Editor:

How do you convince people that it is vitally important to support an agency that serves alcoholics and addicts?

We don’t have cute little children walking our halls. Nor adorable puppies or playful kittens. No beautiful forests or shining ponds.

Addiction isn’t pretty.

However, addiction is the No. 1 treatable health care problem in the United States, and the cause of many of our social ills. For every person who achieves sobriety, at least 25 other people are positively affects. That person’s family, extended family, place of employment, church, school and community all benefit.

When addiction continues, however, those cute little children become fatherless, poverty-stricken and emotionally crippled. Those puppies and kitties are abandoned. And unlike a tree, a human has no chance of growing back once he is cut down. Though addiction is a geometrically growing problem, funding for the solution continues to decrease. It’s easy to find money for children, animals and the environment. Medical charities are also popular. These are all good and necessary organizations, and our staff supports them, too. However, the origin of many of society’s ills is addiction. And addiction isn’t pretty or run to talk about.

Those who have exhausted their families and their resources while in the shackles of their disease have no money. No one wants them. They end up in court, in jail, in the charity wards of hospitals, or in mental institutions. You and I are paying for addiction, whether we realize it or not. There is an answer, and it is treatment. Unfortunately, the financial burden of providing treatment for the most addicted falls to the nonprofits.

When you support The Shoulder, you’re supporting our community. You’re supporting families. You’re supporting preventative education to neighborhoods, schools and churches.

You’re supporting “the least of these, my brethren,” even if they aren’t always pretty.

“Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home.” Luke 15: 4-6.

Please help us help them.

The Shoulder development director