in return.."to feel good." Have you ever been ripped off when buying crack? Find out the rock you bought was really a piece of soap or wax? How did it make you feel? Well, for me, I got angry, anxious, impatient, worried, all the human emotions that bring you down to the lowest of low.

Its kind of like when a person gives say $30.00 to help the homeless or some other charity and then hears on the news that the organization she gave to was using the money to buy beach houses in Hawaii. You would be pretty upset wouldn't you?

With crack..there is nothing GOOD that comes from buying it.. but when you do buy it..you are supporting it.

Support means: "to maintain or advocate" so when a person buys crack... they are maintaining the influx of cocaine into the area. They are saying, "I advocate death and destruction!"

Cocaine is a plant, it grows; someone has to pick it..(workers who get paid $5.00 a week with a soldier carrying an AK47 standing over them.) Then it is processed by women and children who are oppressed by the same soldier with the AK47. Then it is imported by people who break every international law there is to get it into the country and sometimes die trying. Once it is here, it is made into crack by people who would kill anyone that tried to take it from them and they have plenty of guns to protect it.

Once it is created, the distribution process takes place and again, every law concerning drug distribution is broken to get it to the streets. The customers trying to get it will go to any length to get it. Lie, cheat, steal, and even sell their own body to get it. Once they are addicted, morals go out the window, no matter how well they were raised.

People are hurt, broken, scared, manipulated, ripped off, and even die to get crack.

When you buy even $5.00 of crack you are literally "supporting" the whole process. You are helping that guerrilla soldier pay for his AK47. You are helping the drug lord pay for his billion dollar mansion; and even the fellow crack-user that breaks into your grandmother's house and steals her TV.

Does a crack-addict care? Or even think about it for that matter? Heck no!.... all he wants is to feel good and if he can continue to buy it, then it will always be there and he will feel good until it kills either the people trying to get it to him or the crack-addict himself.

Today, I am concerned about re-building my integrity, but even more concerned that I never support a process that brings nothing but death, destruction, and tragedy, so that someone can feel good for 15 seconds.

When I think about all the people that were humiliated, taken advantage of, tortured, mistreated, and possibly killed so that I could sit in my car and smoke crack cocaine, it tears at my heart. When I was using, it never crossed my mind, all I knew is I felt good and didn't care what may have occurred before I actually got the rock in my hand.

Now I have to deal with the fact that I supported (maintained the influx) and advocated, the process to bring me my happy candy. I know that in this life I will never know the journey that this substance that started as a mere plant might have taken to get to me, but one day, I will have to face it. I thank God that I have been forgiven, but that still doesn't undo the tragedy that happened over and over again to make me feel better.

Crack is the epidimy of selfishness.. A crack-addict doesnt care what has to take place to get it, and has no concern for the trail of despair it leaves while using it.

Crack is unmatchable in its ability to campaign for support and doesn't even have to advertise. People give selfishly to the cause daily....billions of dollars, and the only result is death, despair, and tragedy..all for a few seconds of pleasure...pleasure that is bogus, misleading, unnatural, corrupt, deceitful, unforgiving, hypocritical, treacherous, and will betray you in a second.

Would you give to or support a cause that stole your money and then used it to hurt others? Would you support a war that had no legitimate motive other than death and destruction? Would you sell everything you owned, including you soul for the sake of one night of pleasure knowing that other people had to die, work for $5.00 a week and be tortured to make it possible?

Well, I did for almost 5 years and looking back in retrospect it makes me sick that my actions, my money, and my resourcefulness, was even a small part of the cause to "feel good" at the expense of hurting others.

I am devoting the rest of my life to the support of all that is good, pure, worthy, beneficial, and selfless. I started my adult life with an ambition to help others, which is why I became a teacher. It only took me one night to divert my path and point me down a road of destruction and demolish every good thing I ever did.

It will take much longer than one day or night to set things right, but I feel I am back on the right path, and this time, that path will be motivated by selflessness.

I recently heard that when we are born we are given two names. We then have the ability to make one more name. The first name we get at birth is the one we inherit. Then we are given one by our parents. Finally, we have the rest of our lives to have the name we "make for ourselves."

I do not want to be remembered as "Mike Johnson" the crack-addict, the man who supported death and destruction.

I would much rather be remembered as "Mike Johnson" the man who selflessly supported "life" and "meaningful existence"

If you are here and still smoking crack, think long and hard about where your money is going the next time you buy a rock.

Mike Johnson (2008)