Naloxone. Narcan.
What if????
What if....it was more easily available?
What if....it could be part of safe-use kits in the hands of heroin users and those who might be able to help them survive an overdose?
I keep thinking about Philip Seymour Hoffman.
And I keep thinking about my friends
Jess
Micha
Ratzzo
Rebecca
Boo
Davey
Seamus....
all of them were addicted to heroin
and all of them overdosed on it.
It's been over 30 years later and I still miss them. Sometimes, it's too painful to think about. Too many broken sweet souls with brilliant minds who never had a solid grasp on recovery from heroin and the hope for a clear path to a life worth living without dope. Like so many others, they left this world way too young.
Way too young.
....while their dealers, pimps and other drooling abusers and parasites walked away alive and scott-free. And now they pop-up on social media walls in search of absolution and so much else.
It turns my stomach and makes my heart ache and bleed. That's a major reason why I closed my MySpace, Facebook and others. I'm tired of social networks and the slime who've tried to contact me to make connections we never had in the stretch of any imagination.
Acting as if the dusty past is long forgotten and they should now only be judged on who they are in the present.
My friends should still be here.
They should all still be here.
I remember hot Chicago and New York summers, long, passionate conversations over cold Mickey's Wide Mouths and PBR. Seriously joking or joking seriously about growing old together and going to punk shows with our walkers, canes and Depends....and none of us ever thought we'd make it past 25, let alone 30.
In my teen to young adult years in the 80's and 90's, my main issues were trying to spin and balance jagged plates of Complex PTSD, anxiety, sweeping manias and bottom-heavy depressions with drinking as my main mode of self-medication. In the early years of my drinking, I could be a damn fine functional alcoholic. While there were plenty of incidents where I had my public stumbles, I had ways of hiding my self-medicating. There are still some people I know who think I had it all together, but that was the beauty of being able to smile and try to be someone else while hiding the horrible, stinking truth. As the years wore on, though, the veils began to shred and the masks began to crumble. I finally hit my major bottom with alcohol in 2009 and I've been managing my recovery ever since. The big turning point for me in my mental health recovery and wellness shifted in 2005 with a major life-threatening episode. I've been struggling with a lot of heavy issues and challenges, and some have knocked me down harder than ever, but I'm still here. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and WRAP (Wellness Recovery Action Plans) have been the major lifesavers that keep me afloat. I'm working hard on managing my wellness and recovery journey, one moment at a time.
We were all trying to numb and soothe ourselves. I can't speak for anyone other than what my friends and I struggled with, but the majority of us were survivors of brutal and long-term child abuse and sexual abuse. And we were all very smart/precocious kids. Those were 2 serious common threads I saw that tied us together. Like me, some of my friends used excessive drinking to self-medicate. But others found their balm in the hot bottom of a bottle cap and the slow push of a needle.
So many times over the years, I've gotten stuck on the thought of what if having ready, easy to access doses of Naloxone could've saved so many lives of heroin users who fell into overdoses? How many of my friends would still be here?? It's not that complicated of an idea, is it?? Granted, there's no way to perfectly guarantee error-free scenarios and textbook methods that will save every addict in the same perfect way...but it doesn't hurt to have a simple survival action plan for safe-use that includes doses of Naloxone/Narcan.
How long will it take to make this a reality??
What if????
http://odprevention.org/for-providers/what-is-narcan1/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naloxone
Knowledge is power.
What if????
What if....it was more easily available?
What if....it could be part of safe-use kits in the hands of heroin users and those who might be able to help them survive an overdose?
I keep thinking about Philip Seymour Hoffman.
And I keep thinking about my friends
Jess
Micha
Ratzzo
Rebecca
Boo
Davey
Seamus....
all of them were addicted to heroin
and all of them overdosed on it.
It's been over 30 years later and I still miss them. Sometimes, it's too painful to think about. Too many broken sweet souls with brilliant minds who never had a solid grasp on recovery from heroin and the hope for a clear path to a life worth living without dope. Like so many others, they left this world way too young.
Way too young.
....while their dealers, pimps and other drooling abusers and parasites walked away alive and scott-free. And now they pop-up on social media walls in search of absolution and so much else.
It turns my stomach and makes my heart ache and bleed. That's a major reason why I closed my MySpace, Facebook and others. I'm tired of social networks and the slime who've tried to contact me to make connections we never had in the stretch of any imagination.
Acting as if the dusty past is long forgotten and they should now only be judged on who they are in the present.
My friends should still be here.
They should all still be here.
I remember hot Chicago and New York summers, long, passionate conversations over cold Mickey's Wide Mouths and PBR. Seriously joking or joking seriously about growing old together and going to punk shows with our walkers, canes and Depends....and none of us ever thought we'd make it past 25, let alone 30.
In my teen to young adult years in the 80's and 90's, my main issues were trying to spin and balance jagged plates of Complex PTSD, anxiety, sweeping manias and bottom-heavy depressions with drinking as my main mode of self-medication. In the early years of my drinking, I could be a damn fine functional alcoholic. While there were plenty of incidents where I had my public stumbles, I had ways of hiding my self-medicating. There are still some people I know who think I had it all together, but that was the beauty of being able to smile and try to be someone else while hiding the horrible, stinking truth. As the years wore on, though, the veils began to shred and the masks began to crumble. I finally hit my major bottom with alcohol in 2009 and I've been managing my recovery ever since. The big turning point for me in my mental health recovery and wellness shifted in 2005 with a major life-threatening episode. I've been struggling with a lot of heavy issues and challenges, and some have knocked me down harder than ever, but I'm still here. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and WRAP (Wellness Recovery Action Plans) have been the major lifesavers that keep me afloat. I'm working hard on managing my wellness and recovery journey, one moment at a time.
We were all trying to numb and soothe ourselves. I can't speak for anyone other than what my friends and I struggled with, but the majority of us were survivors of brutal and long-term child abuse and sexual abuse. And we were all very smart/precocious kids. Those were 2 serious common threads I saw that tied us together. Like me, some of my friends used excessive drinking to self-medicate. But others found their balm in the hot bottom of a bottle cap and the slow push of a needle.
So many times over the years, I've gotten stuck on the thought of what if having ready, easy to access doses of Naloxone could've saved so many lives of heroin users who fell into overdoses? How many of my friends would still be here?? It's not that complicated of an idea, is it?? Granted, there's no way to perfectly guarantee error-free scenarios and textbook methods that will save every addict in the same perfect way...but it doesn't hurt to have a simple survival action plan for safe-use that includes doses of Naloxone/Narcan.
How long will it take to make this a reality??
What if????
http://odprevention.org/for-providers/what-is-narcan1/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naloxone
Knowledge is power.
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