It Doesn’t End

6 Comments

1. 

   wendigo on March 27, 2018 at 8:30 am

   It’s everywhere.  Have a BIL on heroin / methadone (methadone is a total racket) self medicating for arthritis pain / bipolar.  Had another BIL just up and OD out of the blue last year (I suspect it was fentanyl) which was a shock as he was only 30.  Super nice guy.

   Saw a graph lately which showed average time to opioid addiction.  For a few it happens in as little as a week, others a month, a few can go as long as a year.  It’s so widely variable and unpredictable, I can’t believe they’re handing out these things like candy.  Seems every couple of decades the drug industry trots out a “safer” opiate and the learning curve starts all over again.  

   Literally anything for a buck in America.

2. 

   Heart of the Rockies on March 27, 2018 at 9:08 am

   Then there is the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma with its aggressive marketing campaign of oxycontin.

   https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-that-built-an-empire-of-pain

   Also a recent article in the WaPo. “OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma said on Saturday that it has cut its sales force in half and will stop promoting opioids to physicians, following widespread criticism of the ways drugmakers market addictive painkillers.”

3. 

   MikeInOhio on March 27, 2018 at 9:10 am

   So tragic. One thing that seems to perpetually sadden me is how easy it seems for people to discount the magnitude of the struggle that people have who find themselves in such circumstances.  It just feels to me as if there is such a lack of empathy and humanity in so much of our society and culture today. We seem to have developed a chronic level of insensitivity, and the understanding that things like addiction and mental illness are not bounded by race, class, or religion. It seems as if my family has been dealing forever with those twin demons. Watching the effects up close for decades, to someone who is your flesh and blood, who has forever been a part of you, will slowly suck the life and spirit out of your very being. It is hard to describe to anyone. You must have lived it, and I hope all of you never do, though I know there are many in this group who are a part of that involuntary fraternity.

   Every week in our area, all you have to do is scan the obituaries and you will find another handful of victims.  Mostly young, many who would be considered as having “made it”, as far as the way success is defined in the U.S..  They have jobs, families, life responibilities, not to mention many friends.  Friends who all end up looking back and wondering why, and if there was anything they could or should have done to try and keep their friend on this side of the eternal divide. But our hindsight is always 20/20. As someone who has been chest deep in these problems for a long, long time, I wish I could say the passage of time gives one the wisdom on how to help stem this tide of human destruction. But sadly, it only seems to make it more perplexing.

   • 

     CabinGirl on March 27, 2018 at 11:18 am

     The level of insensitivity to the struggles of people suffering from addiction is truly disheartening. So many people seem to think shame and humiliation and isolation will work, when it’s actually compassion and humanity and connection that are needed. My heart breaks for the family of this young man, who seemed to “have everything” and be on an upward trajectory. The demons of addiction seem to always be hiding in the shadows, watching for a weak moment when no one else is looking.

4. 

   Brendan Skwire on March 27, 2018 at 10:32 am

   Last time I visited my dad, a family down the street had an ENORMOUS banner on their front porch detailing their son’s death from opiates.
   ‘
   It’s horrible.

5. 

   n1cholas on March 27, 2018 at 5:06 pm

   Well, at least ol’ Beauregard Sessions is champing at the bit to persecute cannabis users, the gateway drug to shooting heroin.

   So there’s that.