Brace yourselves.

Butler is going to be an uptight community during the next few weeks, and not simply because waiting-for-spring cabin fever has set in.

The sheer size of Tuesday’s sweep of drug arrests across the city and Butler and Center townships is astounding. Twenty five targeted suspects, most of them street-level drug dealers with prior arrests, are both male and female. They range in age from a 17-year-old boy accused of selling heroin to a grandmotherly 52-year-old woman charged with dealing in crack cocaine. The arrest of a 26th suspect — resulting from a chance encounter with the 52-year-old woman’s alleged supplier from Philadelphia — was just icing on the cake.

Give ample credit to our law enforcement agencies for coordinating their talents to get these people off the streets. As Butler County Detective Tim Fennell, head of the county drug task force said, “This is what we do.” And they did this sweep very well.

However, the inevitable aftermath is about to set in.

There will be desperately “itchy” drug addicts looking for alternative fixes. To avoid withdrawal, they’ll turn to unfamiliar substances from sources even more dubious than the alleged dealers who were just arrested in the sweep. Some users will have adverse reactions. Some could die.

Meanwhile, paranoia will set in. Are more arrests coming? Will the accused dealers rat out their regular customers? Are there informants?

And then there’s the paranoia by association, thanks to social media. A glance at the Facebook friends list of just one of the 26 suspects shows Butler County Courthouse employees, school teachers, college professors, parents, business owners and professionals, all with reputations to protect or, at least, to consider.

The realization should not come as a surprise: These arrests touch every one of us in one or more ways, just as drug abuse itself strikes at every one of us — and at the heart and soul of a community.

Perhaps the most alarming realization about such a large pool of accused dealers is the implication that there must be an even larger pool of users — and the nagging question: What’s so horrible about our modern-day culture that’s driving so many individuals to medicate themselves into a routine escape from it? Or is it simply a lack of self-discipline that makes cheap, powerful drugs such an attraction?

Regardless of the reasons, the ultimate dirty trick of heroin and other opiate drugs is that by the time the lie is exposed, it’s too late. The user is addicted. And as the Neil Young lyric goes, “Every junkie’s like a setting sun.”

Now is a very good time to applaud the dedication and resourcefulness of our law enforcement professionals in their battle against illegal drugs.

It’s an even better time to consider what the rest of us must do to rid this scourge of drugs from our community.