Rainy's Goodale School Asheville Fundraiser page

01/25/2026

Join me!!!

01/18/2026

Please check out my new fundraiser website at monarchnc.org/rainy and donate! Education and treatment will reduce these horrific situations

01/17/2026

I wish I could change tbe name on this page but fb doesn’t respond. The Goodale school had to be shut down due to lack of funding. My passion is still to help those suffering from addition. Please check out my new fundraiser website at monarchnc.org/rainy and donate!

Dear friends,

01/08/2026

f ideology were enough, addiction would already be solved. If punishment alone worked, jail populations would be shrinking. If limitless compassion saved lives, overdose deaths would be falling instead of climbing.

None of that is happening.

Because none of the extremes work.

I’ve stood at both ends of this argument long enough to know each side tells itself a comforting story. And both stories are incomplete.

One side says the problem is cruelty - that if we stopped judging, enforcing, imposing consequences, people would heal on their own.

The other side says the problem is weakness - that if we were tougher, harsher, less tolerant, people would straighten up or get out of the way.

Both sides get something right.
Both sides get something catastrophically wrong.

I saw one end state clearly in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco.

We were there looking for a missing woman - an adult, addicted, slipping through cracks widened by time, trauma, and substances. We didn’t find her through policy or paperwork. We found her through the streets - people who knew her, saw her, and knew where she’d last been alive.

She was found safe.

What surrounded that success was impossible to ignore.

Open-air drug markets block after block.
People injecting in plain sight.

Needles everywhere. Trash everywhere. Bodies everywhere.

This wasn’t hidden. It wasn’t accidental.
It was sanctioned neglect dressed up as mercy.

The prevailing philosophy said this was compassion - that judgment was violence, enforcement was harm, and society’s role was to make addiction safer, not interrupt it.

On paper, it sounds humane.
In practice, it looked like slow-motion eugenics.

People weren’t getting better. They were surviving - until they weren’t. Overdose after overdose. Some reversed. Some not. Many reversed multiple times before one finally stuck.

What struck me wasn’t chaos.
It was normalization.

This is the end state of harm reduction without recovery - managing addiction instead of challenging it, stabilizing dysfunction instead of disrupting it, quietly accepting a yearly body count to avoid discomfort.

No one says that part out loud.
But it’s written all over the streets.

Chronic enablement removes urgency. It tells the addicted person and the system that tomorrow is optional, consequences are cruel, and survival without dignity or progress is enough.

It feels compassionate to the observer.
It is devastating to the person living inside it.

Addiction isn’t just chemical dependency. It’s neurological hijacking. Dopamine rewired for relief over future. Stress locked high. Numbness chosen over hope because hope requires effort - and effort hurts.

When a system removes every external pressure while offering no internal path forward, it doesn’t restore agency.

Ben Owen

01/08/2026

If ideology were enough, addiction would already be solved. If punishment alone worked, jail populations would be shrinking. If limitless compassion saved lives, overdose deaths would be falling instead of climbing.

None of that is happening.

Because none of the extremes work.

I’ve stood at both ends of this argument long enough to know each side tells itself a comforting story. And both stories are incomplete.

One side says the problem is cruelty - that if we stopped judging, enforcing, imposing consequences, people would heal on their own.

The other side says the problem is weakness - that if we were tougher, harsher, less tolerant, people would straighten up or get out of the way.

Both sides get something right.
Both sides get something catastrophically wrong.

I saw one end state clearly in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco.

We were there looking for a missing woman - an adult, addicted, slipping through cracks widened by time, trauma, and substances. We didn’t find her through policy or paperwork. We found her through the streets - people who knew her, saw her, and knew where she’d last been alive.

She was found safe.

What surrounded that success was impossible to ignore.

Open-air drug markets block after block.
People injecting in plain sight.

Needles everywhere. Trash everywhere. Bodies everywhere.

This wasn’t hidden. It wasn’t accidental.
It was sanctioned neglect dressed up as mercy.

The prevailing philosophy said this was compassion - that judgment was violence, enforcement was harm, and society’s role was to make addiction safer, not interrupt it.

On paper, it sounds humane.
In practice, it looked like slow-motion eugenics.

People weren’t getting better. They were surviving - until they weren’t. Overdose after overdose. Some reversed. Some not. Many reversed multiple times before one finally stuck.

What struck me wasn’t chaos.
It was normalization.

This is the end state of harm reduction without recovery - managing addiction instead of challenging it, stabilizing dysfunction instead of disrupting it, quietly accepting a yearly body count to avoid discomfort.

No one says that part out loud.
But it’s written all over the streets.

Chronic enablement removes urgency. It tells the addicted person and the system that tomorrow is optional, consequences are cruel, and survival without dignity or progress is enough.

It feels compassionate to the observer.
It is devastating to the person living inside it.

Addiction isn’t just chemical dependency. It’s neurological hijacking. Dopamine rewired for relief over future. Stress locked high. Numbness chosen over hope because hope requires effort - and effort hurts.

When a system removes every external pressure while offering no internal path forward, it doesn’t restore agency.

Ben Owen

Donate now at monarchnc.org/rainy

12/24/2025

10/26/2025

We all have good and bad habits. Those who suffer from addiction just cannot crawl out of the bad habits. Help them by donating today at monarchnc.org/rainy

10/10/2025

Learning about addiction takes a lot of time and change. Visit monarchnc.org/rainy and donate

09/24/2025

Please learn more at monarchnc.org/rainy

09/09/2025

Please visit my new website

07/14/2025

These folks are our family. It’s time to address the problem. Donate to monarch nc.org today

07/11/2025

Ernest Hemingway once wrote: The hardest lesson I have had to learn as an adult is the relentless need to keep going, no matter how broken I feel inside.

This truth is raw, unfiltered, and painfully universal. Life doesn’t stop when we are exhausted, when our hearts are shattered, or when our spirits feel threadbare. It keeps moving—unyielding, indifferent—demanding that we keep pace. There is no pause button for grief, no intermission for healing, no moment where the world gently steps aside and allows us to mend. Life expects us to carry our burdens in silence, to push forward despite the weight of all we carry inside.

The cruelest part? No one really prepares us for this. As children, we are fed stories of resilience wrapped in neat, hopeful endings—tales where pain has purpose and every storm clears to reveal a bright horizon. But adulthood strips away those comforting illusions. It teaches us that survival is rarely poetic. More often than not, it’s about showing up when you’d rather disappear, smiling through pain no one sees, and carrying on despite feeling like you're unraveling from the inside out.

And yet, somehow, we persevere. That’s the quiet miracle of being human. Even when life is relentless, even when hope feels distant, we keep moving. We stumble, we break, we fall to our knees—but we get up. And in doing so, we uncover a strength we never knew we had. We learn to comfort ourselves in the ways we wish others would. We become the voice of reassurance we once searched for. Slowly, we realize that resilience isn’t always about grand acts of bravery; sometimes, it’s just a whisper—“Keep going.”

Yes, it’s exhausting. Yes, it’s unfair. And yes, there are days when the weight of it all feels unbearable. But every small step forward is proof that we haven’t given up. That we are still fighting, still holding on, still refusing to let the darkness consume us. That quiet defiance—choosing to exist, to try, to hope—is the bravest thing we can do.

•

What’s the hardest lesson you’ve had to learn as an adult, and how has it shaped you?

READ MORE: https://www.lazylifeinc.com/a-dog-who-happily-played-in-the-fountain/

Text Credit: Coach Mantas

Summer begins with the joy of having a fully stocked freezer but ends in sticky unhappiness due to climate change issues.