Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, out on the street or up on the mountain… the futility of human foolishness strikes again!

"Hillbilly heroin" is the slang term for the prescription painkiller brand named OxyContin containing oxycodone and its other opiate friends containing hydrocodone. It is the most recent mind-numbing, life-sucking, family-wrecking, addictive drug of choice in America. It's particularly popular in the rural Appalachian Mountain corridor of the East. But it could have been any other mood-altering drug in any other country.

"When I started in this field, the primary client was involved with alcohol," says David Bailey, a community resource specialist with the West Virginia Prevention Resource Center. "I wish it were still alcohol. Not that that's not a very dangerous drug, but the addiction (to painkillers) seems to be much more intense, much more severe within a shorter period of time" (Associated Press, Tom Breen, August 21, 2007).

Why race down a dead end street? Why do people—young adults included—seek addiction to booze, "illegal" drugs or publicly available painkillers? What's the deal? Is life so miserable, so pointless, so lacking in purpose, so totally vacant that drugs are one's only hope? It makes you ask, which is taken, the drug or the user?

As the editor of our Vertical Thought weekly web commentaries, let me talk personally to you, the VT reader, about the challenges before you today.

This column is normally written by one of our keen-minded and talented international team of young adults and teens. They see the same world you see, feel the same impulses you feel and perceive the same pitfalls of mankind's madness. They read about things like "hillbilly heroin" and wonder deeply about the future of the world.

Their mission, which they have chosen to accept, is to help you go vertical in your thoughts too. They strive to articulate the true meaning of life in the face of the meaningless philosophies of our age. They want you to see that there is a loving God above who seeks those who seek Him (John 4:23).

The Associated Press article cites a West Virginia man who finally broke free from his painkiller addiction and now tries to help others recover. Sadly, he observed of his addicted friends, "You've got three choices. You either die, go to prison or get saved. Mostly, people around here are dying."

"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death," (Proverbs 14:12, 16:25). How many times have you seen someone choose to get drunk, use drugs, engage in sex outside marriage, get violent or turn criminal because it "seemed" like a good idea at the time?

A good friend of mine who draws the cartoon "Crow's Encounters" just sent his latest panel. It humorously illustrates the sad irony of all drug—or any other kind of—addiction.

Beyond the ironic, beyond all of society's hillbilly heroins, VT commentators look forward to a wonderful future of the world, when there will be liberty, brotherhood, equality and justice for all—for real. Theirs is a hope driven by anticipation of the soon-coming Kingdom of God when Jesus Christ returns to rule the world for 1,000 years and beyond.

The Vertical Thought commentary team want you to be a part of that future of the world—God's brilliant world to come! VT