BECKLEY — Perhaps the trigger was an acrimonious divorce.

Possibly, the fuse was lit when a financial setback unleashed an avalanche of unpaid bills that made day-to-day living expenses too difficult to handle.

Maybe the proverbial straw on the camel’s back was a sudden illness that hurled the person into a deep fugue.

Whatever the underlying cause for depression, someone came along with some poor advice:

Sniff this. Swallow that. Inhale here.

What ensued was euphoria, with an unseen hook the friend never mentioned.

Once is not enough. So to maintain that good feeling, the hurting individual needs more of what took him into dreamland. Now, he’s hooked. From there, the path is treacherous, fraught with faking pain in “doctor shopping,” or buying from a back-alley supplier, and possibly ending with the slamming of a steel door.

And there’s a good reason for dependency, says Dr. Hassan Jafary, a practitioner of internal medicine at Stanaford Medical Clinic, outside Beckley.

Simply, the brain never forgets.

Jafary experimented on a reporter to illustrate. Eyes closed, the reporter opened his left hand and Jafary dropped in it an object.

“Now, as I start to count, tell me what it is,” he said.

“A dime,” the object of his experiment replied, correctly.

And that is why one shackled to drugs cannot readily overcome an addiction. The brain just won’t let go of him.

Jafary applauds West Virginia lawmakers for moving to set aside $60 million in a proposed cigarette tax increase to treat addicts.

But society as a whole needs to get involved, he says.

“Nobody has ignored the problem,” he says. “It’s just we do not have the will power. We are a hypocritical society. We have different standards for addiction, socially acceptable and socially unacceptable. Nobody wants to believe this is a common disease.”

Jafary likens the drug menace to the chameleon.

“It is a very flexible animal that changes its diet, changes its fuel, but its victims are in every class,” he says.

“Every village in every country and every part of society, rich and poor, are affected.”

Jafary points to the crown princes of entertainment — Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley — as examples on one end of the social spectrum, and the ordinary, work-a-day folks in southern West Virginia on the other.

“It does not spare you just because you are rich, or because you are educated, or because you are uneducated,” the doctor says.

At the height of the Vietnam War, the drugs of choice were marijuana and heroin. In that era, cocaine became the Cadillac of recreational drugs.

“It all depends on what is available, and now it is prescription drugs, which are the No. 1 killer now,” he says.

“You can choose one segment of society to blame and close your eyes to the other one. You can raise taxes for tobacco but not for alcohol.”

Add up a natural propensity toward drug usage, environmental pressures and the easy availability of pills, and it’s a recipe for widespread abuse, he says.

“Jails are not the solution,” the doctor says.

“More laws are not the solution. It’s a sick person. We have more Wal-Marts, we have more McDonald’s, we have more alcohol bars. We have everything. But do we see more rehabs? Do we see more seminaries where a person can be treated as a person? It’s a disease like any other disease. And it has lapses. People do something good and they’re back again.”

Physicians might get most of the blame heaped on them, but Jafary sees enough blame to be spread around society as a whole.

While he supports tighter controls on the medical profession, he emphasizes that doctors are powerless to combat drug misuse. Their control over health care of patients has diminished in recent years, he says, and the paperwork required now for pre-authorization of prescriptions would stretch to Timbuktu, he says.

“We should leave the profession to the professionals,” he said.

“I went to medical school to be a doctor, not to be a deputy, or a private investigator. We will be responsible, but I don’t want to leave a doctor’s compassion.”

When a patient arrives with a complaint of pain, or other disorder, Jafary says he doesn’t want to view him with suspicion that it’s a fake to get some narcotic pain killers, but prefers to look at his patient with compassion.

“I don’t want to behave to that patient like a lawyer or a policeman,” he says.

“That’s not my job. My job is to trust the patient and be responsible. I don’t write him 240 pills and never check him and never call him. I have to be responsible. At the same time, I don’t want society to take away my compassion and my passion as a doctor, a healer, and one who wants to trust his patient. I didn’t go to law school to be a lawyer. I didn’t go to school for criminology.”

Jafary feels the bill advanced by House Health and Human Resources Chairman Don Perdue, D-Wayne, to put $60 million aside from a higher tax on cigarettes and spit tobacco for drug treatment is a sound idea.

While the state can begin making inroads into the drug culture, Jafary challenges the spiritual community to join the fight.

“Churches have more influence,” he says.

“We do not have that social fabric we need. Not even with neighbors. We don’t have churches that father their flocks and help these people who are suffering and don’t need to be thrown out as an outcast like a leper.”

His office is filled with biblical tracts and plaques quoting familiar Scriptures. Jafary says he puts much emphasis on the spiritual aspect of drug healing. Confidentially, he asks the addicted if they can touch base with a church for support.

For three years, his clinic has offered drug rehabilitation and says the program has been successful.

“These people, most of them, feel like they have been cast out, not only by family members and loved ones, but everyone they call on,” he says.

“Churches can be a major factor in healing the people. And law enforcement has to be more vigilant. Most of these people are victims, but a few are not. They have a pack leader collecting pills and are making the victims.”

It has been estimated that four-fifths of the inmates in West Virginia jails and prisons are there for some variety of substance abuse.

Locking people up with no hope of becoming unhooked is not only a non-solution but merely aggravates the crime problem, the doctor maintains.

All that does is expose the addicted to hardened criminals, eager to instruct them in the ways of crime. In short, the addicted gets out as a more sophisticated criminal.

“They will be more hard core, and learn more ways to acquire pills,” Jafary says.

Jafary paints a picture of futility of a coal miner using drugs while laboring in the bowels of the earth to earn money to keep a family fed, likening it to a lion.

“You work hard in the belly of the earth, half a mile down, all night,” he said.

“Your face is dark when you come out. It’s just like going into a jungle and getting a piece of animal meat for your cubs. By the time you bring that little piece of meat to the cubs, it’s already been taken by hyenas. Your tribe, your house, your cubs are dried out and going to starve because of what you’re spending on the drugs.”

Unless society comes to grips with a menace that transcends all walks of life, the very fabric of the nation could unravel, he warns.

“We are all responsible for this one,” the doctor added.

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com