The pop punk star opened up about getting sober and how GnR’s Duff McKagan inspired his sobriety.
Deryck Whibley, the lead singer of Sum 41, had to get sober in 2014 if he wanted to continue living. Like many artists when they get clean, he’s had adjustments to make, but he’s found that the pros certainly outweigh the cons.
Whibley found himself close to death when his liver and kidneys started collapsing from too many years of alcohol abuse. Being a musician was a dream come true for Whibley, but as he told Forbes, “Once all the partying and everything I had done caught up to me and I ended up in the hospital and I felt like I was about to lose it all, getting sober sort of re-solidified more than ever [that] all I care about is playing music. Once I felt like it was gonna be gone forever, I started respecting the fact I play music and it’s taking care of myself to play music.”
It wasn’t just the hectic musician lifestyle that drove his addiction, Whibley was also dealing with a bad back.
“I was self-medicating that pain with alcohol,” he explains. “So I started drinking a little bit more because of that on top of the partying. But then I would party that night too. So I was doubling it all up and that’s what got me into trouble.”
Duff Inspires
Whibley has looked up to Duff McKagan from Guns N’ Roses, who also got sober after many years of heavy drinking and a near-death experience where his pancreas exploded.
“I always knew his story and obviously loved Guns N’ Roses when I was growing up,” Whibley says. “I knew he had gone through all that and gotten healthy and was doing really well. When I knew I was getting bad I would say to myself, ‘I’m gonna do the Duff thing. I’m gonna get healthy. I know I’m gonna get out of this.’”
Whibley reached out to McKagan after he got out of the hospital. “I didn’t know him at the time. I’d run into him a few times, but not enough to know him. He gave me some advice and he was great.”
Passion Returns
Now that Whibley is sober, he feels “the passion for music is probably stronger now and also passion for the work that goes into it… I thought touring was so fun when we were all partying. It was just this rolling party wherever we went. And I thought, ‘Would it be that fun sober?’ And doing it now it’s way more fun.”
Given the singer’s substance-soaked history, prison time, and medical problems, Crosby is unsure of how he’s still here.
Singer-songwriter David Crosby, 77, says he’s about as surprised as anyone that he’s lived to such a ripe old age. Crosby has been addicted to drugs, did hard time in prison, and survived heart attacks and a liver transplant foisted upon him by hepatitis C.
“Nobody has any clue why,” said Crosby. “A whole lot of my friends are dead. I think my new motto is gonna be ‘Only the good die young.’”
He will be celebrating his 78th birthday on August 14.
An upcoming documentary, entitled Remember my Name, will cover the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer’s “checkered history.”
“I’ve done some great things, some terrible things. Of course I remember that s—,” Crosby revealed. “All I had to do is be willing to tell the truth… But considering how old I am, I should be fading off into the distance politely and sort of getting ready to sit down and shut up.”
Crosby has entrusted the telling of his life’s story to producer Cameron Crowe, who he’s known for a good while.
“I’ve known him since he was 15,” Crosby said. “He was a very, very bright young man, and everybody liked him. I thought he was terrific, and we became friends. He’s been my friend ever since. And he knows, he really knows [about me].”
One of the tales from Crosby’s life featured in the film is the story of how Joni Mitchell dumped him via song. Despite Mitchell going on to date Crosby’s bandmate, the two have stayed friends.
“I do see her and talk to her,” Crosby said. “I had dinner with her at her place a couple months back. And I do still love her. Our relationship has always been thorny but good.”
Prison Was The Turning Point
Crosby’s life took a dark turn when he became addicted to heroin and cocaine, which culminated in drugs and weapons charges in 1983. After at first fleeing, Crosby turned himself in and served five months in prison in 1986. Here, he says, was where he was able to get off drugs for good.
“It’s the only thing that really worked,” he recalled. “I had tried going into treatment and it didn’t work. I went into prison, and it worked. It was a s —y way to do it.”
These days, life is pretty good for Crosby—with the exception of one thing: the 45th President of the United States.
“I’m pretty happy almost all the time—unless I think about the president,” he says.
He’s so passionate, he might even reunite with his old band, Crosby, Stills & Nash, if it could help beat President Donald Trump.
“I would like to do some get-out-the-vote stuff in this coming year,” he said. “I really want this guy out of the White House. So if they wanted to do that, I’d probably do it with them.”
It’s not my intention to minimize what sober curious folks are doing, but let’s not lose sight of actual alcoholism or addiction either.
Somewhere in the drunken mess of 2002, I was curious to try the combination of vodka and Klonopin. Ditto, I was a curious little kitten when it came to what could possibly happen if I took acid and ecstasy at the same time! I was curiouser and curiouser about everything, from trying heroin to trying to buy cocaine instead of paying my rent. That’s the sort of curious that kept me in trouble for the better part of two decades, but curious to quit drinking because I just needed a break from partying and how it was affecting my life? Uh, not so much.
Trendy, Cool, and Not Dying
If you don’t know what the “sober curious” movement is, you haven’t been paying attention to “sober influencers.” Those phrases actually cause my eyes to deeply roll and my head to shake like a bitchy old neighbor watching you try to parallel park. Look, I don’t know anything about being an influencer unless we’re talking about the fellow teenagers I influenced to take drugs and come to the mall with me in the 80’s. I also don’t know about sobriety being trendy. I didn’t get sober to be cool, I just got sober to stop dying. But I do know that this sober curious movement is an actual thing.
We (and by that I mean people like me who write about recovery) like to latch our collective wagons to sobriety buzzwords and trends. This summer, the world cannot stop talking about “sober curious.” The term, taken from author Ruby Warrington’s book by the name same, has popped up on everymediaoutlet over the last few months.
“Sober curious,” for the uninitiated, describes:
Folks who don’t need to get sober but who can see the benefits of cutting down or cutting out alcohol completely.
Mainly younger people who want to relieve the pressure to drink heavily at social occasions.
Folks who are concerned with hangovers and how drinking is affecting their social and professional lives.
Whimsical nymphs who want to hang out with their friends but not get loaded.
In short, the sober curious ain’t me.
When Alcohol Is Mildly Inconvenient
See, these folks can take or leave drugs or alcohol. They don’t identify as having a problem. Alcohol is mildly inconvenient for them; it’s like your aunt Linda who eats chicken vindaloo but forgets it gives her heartburn. Fundamentally, I do not understand this way of thinking. The way I’m wired, I like to do substances in amounts that will numb me out completely. I didn’t care if work was going to be hard the next day or if my health was going to be affected. Hell, I needed tequila and cocaine just to get through six-hour shifts waiting tables.
I mean, why casually use drugs or drink alcohol when you can implode your whole existence? This is a level of insanity that probably isn’t familiar to the “sober curious.” Nevertheless, they’ve decided to rally together and say “We’re just going to stop drinking and it’s okay if you do too!” It’s more like giving up carbs for a trendy diet than, say, being placed on dietary restrictions because otherwise your diabetes will kill you.
As a movement in and of itself, it’s harmless. I see no problem with people whose brains are very much not like my own who can say, “Maybe I should cool it with the booze for a while.” The fewer people stumbling around, barfing in Ubers, and screaming at each other in Taco Bell at 3 a.m. can only be a good thing for society. The annoying trendiness notwithstanding, sober curious has at the very least made people examine their relationship with alcohol.
However, I don’t see a lot of “sober curious” folks in the ER or ICU.
At my day job as a recovery mentor on an addiction medicine team at a busy urban hospital, I see far more people brought in because of the effects drinking has had on their lives than nearly anything else. As devastating as the opioid crisis continues to be, there is a continuous influx of people with alcohol-related health problems. Sure, sure, the emergency room sees a handful of bachelorette party attendees who drank too much and fell down a flight of stairs who show up needing TLC for a busted ankle. But mainly, I witness patients who are way beyond curious.
They come in broken, in desperate need of medical and psychosocial attention due to their relationships with alcohol. Despite winding up in the hospital, sometimes in terrible condition, many of them think it’s not that bad or that they can just cut down. I certainly identify with this thinking. For decades, I fooled myself into thinking I could outrun it, or that the handful of people I knew who were heavier drinkers meant I couldn’t possibly be that bad.
This is where the Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) diagnosis comes in handy. Used in our hospital (and around the country), the diagnosis quickly separates the sober curious from people literally dying. Some NIH assessment questions for AUD include: “Have you continued to drink even though it was causing trouble with your family or friends?” and “Have you experienced craving — a strong need, or urge, to drink?” This sounds wildly different than the interns at the office who decided to cut back on Rosé because it was making them feel icky. It’s not my intention to minimize what sober curious folks are doing, but let’s not lose sight of actual alcoholism or addiction either. Marginalization, ignoring, and minimizing have never done substance use disorders any good.
If You Drink Again, You Will Die
For the people I see in hospital beds and for people like me, it’s a matter of life and death.
Beyond that, this idea that younger people are drinking less and buying less alcohol doesn’t jibe with bigger, more staggering statistics of alcohol-related deaths among millennials. A study from earlier this summer found that folks between the ages of 23 and 38 were dying the most of “deaths of despair”, meaning suicide, overdose, and alcohol-related deaths. Furthermore, additional data shows that from 2009 to 2016 there was a significant increase in cirrhosis-related deaths among millennials, which researchers say was driven by alcohol-related liver disease.
Over the last year, I have personally worked with a handful of patients under 30 who have the kind of alcoholic liver damage usually only seen in people twice their age. From my position at their bedsides, it certainly doesn’t look like a generation that has this booze thing all figured out. It looks like a group of people being killed even faster than the generation before them. This is a story not buzzword-worthy or even really noticed. About a month ago, I had the honor of sitting with a 28-year-old while he processed the news that if he ever drank again, he’d die. Heavy news for a kid whose friends are all still happy hour-hopping and swilling the latest craft beers. This young man didn’t have the option of being sober curious.
Yet, as different as Ruby Warrington and I are regarding alcohol, we’re doing the same thing: We’re talking about how much we drink. What if someone reads my stuff and says, “Well at least I don’t drink like that guy!” Likewise, the plethora of sober curious articles might make a reverse light bulb go on for someone. They might seek help after reading about this new trendy health craze and think: “sober curious, that ain’t me.”
“They’re dope refugees. They’re looking for a better life,” said Dimitri Mugianis, a counselor in NYC.
Whether you are seeking recovery or a place to score drugs, New York has it all. According to people interviewed by the The New York Times, many have been coming to the big city—and staying more often—to find what they couldn’t at home: harm reduction services, recovery support, or more drugs.
The New York Timesinterviewed about three dozen people living on the streets near major transit hubs—Penn Station and Port Authority Bus Terminal (PABT) in Midtown Manhattan and Jamaica Station in Queens—to explore the growing visibility of drug use and homelessness surrounding these places.
On its own, New York has had a pretty significant drug problem throughout the five boroughs, but as reporter Annie Correal observed, the problem is most visible around these parts. Ambulances, people who are in “critical condition,” panhandling or sleeping on the street are common.
However, according to Denise Paone, senior director of research and surveillance of the city’s Bureau of Alcohol and Drug Use Prevention, only 1% of the total 1,487 fatal overdoses in New York in 2017 occurred at Penn Station, PABT or Jamaica Station.
Dope Refugees
But drug users, harm reduction advocates and paramedics reported to the NYT that the drug problem is indeed growing in these areas, due in part to the increasing number of people who come to the city for this reason.
“They’re dope refugees. They’re looking for a better life,” said Dimitri Mugianis, a local counselor at New York Harm Reduction Educators. Mugianis explained that NYC is not just a place to score cheaper drugs, but where people can access recovery support like syringe exchange programs and medication-assisted treatment.
“There’s more resources for us here,” said Grace Cohen, a 19-year-old woman who came to New York with her boyfriend from Georgia. They submitted an application to a family shelter in the area, but are sleeping on the street until they are approved.
Five Years Ago
The Midtown Manhattan landscape surrounding Penn Station and PABT, and the area around Jamaica Station in Queens, has seen more drug users who are coming to New York and staying, when in the past they would go home at the end of the day. According to the people interviewed by the NYT, the first wave came from Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut about five years ago. Many of them were struggling with prescription opioid and heroin abuse.
Now, longtime residents of the Midtown Manhattan area report being squeezed out of panhandling earnings as more people descend on the area seeking better drugs or a better future.
A new study examined whether a person believing that they’re overweight increased their risk of depression.
People who believe that they are overweight are more likely to be depressed, even if they have a healthy body mass index (BMI), according to a recent scientific review.
For the review, published in the Clinical Psychological Review, researchers looked at 32 previous studies that had examined the link between mental health and weight. The researchers found that people who perceived themselves to be overweight were at a higher risk of depression, regardless of their actual weight status. This connection was observed in research populations from different countries around the world.
This study is important because it breaks down the fact that perception of weight—not just weight itself—can take a toll on mental health. Because people of a higher weight are generally stigmatized, people who believe they are overweight may worry that they will not fit in with their peers, and this in turn could contribute to depression.
“This fear of social devaluation resulting from perceiving oneself as being part of a stigmatized group may threaten core psychological needs of belonging and acceptance, and in turn damage mental health,” wrote the team of researchers led by Ashleigh Haynes of the University of Liverpool, according to the New Scientist.
The researchers found that people who believed they were overweight consistently had poorer mental health regardless of age, gender and actual weight classification.
The data suggested “that the detrimental effect of overweight [sic] on mental health is largely dependent on whether or not a person identifies as overweight,” the researchers wrote.
Perception
People who viewed themselves as overweight were also more likely to struggle with suicidality, the research revealed.
Researchers pointed out that body perception may not be the cause of depression. Alternatively, being depressed could make people see their bodies as overweight even when they are not.
Being overweight and being depressed have been closely linked. Nearly 43% of people with depression are obese. Adults with depression are more likely to be obese than adults without depression.
Depression Risks
Another study found that people who are obese have a 55% increased chance of developing depression. In that case, the study authors found that the conditions can exacerbate each other.
“We found bidirectional associations between depression and obesity: obese persons had a 55% increased risk of developing depression over time, whereas depressed persons had a 58% increased risk of becoming obese,” the study authors wrote.
The anonymous tip that led to the man’s arrest identified him as an alleged drug dealer and a participant in the Netflix series.
Ryan James Zettell, who appeared in the Netflix documentary series Dope, is facing a prison sentence of three to 20 years for his alleged involvement in a drug-trafficking scheme.
The 21-year-old Zettell was arrested by Oakland County, Michigan narcotics officers in January 2019 after an anonymous tip identified him as not only an alleged drug dealer, but also a participant in a second season episode of the Netflix series, which examines the war on drugs from the perspective of police, traffickers and users.
Zettell pled guilty to multiple charges of delivery and manufacture of controlled substances, including cocaine, acid and MDMA (or “Molly”).
Zettell appeared in the third episode of the series’ second season, which focused on the drug trade in Detroit’s metro region. He identified himself by his alleged street name, “Ozone,” and told the documentary crew that he hoped to go into criminal justice.
Anonymous Tip
The anonymous tip to the Oakland County Narcotic Enforcement Team in July 2018 mentioned his appearance in the series, as well as his alleged status as a dealer in the Troy, Michigan area and surrounding communities.
The narcotics team launched an investigation that, over the course of several months, arranged undercover buys of cocaine and Molly from Zettell.
After obtaining a search warrant for two locations where Zettell had been observed conducting allegedly illegal activities, detectives arrested him on January 29, 2019. A backpack containing digital scales, 62 tabs of acid, 29 grams of Molly, and a gram of cocaine was retrieved at the time of the arrest, while a .45 semiautomatic weapon, another gram of cocaine and more than $7,000 in cash were found at one of the aforementioned locations.
Guilty Plea
During questioning, Zettell admitted to Troy deputies that he had appeared on Dope. He was subsequently booked on controlled substance delivery/manufacture charges. In June 2019, Zettell pled guilty to all six charges.
As Pop Culture Medianoted, Zettell’s arrest follows on the heels of the May 2019 capture of another Netflix series documentary subject, Megan “Monster” Hawkins, who was arrested after allegedly attempting to use another person’s identification to open a bank account in Elk Grove, California.
Hawkins, who appeared on Jailbirds, was arrested on charges of possession of a stolen vehicle, misuse of personal ID and probation violation, and was taken to Sacramento Main Jail, where the series was filmed.
Shocking data from a federal opioid lawsuit has been unsealed and made available to the public.
Data that was recently unsealed by a panel of federal judges has revealed that drug companies flooded the country with 76 billion opioid pills between 2006 and 2012, enough to supply every American adult and child with 36 pills each year.
In some rural areas in Appalachia, the rate was more than 300 pills a year for every resident.
The data was reported on by The Washington Post. It comes from a database maintained by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System, or ARCOS. The ARCOS maintains a record of every legal drug sale in the country.
The ARCOS data has been instrumental in the federal lawsuits involving opioid manufacturers. However, the data was sealed by federal judge Dan Polster, even though he had said “the vast oversupply of opioid drugs in the United States has caused a plague on its citizens” and that releasing the data “is a reasonable step toward defeating the disease.”
Making It Public
The Washington Post and Charleston Gazette-Mail in West Virginia sued for access to the data, and in response the ARCOS was made public this week.
“The data provides statistical insights that help pinpoint the origins and spread of the opioid epidemic—an epidemic that thousands of communities across the country argue was both sparked and inflamed by opioid manufacturers, distributors, and pharmacies,” said Paul T. Farrell Jr., a lawyer for the newspapers.
The data shows that the distribution of opioid pain pills increased rapidly during that six-year period. In 2006, 8.4 billion pills were distributed, and that rose more than 50% to 12.6 billion pills in 2012. For comparison, morphine doses remained relatively steady during that period, with about 500 million per year.
The Culprits
The ARCOS also showed that the biggest players in the opioid epidemic are not the ones commonly talked about. The three biggest opioid manufacturers controlled the vast majority of sales: SpecGx with 37.7% of the market, Actavis Pharma with 34.6% of the market, and Par Pharmaceutical 15.7% of the market. Purdue Pharma was the fourth-largest manufacturer, but controlled just 3.3% of the market.
Likewise, the three largest drug distributors were responsible for distributing more than half of the opioid pills during that time. They were McKesson with 18.4% of the market, Walgreens with 16.5% and Cardinal Health with 14%. The fourth largest manufacturer, AmerisourceBergen, controlled 11.7% of the market.
A spokesperson for AmerisourceBergen told The Washington Post that the data “offers a very misleading picture.”
The database also helps show that the areas that received the most opioid pills were also those with the highest overdose rates. West Virginia, which had the highest death rate between 2006-2012, received an average or 66.5 pills per person during that time period, nearly double the national average.
Other hard-hit states also had very high opioid sales: Kentucky with 63.3 pills per person, South Carolina with 58, Tennessee with 57.7 and Nevada with 54.7.
Stapp’s new music video features images of Cornell and Bennington performing as well as the late musician, Prince.
Creed frontman Scott Stapp paid tribute to the late Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington—fellow rock vocalists who died by suicide around the same time in 2017—in “Gone Too Soon,” a song off his new album The Space Between the Shadows (July 19).
The music video for the song is a simple but powerful tribute, playing images of Cornell and Bennington performing as well as the late Prince, who died of a drug overdose in April 2016.
Being in recovery from substance use disorder and mental illness himself, the passing of Stapp’s iconic peers affected him deeply.
“When Chris passed, it hit me hard. And then a year later [sic] when Chester died, again, hit me really hard,” said Stapp during an interview with Nightline. “That’s when I began, I was at a place in my recovery… where not only was I feeling the pain of their loss, but I was saying, ‘Man, that very, very easily could’ve been me and should’ve been me.’ And this feeling of just, ‘I can’t ever go back. You know, because that will be my story.’”
Stapp, who marked five years sober in March, endured a very public rock bottom and at one point became known for his erratic behavior. When Creed disbanded in 2014, Stapp reportedly suffered a psychotic break. He admitted to Rolling Stone that around this time he had been abusing alcohol, Xanax and Percocet.
Reflecting On Addiction
He reflected on that period of his life in a 2016 interview with The Fix. “It was a very scary and low point in my life. I was having delusions, hallucinations and massive paranoia. I was lost!” he said. “My bottom was losing my family, sitting in a psych ward thinking I was undergoing experiments at the hands of the CIA. It was the most horrific living nightmare of my life.”
Eventually he found his way. His wife gave him an ultimatum—get help or lose your family. He stopped using drugs and alcohol, and began taking medication for his bipolar disorder.
“My greatest accomplishments in life, my Grammys, are my children and my wife,” he told Nightline. “They mean more to me than anything that I could ever achieve or receive or have received in my entire career. That’s where it’s at. And if I never get another accolade… moving forward, I’ve already achieved it all with the family that I have.”
The 65-year-old Colombian man was charged with a “crime against public health.”
Sometimes, the ingenuity of drug smugglers is downright awe-inspiring. In other instances, their efforts are simply laughable.
The latter was the case in Spain last month, when authorities arrested a man traveling from Colombia who was trying to smuggle half a kilo of cocaine beneath an ill-fitting hair piece.
Sporting a curious bump beneath his toupee, border officials said that the man tried to hide the bad wig with a hat, but there was no covering up his nervousness when he went through a border checkpoint.
“His toupee was very curious, but the agents there have a lot of expertise and they pay attention to people’s attitude,” the National Police told La Vanguardia, according to NPR. “His nervousness was very noticeable as he was about to pass the security checkpoint.”
Authorities On Alert
Because of the man’s demeanor authorities became suspicious, especially once they gave his hairstyle a second glance. When they asked him to remove his hairpiece they found 503 grams of cocaine, said to be worth about $33,000 USD.
This week, Spanish authorities released a picture of the man on Twitter, with his hairpiece in place, and another showing the bundle of cocaine on his head without the hairpiece.
The 65-year-old Colombian man was not identified when the story hit the news. He was charged in Spanish courts with “a crime against public health” and remains in custody, the Spanish National Police said.
Other Smugglers
Earlier this summer Spanish authorities intercepted another notable drug-smuggling attempt. In that case, an air force official traveling with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was found to have 86 pounds of cocaine in his suitcase aboard the presidential plane.
The drugs were discovered when the presidential plane stopped over in Spain while en route to the G20 economic summit in Japan.
The official, Sgt. Manoel Silva Rodrigues, was taken into custody in Spain, and Bolsonaro immediately went on Twitter to speak out about the incident, according to The New York Times.
“We won’t tolerate this type of disrespect to our nation!” said the president, who has taken a tough-on-drugs stance.
Still, Brazilian opposition leader Marcelo Freixo took the opportunity to criticize Bolsonaro’s approach to controlling the drug trade.
“The cocaine case in the presidential plane shows the error of pursuing a war on drugs in Brazilian favelas, which victimizes the poor,” he wrote on Twitter. “Trafficking of arms and drugs generates fortunes the world over and involves powerful people. It’s necessary to follow the money and pursue those at the top.”
“We don’t discourage use, but we don’t promote it either. We encourage people to participate in whatever kind of treatment would give them a better quality of life.”
Since the Introduction of the Ithaca Plan in 2016, Ithaca, New York has been part of the national conversation of progressive drug policy. The plan includes the use of Safe Injection Facilities where drug users can safely use under the supervision of a medical professional. Supporters of the facilities argue that users will never have the chance to get clean if they overdose first, and this facility allows them to stay alive until they are ready for treatment.
Three years later, Ithaca remains a politically progressive area with fairly progressive drug policies, but local drug users and former drug users see room for improvement in the way that they are treated in the legal system, health care, and treatment, to name a few. So, they’re forming a union.
Raising Awareness and Breaking Down Sterotypes
According to the Ithaca Drug Users’ Union mission statement, it is a group of former and current substance users “who confront the stigmas and injustice long suffered by drug users to replace them with fairness and compassion for all.” Since being formed earlier this year, the union members have already started planning protests and will be creating a television show to air on the local public access network every other week.
“We really felt it was a good way to get out our message and be out front and open with it,” said Brian Briggs, the union’s director and founder, about why the union decided to pursue a television show. “The other [drug user’s] unions are fighting for stuff that we think are basic rights and we have. If we don’t take the next step and take up that mantle and be willing to take that risk and be out front on TV, then who will?”
Local organizations like the Southern Tier AIDS Program (STAP) and the Ithaca REACH Project, which operates a low threshold harm reduction medical practice in Ithaca, have helped fight for harm reduction practices that many other places with drug unions don’t have. But it’s on the drug users, Briggs said, to fight for themselves and their rights. Part of that fight includes pushing back against stigma and breaking down stereotypes. By putting their authentic selves on television, Briggs wants to show people that drug users are just people.
“We’re not trying to antagonize anybody,” Briggs said. “We want people to just hear us and basically enjoy us. We’re a group of fun people and we have a blast. Maybe people can see us for that and just enjoy it.”
Brian Briggs shows off a potential logo for the union designed by one of the members.
Briggs has been a drug user since 1991. He was put on methadone for a spell then tried quitting cold turkey because he wanted to be done. When he got hurt playing hockey in the early 2000s, he became dependent on pain killers and tried going back to a traditional treatment center but didn’t feel like he could get the help he needed. In 2003 he went on Suboxone and went back to school with the goal of getting a master’s degree in social work, but he said that even though his urine tests were clean, his provider stopped prescribing him Suboxone because he wasn’t attending group meetings, which were part of his treatment plan. He used all the medical leaves he could with the community college he was attending but couldn’t go back to finish his degree.
Since 2007, Briggs has been a volunteer with STAP doing peer-delivered syringe exchange and spreading the word about harm reduction services in the community. In STAP he found a like-minded community that understood that traditional treatment and its strict rules doesn’t work for everyone.
“They agreed with me and believed me and I got involved in this whole movement,” he said. “I felt like I was sane again. I could say stuff like I want to be treated like a diabetic who needs insulin. If a diabetic goes to the doctor and the doctor says ‘How are you doing?’ and his blood sugar is all messed up, his health is bad because his diet has been terrible and he’s been eating Twinkies and Ho Hos, well he’s not following his treatment plan but he needs insulin to live.”
He was inspired to start a union after attending a conference last year and speaking with Jess Tilley, the creator of the first drug user’s union in New England. Earlier this year he started collecting members and holding regular meetings. It didn’t take long for him to find people who bring personal investment to the union’s mission, including his best friend Tony Sidle.
At first, Sidle, a former heroin user and dealer, said he didn’t want to be part of the union because it was Briggs’ thing. He went to the meetings when his friend asked him to but mostly to observe. He understands what Ithaca Drug Users Union sounds like. In his words, it sounds like “a shooting gallery.”
“That’s not what it’s for,” he said. “We don’t discourage use, but we don’t promote it either. We encourage people to participate in whatever kind of treatment would give them a better quality of life.”
Prohibition Feeds the Beast of Mass Incarceration
People in active addiction and people in active use, Sidle said, don’t get a fair shake or a voice. It’s part of why he joined the union and has become a very active member. Like Briggs, Sidle takes issue with the narrow ideas of treatment currently being used and sees prohibition as another way to feed the beast that is mass incarceration in the United States.
The union is not afraid to be public, as demonstrated by their participation in the recent Ithaca Festival parade, an annual community event that celebrates dozens of local organizations. Four of the members, including Sidle and Briggs, regularly attend meetings of the Criminal Justice and Alternatives to Incarceration committee (CJAI), headed by Dave Sanders, Tompkins County Criminal Justice Coordinator. The committee is made up of representatives from local organizations and municipal offices that work with incarcerated, or formerly incarcerated, individuals, with the goal of reducing the jail population and supporting the formerly incarcerated community. Sanders said he is impressed by the union members’ knowledge of the systems at play and the questions they bring to each conversation. He sees the union as an advocate group for drug users seeking help.
“I think that their ideas are very important, especially with how we’re moving things forward,” Sanders said. “I think there’s a place for that right now.”
The union’s next big stand will be a protest at the local hospital, Cayuga Medical Center, where multiple members of the union say they have been treated badly because of their history of drug use.
“If people are afraid to go into hospitals because of the way they are treated because of the drug addiction, then the chances [increase] of people dying from things that they shouldn’t die from, and losing arms, and making things exacerbated and further complicated than they need to be…that needs to change,” Sidle said.
Sidle was incarcerated for about 13 years on drug-related charges and was an active drug user for about 20 years. Now, he’s taking Suboxone, works at the local homeless shelter, and is the vice president of the union (even though he and Briggs both agree that titles don’t really matter). He’s been through traditional treatment a number of times but didn’t feel like he was actually being listened to, just judged. He doesn’t apologize or make excuses for his past use and dealing, but he wants people to stop treating him and other users like that is all they are.
Herb Howland-Bolton is a longtime friend of Sidle’s who started using drugs as a teenager. He joined the union because he doesn’t want other kids to go through what he did, and has had too many friends die from an overdose that could have been helped if the system was different.
“People died before they could advocate for themselves,” Howland-Bolton said of the shame and stigma that causes drug users to hide their use and put themselves in unsafe situations because of their addiction.
The union’s main goals are to confront the stigma against drug use that makes users hide and to promote treatment options outside of what is traditionally offered. While marching in the parade, and at the eventual protest, members will be holding signs that list the names of their dead friends and acquaintances, drug users who were sent through traditional treatment (sometimes multiple times) but for one reason or another, it didn’t work.
Traditional Treatment Can Be a Setup for Failure
Over and over, members of the union described the precariousness of traditional treatment methods. Missing a meeting could mean mandatory volunteer hours that they have to fit in between more meetings and work and life. A parole violation could mean being sent back to jail where their treatment plan would be interrupted. Getting out of rehab without a support system to help them find housing that isn’t with other users means they are often right back where they started.
Jane* is a member of the union who is also going through Ithaca City Drug Court, which is specifically for offenders whose charges are associated with drug use. Drug Court participants are expected to stay clean and get treatment and find a job or go back to school. It’s set up to be a nine-month program but she’s been in it for two years. Jane has done inpatient treatment multiple times and said she’s a perfect patient while there, but it’s never enough time to address the trauma that fuels her addiction. She’s currently doing an outpatient program, and thankfully she has a counselor who allows her to be honest and gives her flexibility.
“Right now, I’m free. I’m not in jail, I’m not in rehab, I’m out in the real world,” she said. “But, if one thing goes wrong, that’s gone. That’s all taken away. And that’s terrifying.”
Often, she feels, with traditional treatment, they aren’t given the opportunity to succeed. She sees the union as a place for support and connection for users or past users, support that isn’t offered in the current system.
