Two mice paused between floor joists beneath the cereal cabinet where they often met to snack on the crumbs that filtered down. One queried the other, “Have you seen Junior?”
“No,” replied the second mouse, “last I saw him he was on his way to explore a hole in the floor that smelled like peanut butter.”
“You’re kidding!” gasped the first mouse. “If he goes missing that will be the 5th one this month. Just last Friday Casey was found dead with peanut butter in her mouth. Why do we keep going after the stuff that takes us out? You would think we’d learn.”
Being much wiser and higher on the food chain, we humans have a little better understanding of the world than mice. We know that mice have been getting trapped using peanut butter for decades. It works. You would think the word would get out. Why do the mice keep falling for the same deadly trick? Why don’t they put a warning on their social media outlets saying, “Don’t eat the peanut butter!”
But wait, humans have not fared much better. We have our “peanut butter.” For millennia there have been a few simple baits that have systematically thinned our population. Even with much research and many sources of social media, we continue to stampede toward these known killers. The most obvious of these deadly tempters is drugs and alcohol. Even before the steep increase in opioid deaths that we are currently witnessing, the American Addiction Center reported the following statistics:
- Up to 75% of individuals who begin treatment for a Substance Use Disorder report having engaged in physical assault, mugging, using a weapon to attack another person, and other violent crimes.
- The connection between drug addiction, alcoholism, and violence crosses many thresholds (individual psychology, public health, and domestic violence, to name a few), and is vitally important in understanding the scope of how controlled substances can affect people.
- In 2016, alcohol caused approximately 90,000 domestic violence deaths worldwide.
- Alcohol or drug use is involved in 40-60% of domestic abuse situations.
- More than half of individuals who abuse their elder parents (age 60 or older) are dependent on alcohol or drugs.
- Each year, about 300,000 victims of violent assaults report that their attackers were under the influence of alcohol.
- Alcohol plays a role in 32% of all murders in the United States.
- Chronic substance users have a greater risk of dying by suicide.
- Severe alcohol intoxication—by the perpetrator, victim, or both—plays a part in nearly half of all violent crimes and sexual assaults.
- 80% of child abuse cases involve the use of drugs and alcohol.
Although the statistics are sad, the implications could be very positive. If each of us would make the personal choice to abstain from drugs and alcohol we could immediately save hundreds of thousands of people, billions of dollars and enormous amounts of pain and hurt each year. If we altered our cautions from “drink responsibly” to “don’t drink the poison”, or from “don’t drink and drive” to “don’t drink,” our society would prosper. We have the power to reduce homelessness, child abuse and violent crime… if we would simply stop eating the peanut butter!