Meet Father Dan Egan, otherwise known as “The Junkie Priest”.

Father Egan got this title due to his relentless pursuit of helping drug addicts during a time when drug addiction was predominantly seen as a moral failing and not an illness one can recover from. 1/

Father Egan was ridiculed, despised, and removed from positions he had attained in the Catholic community.

None of that stopped him from going to bat for addicts. In fact, it inspired him to double down.

At the time, there was no such thing as “recovery” for addicts...2/

...there were no detox wards or hospitals that would so much as glance at an addict who walked through their doors. “Once an addict, always an addict” was the prevailing thought of the day. Dan thought otherwise.

Father Egan worked tirelessly with addicts, despite the...3/

...stigma that surrounded them.

There’s stories of him approaching stores in a certain part of the city and promising that their inventory loss would trend downwards if only they would donate to create a new halfway house in the area...they did and as promised, shoplifting...4/

...trended downwards.

He kept up the fight long enough that they saw to an end of Rockefeller laws which prevented addict recovery meetings from taking place.

He eventually regained his stature in the community and is one of the reasons that addicts have hope today. 5/

This nation is just now getting to a place where we are having honest and open dialogue about addiction & recovery. I look forward to the days when we look back on these archaic drug laws as a lesson learned and not a trial we still have to traverse. 6/

12 step recovery fellowships, churches, support circles, and other spiritual avenues have gotten to the root of the problem and offered tangible solutions.

Government can only exacerbate the issue and offer lifelong injury.

End the fucking war on drugs already.