I’m out to lunch and someone starts talking, then they stop. “You’re not going to publish this on your blog, are you?”
I get a message on Facebook. Same question.
I get an email, phone call, text. Same question.
Only if you are submitting a story and I have your permission, will I publish a post.
I do not publish personal conversations here. Maybe one day there will be an exception. But only if I ask and you give me permission to publish it.
I’m not putting your name on it without your permission. I’m not publishing your loved one’s suicide note here without your permission and a lot of consideration to make sure it’s not triggering (I might run it by someone else who is a suicide prevention advocate first.)
So stop being paranoid! I am not going to grab our conversation out of the air and put it on my blog.
Just thought I’d get that straight.
Probably not the last time I’ll get that question but have to tell you it makes me laugh.
I do understand. These are sensitive subjects. Family members get their noses out of joint when it comes to suicide and addiction of a family member. It can get ugly. I don’t want to cause ugly.
I’m in the middle of another relapse and in such despair. Poised for annihilation. Waiting for a dreaded call 24 hours a day. My lovely kind girl- so many treatments. All voluntary, always engaged and resolute to stop. Always relapses. I have noticed a pattern of her being almost preyed upon by dealers during recovery– this vulnerable sad beautiful person – with such determination for a fresh start. This can be posted anonymously, but if the tone is not helpful for others, it’s okay not to post. It’s a bit of a rant. I’m so angry.
It is the small distributors or often those that sell very little in order to secure their own addiction needs –these are the dealers that are unwittingly the killers. They commit murders everyday across America that they are unaware of by their quick hand off of a a tiny bag or folded paper –usually passed off in seconds in an ordinary parking lot.
They don’t know when they touch someone’s hand briefly during that quick exchange of a single dose of heroin if it’s in fact the last human touch their customer will ever feel. They are unable to guarantee the actual contents of that small packet–they didn’t see who cut it and with what for extra profitability from their source–they did not manufacture it personally. They are also unaware of how much their often desperate customer has already consumed that day. How sick and weak their bodies may be, and if they just handed them the dose that will cause their hearts to stop when they pull over and use it when their dealer is just a stoplight away.
They don’t know who their desperate customer had to steal from, or what lengths were involved to sell a loved one or close friend’s valuable for very little at a pawn shop just to buy that small amount that will hold them off for two or three hours, knowing in an hour or two they will have to find more money. They didn’t have to witness what humiliating act they may have had to perform if they were unable to steal enough for that one small dose— boys as well as girls. Theft and degradation born out of what has become a desperate, terrifying 24 hour craving they never expected to have . Actions that lead to unbearable self loathing, self hatred and suicidal shame, until they begin to hope each fix leads to an overdose so they can escape what’s become a life of slavery to a drug. An overdose that they think will free their loved ones of the pain and fear they know they are causing them that they see in the faces that look back at them everyday.
These dealers that supply a small amount of the drug – a single fix –do learn to recognize the point that a regular customer is unable to stop themselves. The urgency of calls and the more frequent doses. They can tell by the briefest glance into the now familiar car that has become littered with telltale signs of withdrawal – empty bottles of pepto bismol and antacids, ice cream containers and candy wrappers, bags of clothing and shoes headed to or rejected by consignment stores, fresh dents and scrapes on a car that’s now being driven in frantic urgency to meet them, or from driving too high on the way home from meeting them–dents they have no recollection of because they actually don’t remember driving. They see declines in appearance , a thinner, now broken out paler face- shadowed eyes and a fear that is palpable from their addiction that is now out of control. They may notice they’ve been crying–people suffering from addiction are broken and terrified people and they cry alot.
But they sell it to them anyway; maybe even with a distorted feeling that they are relieving their suffering. Not thinking that it may be that one dose that paralyzes their lungs and stops their heart. The dose that will turn them blue, alone on the side of the road or in a parking lot where they stopped to use it– waiting to be okay enough to drive home. They sell it to them and may make a note of their small inventory; knowing they may not have enough to sell them tomorrow and how they are going to get dozens of calls in a row from them.
Their customer may have overdosed in their bedroom after a frenzied drive home from the parking lot. The dealer will never see how they were discovered. They won’t see the face of an adoring younger sibling that may be the one who finds them in their room – one they still manage to tease and play with. Their dealer won’t hear the visceral wails of a mother or father – a primal screaming sound they don’t even know is coming from them. They won’t see the desperate CPR attempts or the cradling of their dead son or daughter in their arms as they rock back and forth and wail and pray and beg them to breathe and call their name over and over.
They won’t see the thin body of their customer lying lifeless in an alley or behind a dumpster where they may have hidden to take their hit and overdosed alone, or the shocked sorrow of the stranger’s face that discovers them, or the face of the person with the terrible task of telling a family their child or brother or sister has been found dead. They won’t be there to see the stoic face that crumbles with unimaginable grief as the person they love slides out in a drawer at a morgue for identification–won’t see them collapse over the body when a bag is unzipped to hold that person one more time while they are tortured by imagery of their lonely death. A moment that they’d feared for months, making the pain even more unbearable–that for the rest of their lives will torment them thinking they could have stopped it.
These dealers are often young and troubled too, victims of the opiate crisis and are also somebody’s child.
Parents can enlist to fight the opiate war. Anyone can. If you suspect someone is a dealer, do what you can to share this. A call of action to local community with a specific plan targeting the small transactions that happen all around us is underway. Selling and accessing drugs can be made much more difficult.
If your child has become addicted, steel yourself and make stopping it your entire focus. Make if your full time job as you would they had received a diagnosis of an extremely aggressive cancer. Tell your employer what you’re faced with. You will be surprised at their support. Provide the same loving presence you would unthinkingly provide if they were the victim of a terrible accident and clinging to life– you would remain at their hospital bedside and not leave them to suffer alone and full of fear. Addiction is a terrifying and lonely way to die.
Thank you for posting this. It’s how we’ve all felt at one time or another. Others will read their story in yours. I do hope to God she makes it. I do with all my heart.