Living with someone who has a constant urge to do something that hurts them is difficult. Addiction can be something that is hard to cope with and even talk about. But on Oct. 10 the three speakers, Ashleigh, Tyler and Melanie, came together and told their stories of addiction and it gave me a chilling insight.

Ashleigh constantly had to live with the fear that each phone call would be the one saying that her brother, Tyler, wasn’t going to be coming home. When someone from my family was in the hospital we all hoped that the phone calls would be saying that he would be able to come home. Sadly, we weren’t lucky enough to have our story end the same way as Ashleigh and Tyler’s.

Then Melanie came onto the stage and talked about how she had to decide that her daughter’s favorite cheetah print dress was the last thing she would wear. I couldn’t imagine being in a situation similar to it. I sat in my seat and just thought about how my family would deal with all of this if this was happening to me.

Hearing these stories opened up my eyes to the dangers of addiction. Addiction affects everyone, just not the person addicted.