Darrell Castle talks about being thankful even while difficult circumstances surround us. Transcription / Notes GIVE THANKS – BUT SOMETIMES IT’S HARD Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report.  Today is Friday, November 24, 2017, but more importantly today is the day after Thanksgiving, or what is commonly known as “Black Friday”.  The day after Thanksgiving has developed into a kind of holiday all its own as the retailers of America start the deep discount sales that begins the Christmas shopping season. Now some stores have extended Black Friday to Thursday so Black Thanksgiving, I suppose.  These retailers are counting on the lust for discount shopping but I suspect they are also counting on the distant and fading American family.  We want to buy presents for each other at a discount, but we can’t stand each other’s presence for one day. Don’t get caught in that trap. Black Friday if you must, but not Black Thanksgiving, please don’t go shopping on Thanksgiving even if they are giving stuff away. Let them keep their trinkets for one more day, perhaps just long enough for you to give thanks for your family. The American family is in trouble right now, and showing signs of crumbling.  The destruction of the American family coincides with the rest of America’s crumbling values, such as the high divorce rate and the extremely high rate of illegitimacy, which also coincides with the high rates of incarceration.  Addiction is another difficult anti-family problem, which I will talk about in a minute.  What does all that have to do with shopping; perhaps nothing, but it is an indication of lack of respect for the family unit. I said in the title of this report that sometimes it’s hard to be thankful, and that’s very true in our country and our world today.  To be thankful sometimes we have to remind ourselves of who we really are and what’s eventually in store for us. On this short Thanksgiving Report, I want to mention one thing that is sweeping across America today, that makes it hard for some to be thankful.  Around the turn of the last century, or the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, America did not have the concept of illegal drugs.  Everything was legal, even heroin, and that drug was widely included in other formulas such as cough syrup, and elixirs designed to treat a myriad of ailments.  It was even included in baby tonics, to keep baby quiet and pain free.  It worked, but it created quite a few addicts, although quietly. World War l came along with its trench warfare and exploding shells.  The wounded were often given heroin in its various forms, as a battlefield treatment for wounds and for pain.  The result was many addicted veterans of the war, often mutilated and physically disabled and in chronic pain.  The years between World War l and World War ll gave the country an opportunity to look at what had happened and heroin was banned. During World War ll, wounded men were given a battlefield shot of morphine for the pain.  These men were supposed to be noted somehow so the doctor at the aid station did not give them more, but it was rarely done.  While recovering they got more morphine, and before long, thousands of new addicts.  This has continued on through the wars our country has fought and has gotten worse, not better.   I argue that the worsening addiction rate among veterans has been caused by two things. Number one is increased effectiveness of battlefield treatment and early evacuation of causalities.  Wounds that would have been fatal in Vietnam were treatable in the desert wars. The second thing was that, after 80 years on the banned list, heroin made a very legal come back by American corporations in the form of Oxycodone, Oxycontin, and especially fentanyl  patches.  These corporations were able to fund studies and spread enough money around to convince doctors that the new drugs were safe.  The drugs are basically a new form of heroin, more addictive and more expensive than the original.