Tag: Overdose

God Hates Pikachu and He Also Killed My Daddy
My higher power doesn’t want me sticking a needle in my arm. For me today, it’s as simple as that.

I didn’t want to unpack this story so soon. My aim was to share my experience with getting and staying sober in a dry and witty way, do that for a while with you, maybe unpack the heavy stuff after we got to know each other a little more, and then go for the gusto. I didn’t want to bring up a subject that might rub you the wrong way but I recently finished a writing exercise that really got me thinking about my dad. He’s dead.

My father died when I was two years old. He was a heroin user who shared needles. Nobody was talking about harm reduction in the late 80’s nor were they concerned about the consequences of IV drug use. After he got sober, he found out that he had contracted HIV. It wasn’t long after that diagnosis that he lost his battle to AIDS.

I believe growing up without a father had an effect on the man I am today; but this isn’t a story about my dad. This isn’t a story about harm reduction or AIDS awareness. This is a story about God.

Wait! Stay with me, please. Don’t go.

I promise you this isn’t that kind of story. I’ve done right by you with the last two articles. I plan on doing the same with this one. I know the God word bothers some people. It bothers me sometimes. It’s okay, just keep scrolling. We’ll do this one together. Besides, you have to at least get to the part about Pikachu. I’m sure you’re wondering what the heck he’s got to do with all this. Stick around, I’ll tell you.

I grew up in an extremely charismatic religious household; the crazy dogmatic type. Let me tell you how crazy: Did you know that if you listen to any music that isn’t religious, demons will literally fly out of your headphones like a vapor of smoke and possess you? It’s true. My aunt told me that when I was only eight years old. Also, if you watch any movie that isn’t rated G or about the crucifixion of Christ, you run the chance of committing your soul into the fiery pits of hell. Here’s a good one: My younger brother and I were not allowed to watch Pokemon because our grandmother told us that those cute little Japanese cartoons were actually demons and it was Satan’s master plan to trick unassuming kids into falling in love with his minions.

Here’s a few more examples:
1. Don’t drink beer. You’re ingesting the semen of the devil.
2. True love waits. So if you have sex before marriage, you’re going to burn in hell.
3. Never smoke cigarettes, you’ll accidentally inhale a demon.
4. Don’t use profanity unless you want God to give your tongue cancer.
5. Hey boys, do you like your hands? Well, don’t play with your penis, that’s how you lose them.
Here’s my absolute favorite. When I was kid, my mom brought my younger brother and me to this old-time-holy-ghost Pentecostal church in the hood. The younger children had to go to Sunday school with some 16-year-old babysitter while the adults went to “big church” in the main auditorium. While we were waiting for our mom to pick us up, our babysitter kindly told me that God killed my dad because he was a junkie.

Yup, that’s right. This ignorant girl basically told me that God “gave” my dad AIDS because he was in love with heroin. And it was God’s perfect judgment to execute my powerless addict of a father. Cool, right? I’m going to grow up to be a perfectly normal man, unscathed by any of this tomfoolery.

When you grow up in an overbearing legalistic household and finally start doing some of the things that they told you not to and nothing bad happens, you end up slamming your foot on the gas, speeding straight into the freedom to do everything you’re not supposed to. The things you didn’t do growing up because you believed they would kill you turn into myths created to control you.

This isn’t going to end well for an addict like me. Once I started thinking for myself and realized that my dick wouldn’t fall off if I watch porn, I started watching all the porn. When I realized that I wasn’t possessed after smoking a cigarette, I started smoking all the cigarettes. Add sex to the mix, sprinkle a little drugs on top, and my newfound freedom as a junkie sinner is complete.

Let’s fast-forward a few years because I don’t want to get into other stories that deserve their own headline. Let’s land where I’m walking down the steps of the courthouse with a piece of paper that mandates that I start attending 12-step meetings. Meetings that I must go to or I’m going back to jail and possibly prison.

Imagine my delight, sitting in my first meeting while they’re doing the readings. I hear the 3rd step read aloud for the first time and everything within my gut cringes. I die on the inside. I’m powerless over drugs and alcohol. I can’t stop. I need to stop. And now I’m being told that the only way to do this is with God. I’m in big trouble.

I have a confession to make. Remember when I told you that this story was about God? It isn’t. I mean it is and it can be for you, too, but it really isn’t. It’s about a higher power; something greater than you. It’s crucial that you hear what I’m about to say.

If you’re a 12-stepper who’s all gung-ho about the 3rd step, that’s cool. If you’re not a 12-stepper who’s grasped the God concept, that’s cool too.

What I want to be explicitly clear about is just one thing. It’s my experience, being an addict in recovery— whether it’s the 12-step route or not—that at some point I have to accept the fact that I need saving. And it’s not going to be me that’s going to do the saving. It’s got to be something greater than me. What I’m good at is getting high. Getting sober is easy. Staying sober isn’t. That’s where the saving comes in for me.

In the beginning. G-O-D meant a lot of things.
- Group of Druggies
- Group of Drunks
- Grow or Die
- Guaranteed Overnight Delivery (kidding)
- Good Orderly Direction
A wise man once told me, “I don’t know what God’s will is for my life… but I know what it isn’t.” I know that my higher power doesn’t want me stealing in sobriety. I know I shouldn’t be smoking crack. I know that now that I’m attempting to live a new way, maybe I should concern myself with my physical health since I neglected it for so long. My higher power doesn’t want me sticking a needle in my arm. For me today, it’s as simple as that.

For people who don’t subscribe to an acronym but actually believe in a God, it can be slippery if it’s not kept simple. It’s common for people to get sober and say, “Okay, what do I do know? What is my life’s purpose and what is God’s will for me?” If they do that, they end up stressing themselves out and thinking themselves out of the game, thinking that they have to understand the meaning of life at 12 months sober; or that they should have a roadmap for their life drawn out, down to every little specific detail.

It’s not that serious. Instead of concerning yourself with some huge existential question mark, keep it simple. Get off the bench, get back on the field and play. Before you know it, you’ll find yourself sober years later with a beautiful life filled with purpose and meaning. I can promise you that only because I’ve seen it happen for many of my junkie friends around me.

My higher power doesn’t hate Pikachu. That’s just silly. If you believe in God, that’s cool. If you don’t, that’s cool too. Just find something greater than you when the days get dark in your life. Hey! Maybe it’s this story. Who knows.

If nobody told you that they love you today: I do. I love you.

View the original article at thefix.com
27 September 2018
Don't Blame Ariana Grande for Mac Miller's Death

The idea that someone holds another person’s very life in their hands and has the power to determine whether that person lives or dies is a painful and damaging misconception.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know very much about Mac Miller. I’ve never listened to his music or attended one of his concerts. My knowledge of him has mostly been in the headlines I’ve seen about his relationship with Ariana Grande and their subsequent breakup earlier this year.

And yet, the second that news broke of Miller’s death Friday, I instinctively knew what was coming. I knew that following the shock over his untimely death, the shame and blame would begin.

I knew because I’ve been there. I’ve lived it. And I’m here to tell you that casting blame is just about the most unhelpful thing you can do for someone following the death of a loved one.

Sadly, I was right. Just a few hours after it was reported that Miller died of a suspected overdose, people began hurling blame on social media. Their target: Grande, who first fended off trolls after their May split when fans blamed her for her ex’s DUI. She even took to Twitter to explain their relationship.

Now, four months later, Grande is battling trolls yet again. Trolls who are blaming her for Miller’s death and leaving hateful comments on her Instagram like “His spirit will forever haunt you,” “There’s a special place in hell for people like u [sic],” “You could’ve done something,” and “You should have helped him.”

Grande has since disabled comments on her Instagram and fans quickly came to her defense on Twitter, but unfortunately, what happened to her is nothing new. It’s reflective of a pattern we’ve seen before, most notably with Asia Argento following Anthony Bourdain’s suicide in June. Argento was cyberbullied and blamed for the celebrity chef’s death, which prompted those in Hollywood to rally around the actress in the form of an open letter published in the Los Angeles Times.

When someone dies suddenly and traumatically, it’s typically their loved ones who are caught in the crosshairs of other people’s grief and the struggle to understand the death. But what about those who don’t have an army of support like Grande or Argento? How are they supposed to traverse the minefield of grief following a traumatic death when they have so many questions and those around them are saying things that are more harmful than healing?

It’s human nature to want to make sense of death because a part of us will always resist the idea that death is natural. And when the death is unexpected, like Miller’s, we rail against death even more, looking for any explanation we can find that will help us make sense of everything. Even if it’s misguided, sometimes those explanations come in the form of lashing out and assigning blame to those closest to the deceased.

However, trying to place all the blame in the world isn’t going to magically bring the person back to life. Death isn’t something that we can wrap up neatly like a half-hour sitcom where everything is solved by the end. Just like life, death doesn’t work like that.

When I was 21, my father suddenly and unexpectedly died from suicide. Although the day he died was the most traumatic day of my life, I wrestled with feelings of guilt and shame for years. I was the last one to see my father alive, and the questions swirled around my head in a never-ending loop. What if I’d woken up just 15 minutes earlier? What if I’d seen the signs that he was struggling? What if he said something on the last day of his life, something significant that I just casually brushed aside?

What it? What if? What if?

Those are the questions that plagued me, and I’m sure those are the types of questions on Grande’s mind as she mourns the loss of Miller. The best thing we can do for her — and everyone grieving the loss of a loved one — is to let the grieving process take place. Let people mourn in peace without hurling vindictive words at them. Those words are incredibly hurtful, not to mention cruel and damaging. The idea that someone holds another person’s very life in their hands and has the power to determine whether that person lives or dies is a misconception that has no place in the journey following someone’s death.

As much as we’d like to think otherwise, we’re not superheroes who can swoop in and rescue someone. We can do everything to help them, of course, but we don’t have the all-knowing power to save them. And maybe even more importantly, it’s not our job to cure them. We can offer love, hope and compassion, but in the end, everyone on this planet is responsible for their own life.

I can only hope that those trolls who are blaming Grande have never lost a loved one to a traumatic death like Miller’s. Trust me, people who lose someone to an overdose or suicide struggle enough with self-blame. They don’t need the world shaming and blaming them too. What they need is love and compassion. And space to grieve without shame.

View the original article at thefix.com

11 September 2018
Dopesick: An Interview with Beth Macy

It takes the average user eight years and five to six treatment attempts just to achieve one year of sobriety. And in an era of fentanyl and other even stronger synthetic opioids, many users don’t have eight years.

As recently as a few years ago, the opioid crisis could be referred to as a “silent epidemic,” perhaps in part due to its degrading nature. Opioid addiction is frequently described using metaphors of slavery, or enslavement, and those within its clutches are liable to feel acutely ashamed. No longer, however, is it possible to argue that the scourge of opioid addiction is being overlooked.

No doubt that is partly due to the growing enormity of the problem. For each of the past several years, more people have died from drug overdoses than American service members were killed during the entire Vietnam War.

Meanwhile, energetic and compassionate journalists have been doing outstanding work, covering the crisis from various vantages. Chief among them is Beth Macy, a New York Times-bestselling author, who first began noticing the effects of opioid addiction as a reporter for the Roanoke Times, where she worked for 25 years until 2014. Now she is out with Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America. Gracefully written and deeply reported, Dopesick should act as a vade mecum — a handbook, a guide, an essential introduction — for anyone who may be seeking insight into the deadliest and most vexing drug epidemic in American history.

Beth spoke to The Fix over email:

The Fix: The first chapters of your book, on the origins of the opioid crisis, cover some material that others have explored (most notably Barry Meier, in Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic). Still, I don’t have the sense that many people are aware of the role that Purdue Pharma played in setting off current epidemic. Briefly, what is their culpability? And why do think their crimes aren’t crimes better known?

Beth Macy: I think Meier’s book, Pain Killer, was too early, initially published in 2003, and it was largely set in central Appalachia — a politically unimportant place. Also, let’s not overlook the role that Purdue took in stifling Meier. As I write in the book, company officials had him removed from the beat after his book came out, arguing that he now had a financial stake in making Purdue look bad.

After the 2007 plea agreement, in which the company’s holding company, Purdue Frederick, pled guilty to criminal misbranding charges and its top three executives to misdemeanor versions of that crime, Purdue and other opioid makers and distributors spent 900 million dollars on political lobbying and campaigns. Purdue continued selling the original OxyContin formula until it was reformulated to be abuse-resistant in 2010, continued for years after that pushing the motion that untreated pain was really the epidemic that Americans should be concerned about. Their culpability in seeding this epidemic is huge.

You weren’t able to talk directly with any of the Purdue executives who made fortunes from OxyContin, and who criminally misled the public about its addictive potential. But you spent an afternoon interviewing Ronnie Jones, who is currently serving a lengthy prison sentence for running a major heroin distribution operation in West Virginia. How were Jones’s crimes (and his rationalizations for his behavior) different from those of the Purdue executives you wrote about?

Great question. Jones refused to see that he brought bulk heroin to a rural community in ways that overwhelmed families and first responders in the region with heroin addiction; he told me he believed he was providing a service — his heroin did not have fentanyl in it, he argued, and it was cheaper than when people ran up the heroin highway to get it in Baltimore (and safer because they could stay out of high-crime places).

At the 2007 sentencing hearing, Purdue executives and their lawyers repeatedly claimed they had no knowledge of crimes that were happening several rungs down the ladder from them; that the government had not proved their culpability in the specific crimes. According to new Justice Department documents unearthed and recently published by The New York Times , that was simply not true. For two decades, Purdue leaders blamed the users for misusing their drug; they refused to accept responsibility for criminal misbranding that resulted in widespread addiction and waves of drug-fueled crime that will be felt in communities and families for generations to come.

You quote a health care professional who said that previous drug epidemics began waning after enough people finally got the message: “Don’t mess with this shit, not even a little bit.” That provoked a thought: Shouldn’t we be long past this point with opioids? On the one hand, I’m enormously sympathetic to anyone who is struggling with addiction. But it’s frustrating to realize that the opioid crisis is still building. Why aren’t more people as risk-averse about heroin as they obviously should be?

The crisis is still building because the government’s response to it has largely been impotent. And it’s been festering for two decades. Opioid addiction doesn’t just go away. It takes the average user eight years and five to six treatment attempts just to achieve one year of sobriety. And in an era of fentanyl and other even stronger synthetic opioids, many users don’t have eight years. I hope we will soon get to the point of public education where no young person “messes with this shit, not even once,” but right now we still have 2.6 million people with opioid use disorder. Even though physicians have begun prescribing less, we still have all these addicted people who should be seen as patients worthy of medical care, not simply criminals. Too often that doesn’t happen until we’re sitting in their funeral pews.

One of the women you write about, Tess Henry, slid down a long road. You got to know her and her family quite well, over a number of years. And some of the other stories in this book are just as heartbreaking.

It was a lot of pain to absorb and process, yes. And yet my heartache was nothing at all compared to what these families are going through.

In a couple instances, Tess reached out to you directly, asking you for help. How did you calculate how to respond?

I took it case by case; I just went with my gut, and I got input from my husband and trusted friends along the way. I decided it was okay to drive Tess around to [Narcotics Anonymous] meetings, recording our interviews as I drove, with her permission. But it wasn’t okay when she texted me late one night to come get her from a drug house. (I referred her plea to her mother and recovery coach instead.)

I occasionally gave her mother unsolicited advice because I cared about her and I cared about Tess, and I felt I had access to objective information about medication-assisted treatment that Patricia didn’t have. When Tess was murdered on Christmas Eve, I put my notes away and for several days just focused on being a friend to her mom. But I did accompany the family to the funeral home when they made arrangements (taking occasional notes), and I was there in the room of the funeral parlor with her mom and her grandfather when they said goodbye to her. It took funeral technicians two days to prepare her body for that. It was the most heartbreaking scene I’ve ever witnessed. There was no need to take notes in that moment. I will never forget it as long as I live. I said a tearful goodbye to our poet, too.

Was there ever a risk, over the course of your reporting, of becoming too involved in the lives and predicaments of the people you were writing about?

Always there’s a risk, but I’ve been doing this for more than 30 years now, and I know that my greatest skill — which is that I get close to people — can also be my Achilles. When I trust my gut and try to do the right thing — always also getting advice from editor and reporter friends along the way, including my husband, who is just so smart and so spot-on always — it usually works out.

I’m grateful to have read Dopesick. But at various times it left me infuriated, appalled, and depressed. Can you leave us with anything to be hopeful about?

There are some pretty heartening grassroots efforts that I spotlight at the book’s end, mostly involving providing access to treatment and harm-reduction services. And Virginia just became the 33^rd state to approve Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which will help 300,000 to 400,000 people in the commonwealth have access to substance use disorder services. Seventeen more states to go! There is so much more work to be done, especially in Appalachia, where overdose deaths are highest and resistance to harm reduction programs (easy-access MAT and syringe exchange and recovery) can be severe. My goal is that Dopesick not only educates people but also mobilizes them to care and create what Tess Henry called “urgent care for the addicted” services in their own hometowns.

View the original article at thefix.com

29 August 2018
Relapsing While Famous: Demi Lovato, Stigma, and Compassion

“We would typically not blame a patient with a chronic medical condition for their problem; nor imbue the patient with shame over their offending organ—why do we seem to do this with addiction?”

The news that Demi Lovato was hospitalized of a suspected drug overdose has sent her celebrity friends and fans into overdrive; they are full of praise and well wishes for the singer.

The support offered has been a beautiful response to witness, and this outpouring of encouragement is the exact caring that Lovato needs right now.

This overwhelmingly positive response is a very different reaction than we normally associate with people falling off the wagon. Our society has painted the ordinary (non-celebrity) person with an addiction—whether it be to drugs, alcohol, sex or some other negatively perceived behavior—who loses their sobriety as a monster, as someone who cannot fix themselves, as a loser, as an undisciplined and unhealable soul.

How many Internet memes have been generated that show the unforgiving and unflattering face of addiction? How many ill-conceived jokes about addicts relapsing have you heard? How often do you see mockery of those who have lost their fight? Or a sense of them being not strong enough to withstand the urges we all face?

But the reality is that relapses are oftentimes part of the process, even for those who have spoken about their recovery. Just because someone has stood up and celebrated their recovery does not mean they will never possibly have a setback.

Demi Lovato has been open about sharing her struggles through addiction, eating disorders and bipolar disorder. In her music (her song “Sober” details her ongoing struggle with sobriety), her interviews and social media accounts, Lovato has never shied away from speaking her truth. She is proud to be a mental health advocate and has spoken about how she knows her music has helped other young women struggling with some of the same issues that she has.

Lovato’s openness in sharing her fight and the help her art has provided for others is all the more remarkable considering she was on the Disney Channel when she first entered rehab. There were many pressures and expectations upon her young shoulders and no one would have blamed her for wanting to keep that part of her life private.

But admitting that the struggle continues after a setback can be the hardest part. Often, as a culture, we are not gung ho on offering people second chances, and especially not third or fourth chances.

What’s that famous saying? Hurt me once, shame on you. Hurt me twice, shame on me.

As a society, we can be unforgiving when it comes to people relapsing, but we seem to be much more sympathetic and forgiving with celebrities who struggle with addiction than we are with our ordinary peers.

There is an unwritten social contract that we follow with celebrities that allows them to loom larger in our minds than normal, everyday people. We see them as larger than life while at the same time feeling intimately connected to them, as though they are family. We feel we know them.

And we do know them when they share their personal demons with us. We recognize our own struggles and feel buoyed up by their example of openness and honesty.

Could Lovato’s suspected relapse be an opening for a new understanding of the addiction cycle and conversation about the role of relapse in recovery? Perhaps her experience can shine a light on why no one deserves to be stigmatized for their illness.

Of course, this goes for all mental health conditions, whether the diagnosis is addiction, bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia or others. Historically, our culture has stigmatized people with mental illness so that they feel embarrassed or that they need to hide their condition. It is only in recent decades that more individuals have been brave enough to come forward and speak about their struggles.

Lovato’s overdose can serve as an example and a beacon to help people understand that addiction and other mental health issues are illnesses which aren’t always cured on the first, second or even third try.

The fact that wealthy celebrities, who often have the best treatments and practitioners at their fingertips, still suffer relapses shows us how devastating mental health conditions can be. How can we expect our neighbors—who have those same diagnoses but may be struggling to make ends meet—to fare any better than our most celebrated and privileged?

Many individuals prefer to suffer in silence rather than seek help because of this prejudice. They would rather live with often debilitating diseases rather than expose themselves to the potential stigma that comes with admitting they need help.

What can we do to help alleviate the suffering of those around us?

We can read and learn more about addiction and how difficult the road is to recovery and we can work to understand that the road is not always without bends and turns and sometimes brief exits.

“Research has consistently shown addiction to be a chronic/relapsing disease, where multiple treatment episodes are often necessary, and that recovery may be a cumulative and progressive (non-linear) process,” says Dr. David Greenfield, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at University of Connecticut Medical School and a specialist in addiction medicine. “We would typically not blame a patient with a chronic medical condition for their problem; nor imbue the patient with shame over their offending organ—why do we seem to do this with addiction?”

We can have compassion for those who struggle and sometimes fall in their recovery, which will help alleviate their feelings of shame. For those closest to us, we can be supportive without enabling them or being codependent. The celebrity outpouring of love and caring through social media is an example of how compassion can be expressed through this modern tool.

But Lovato’s friends are not the only ones sharing the love; her fans are sending messages of support, too.

How Demi Lovato speaks to the public about her reported relapse can have real consequences for the greater conversation society needs to have. Hopefully, she will use her celebrity status to continue the dialogue with her fans about addiction; at the same time, she may express a need for privacy and time for reflection.

The real opportunity for change will occur around the water coolers at work or on our social media feeds. When we can openly discuss mental health conditions—not as signs of weak moral character or evidence of being less than or incapable—but as true illnesses which require assistance from all corners—financial, family and friends, and sociocultural—we will then be truly supporting not only the celebrities amongst us, but our neighbors and ourselves as well.

View the original article at thefix.com

27 July 2018
How One Rural Community Is Fighting to Save Lives from Drug Overdose

“I don’t want another parent to pick out a casket. I don’t want another grandparent to have to look a grandchild in the eye and say ‘your momma is gone.’”

The Driftwood Motel on Oak Island, North Carolina, has seen better days. All around it, pastel-colored vacation homes with kitschy names like After Dune Delight reel in tourists with promises of beachfront sunsets and shaded hammocks by the pier. Though the Driftwood Motel is also painted in cheerful pastels, the paint is flaking off in dry strips and littering the ground next to cigarette butts and busted beer bottles. Rhonda C. lives on the bottom floor of the Driftwood with her bed, couch and kitchen furniture crammed into a room with dark sheets that cover the windows. She is one of the motel’s many long-term residents – people drawn in by the $100 a week price tag who end up staying far longer than they had planned. A gray-haired, matronly woman, Rhonda looks after the other residents, especially the young ones who drift in and out in various stages of inebriation. She hadn’t been able to offer them much, until she met Margaret Bordeaux.

Margaret is a petite, African American woman, quiet and unassuming until you get to know her fiery side. As an outreach worker for the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition, Margaret runs a mobile harm reduction unit in Brunswick County, a sparsely populated rural community hugging North Carolina’s Southeast coast. Brunswick is also one of the counties hardest hit by drug-related deaths in the state. At least once a week Margaret drives its lonely roads, seeking out places like the Driftwood Motel that collect people who have lost every other home. Thanks to a grant from the Aetna Foundation to combat the opioid epidemic, Margaret has a van stocked with supplies to help reduce drug-related death and disease. She gives out naloxone (a medicine that reverses overdose from opioids such as heroin, fentanyl, and prescription painkillers), syringes, and other resources, and she teaches people how to prevent, recognize and respond to an overdose.

“I make friends and develop relationships in Brunswick County,” says Margaret. “Many of the people I’ve met here thought that naloxone and clean syringes were magical things only available in [cities]. No one has been coming out here to offer these services until now.”

Some people are wary when Margaret first pulls up because they have been treated poorly by health care workers and aren’t accustomed to a warm, non-judgmental person offering them free services. But after a few visits, Margaret wins them over.

“My whole life I have rooted for the underdog and the underserved,” says Margaret. “I want to care for people that society doesn’t care for. People use superficial reasons to ignore each other and I want to remove those reasons and say, hey, there is a person here.”

Kathy Williams is one of the people whose lives Margaret has touched. A middle-aged, Caucasian woman with a defiant personality, Kathy’s backstory is the stuff of nightmares. She raised two kids as a single mom, Josh and Kirby. As an adult, Josh married a wonderful woman and had two children. Kirby struggled with drug use, and whenever she hit a rough spot, Josh and his wife would take her in and help her get back on her feet. But in 2011, Josh’s car was t-boned by a school bus. He, his wife, and both their young children died in the crash. The loss hit Kirby hard. Her drug use escalated and five years later, she too died of a drug overdose.

Kathy tells this story completely dry-eyed. It’s as though she has endured so much pain that nothing can faze her anymore. These days she is raising her 14-year-old grandson, Kirby’s child, and also caring for her own aging parents. She is also one of the founding members of B.A.C.K. O.F.F., an organization of Brunswick County families who are fed up with losing their loved ones to drugs. What started as a support group in March 2017 has morphed into an organization with a mission to educate people about the realities of drug use and to help save lives.

“A mother is not supposed to bury her child,” says Kathy. “I don’t want another parent to pick out a casket. I don’t want another grandparent to have to look a grandchild in the eye and say ‘your momma is gone.’”

B.A.C.K. O.F.F., which stands for Bringing Addiction Crisis Knowledge, Offering Families Focus, makes and distributes overdose prevention kits containing naloxone to families with a loved one who uses opioids. They also spread awareness about North Carolina’s 911 Good Samaritan law, which protects people from prosecution if they seek medical assistance for an overdose. B.A.C.K. O.F.F. members provide community, resources and support for families impacted by drugs and offer space for honest talk about drug use. No denial, no sugarcoating, no pithy slogans about just saying no. Real talk from real families caught in the same struggle. But not everyone is willing to speak up.

Elsewhere in Brunswick County, Alex Murillo has been trying to convince Hispanic parents who have lost child to drug poisoning to get involved in B.A.C.K. O.F.F. It hasn’t been easy.

“Many Hispanics here deny that drug use is happening in their families,” says Alex, who recently lost his 19-year-old nephew to overdose. “If a parent loses a child to overdose, they say they died in their sleep. No one wants to talk about it.”

A tall, dimpled man with a perpetual smile, Alex’s cheerful demeanor hides a tragic history. Alex is originally from Mexico. When he was brutally raped at 12 years old, his parents threw him out of the house, claiming he deserved to be raped because he “acted gay.” At 15 years old, Alex married a girl, but the marriage made him so miserable that he decided to come to the United States where he hoped to be able to express himself more freely. At the border he was apprehended by a human trafficking cartel and forced into sex slavery.

“They forced me to take drugs. They beat me and pimped me out,” he says. “I was so shocked. I didn’t think things like that happened in the U.S.”

Alex eventually escaped. He tried to join a church community but was turned away after admitting he was gay. He attempted suicide, but his brother found him passed out from a bottle of sleeping pills and took him to the hospital. When Alex woke days later, his attitude on life had changed.

“I was surprised to be alive,” he says. “But I realized that I was still here for a reason and I decided to dedicate my life to helping other people.”

Today Alex owns a small Hispanic tienda in Brunswick County where he offers help to anyone who comes to his doorstep, whether they are seeking food, advice, or help paying rent. Every year he hosts a multicultural festival in his store parking lot, though other Brunswick County residents have threatened to shut it down because they are unhappy with the area’s growing diversity. He is also happily married to his husband, who works in the store and supports Alex’s outreach efforts. Alex hopes to become more involved in educating the Hispanic community about drugs.

“We can’t just ignore this problem. The drugs are in our schools. They are everywhere,” says Alex. “We need to do more outreach to the Hispanic community to teach them how to talk about drugs with their kids. They can’t just tell kids not to do drugs. Kids see their friends doing it and they want to try too. We need to have honest conversations as a community.”

Margaret, Kathy and Alex may be an unlikely team, but together they are working to bring resources and hope to a county that has suffered devastating loss. Little by little, their efforts are making a difference. Margaret has helped people enter drug treatment programs and reconnect with family members where ties had been severed. Alex is making headway on opening up conversations about drugs in the Hispanic community. B.A.C.K. O.F.F. provides Kathy with an outlet to teach families how to help their loved ones who use drugs.

“I used to look at a person who uses drugs as an addict, but now I look at them as someone’s brother, son or family member,” says Kathy. “I feel that if we had had these tools like naloxone, overdose education, and a support group years ago, my daughter might still be alive today.”

At a small Mexican diner where we meet for lunch, I ask Kathy what her message is to people in rural communities impacted by drugs. For a moment, she is quiet. Finally she says:

“I want people to know they are not alone. You might think you are alone, but there are so many of us going through the same thing. We can hold each other up.”

View the original article at thefix.com

16 July 2018