Tears In Heaven?

He did it to himself. The syringe was found half empty on the bathroom floor. Nobody forced him. He wasn’t tied up and injected like Popeye Doyle in “French Connection II” which, unlike the first movie wasn’t based on a true story but was total bullshit.

Nobody coaxed, talked him into it or dared him. Nobody knew he was going to die and nobody who knew him failed to be horrified and traumatized by his death.

The cops, New York’s finest, tossed the apartment in an illegal search. It must have been a bad night, and no police officer ever liked getting a radio call for a DB. But on a cold night in New York, snow and ice everywhere, blackened by automobile exhaust, with a new strain of Covid out there, hell no.

The girlfriend was treated as a criminal, like an animal. Given a blanket and told to sit on the hallway floor. While they tore the apartment up looking for kingpin-sized stashes that didn’t exist.

The search produced nothing and if it had would have been inadmissible in a court of law.

The man was young, not old but certainly no teenager; his history of abuse telling his age. He was not a criminal and made no trouble. His heart was such that he wanted to help people. Which he often had. But for himself, he could spare no such help, none of the guidance he’d offered others, and nothing of the training he had in becoming a certified EMT. Because that’s how The Disease works.

So, in an effort to wean himself from methadone and get out of the system forever, he began, at some point, using again. That’s all too common. You’ll see why.

The 60s and 70s: Goddamn Hippies Everywhere

There was once a TV guide that came free with every copy of Baltimore’s Sunday Sun and The News American newspapers. Each was different in font but let people know the network’s and independent station’s television lineup for the coming week. In The Sun’s version there was a crossword puzzle in the back, and a cartoon page with “Channel Chuckles” by syndicated cartoonist Bil Keane of “Family Circus” fame. It featured insane characters like “Aunt Tenna” who was alternately obsessed with and disgusted by certain shows or commercials. Dated and stereotypical, it didn’t age well, but at times was funny if you got the joke. Today most people wouldn’t. Even the name “Aunt Tenna” would be lost on many people whose TV didn’t come with an antenna, and rooftop versions still standing are mere skeletons of an era long before they were born.

But also in that back section were some things like public service ads. One was a full page drawing of a man titled “How To Identify An Addict”. It depicted a young man in long sleeves, bell bottoms and wearing sunglasses. Lines drawn to certain parts were labeled “Sunglasses to hide bloodshot eyes”, “Red, runny nose”, “Long sleeves to hide track marks”, and so on. This was the golden age of the hippies, counterculture, free sex, tons of drugs and the emergent electric rock. The age when the Beatles no longer sang “She Loves You” or “I Want To Hold Your Hand” and went on to fields of strawberries, vexing parents even more than they had been in 1964.

Woodstock shocked so many people that by 1971, the public service ads changed forever. This public service ad character once urged people to read labels for safety. Then, in the days when the problem with DDT became a headline topic, it changed, extolling the virtues of pesticides. Which really is important, because we can’t eat oats anymore.

Every teen was demonized. If they wore certain clothes they were automatically drug addicts, and if they wore “nice” clothes and got straight A grades in school, then they were athletes or sticks in the mud and probably would turn into drug addicts in college. That’s what older people thought and parents drove themselves to drink worrying about.

Drug abuse was a real problem and it was spreading from urban areas to Elm Street. Truckers who needed to stay awake used Dexies and Bennies, then to come down and sleep without a crashing effect would use Reds and Yellow Jackets. On campuses, both prep and public high school as well as college, amphetamines reigned, helping kids to remain alert in boring lectures or to “cram” for exams.

There was a beginning of awareness of drug use and the words “treatment” and “help” were thrown about by the media and political bodies and officials, but that was lip service; nothing good ever came of it. Usually if caught dirty, or in possession, depending upon the place (economically) or on skin color, clothing and hair length, central booking and jail time came next, or as in the case of a suburban white kid, it would be a release to parental custody. But many young people endured hard abuse at the hands of parents who were horrified that their precious Johnny or Charmaine could do something so despicable and evil. They would sleep deprive them and grill them long into the night as to who “gave” them drugs or “made them” take drugs. And depending on the drug, parents reacted differently. If cocaine or heroin was involved, the world had come to an end. Families ended. Marriage did not survive the wedge driven between an angry father and a grief-ridden mother, or vice versa. Religious beliefs and practices or affiliations made everything worse; and that rarely ended well. From celebrities to ma and pa down the street, all had to deal with kids dead of overdoses, whether intended or not.

Sometimes parents rode their kids so hard that the drug won and suicide was the price.

Families burying an overdosed child were often viewed differently afterward, treated as though their house was cursed or some kind of plague house, and friendships, even long standing ones, ended with not a word spoken.

I saw all of this. Lived through my own hell and my search through drugs for relief. I heard all of the slang, knew people who died, hated first the hippies because I was in a conservative, religious house, then the whole god damned world for standing by and allowing kids to die of overdoses, allowing kids to be raped and beaten, for calling victims awful names and locking them up. For everything.

The Scam War On Drugs And The “Just Say No” Joke

There never was a war on drugs. A war on people of color perhaps. Don’t be surprised by this; everything is always about money, and lots of money always corrupts. From the Reagan administration and Nancy Reagan we got a drug “czar” and “Just say ‘No’ (to drugs)” and shit got worse. Crack hit the streets. PCP and LSD went out and pot, pills, crank and crack ruled. Dealers were everywhere in schools, waiting just beyond the playground if they were older, in alleys, on corners and the workplace. And the young and old alike died by the numbers.

Along with addiction came crime; the need to get well drove desperate people to the most extreme ways. More injured, traumatized and dead because of illegal drugs.

February 14, 2018

The Last Day

My son Mike Jr. had been addicted to pain killers for at least 15 years. By 2010 he could take a 30 day supply in two days. Then he’d be dope sick and a horror. On top of being autistic and having other problems, this made him a monster.

I won’t go into those details about being a monster, but let it be known that his doctor did not help. Dr. Udochi fed him the percocet for years and suddenly cut him off. I don’t necessarily blame her, he was eventually flagged and was doctor shopping, and he was often unruly in the examination room.

By November of 2017, he, like so many others who had suddenly been denied opioids because of the “crisis” they had caused, bringing death and lawsuits for everything from malpractice to wrongful death.

In November my son got a hold of something I’d never heard of. He bought percocet on the street, but it was a pill made with fentanyl in it. He dropped immediately and required CPR. But there was a delay; some brain damage seemed apparent. In hospital he was very confused, unable to focus, forgetting that he’d just asked the same question a few minutes before, and I thought he’d never come back.

A few weeks later, it happened again. The first time he had described Heaven, seeing his sister there, and running around with her on beautiful green grass. His grandfather was there, reading a newspaper and watching them. He wanted to go back.

When my daughter died on 5 July 2012, they had her on life support but turned it off because her brain stem had no bloodflow. After “partially drowning”, as the medical examiner’s report said, she spent 24 hours ventilated. It crushed us all. I was there when the machine was turned off. My son and I cried outside, hugging each other and I felt his grief, so intense that it practically bled through his very pores. We’d been close, the three of us, before and after the divorce. In a way, Mikey took the divorce harder than she did and he clung to her for stability and her own suffering; together they were stronger. With her death, he was never the same. The drug abuse intensified.

Three times he would overdose on the fentanyl-laced pills. At the time there was no fixed name for the mixture so an old name for a different version caught: “scramble.”

And each time he had to be revived, and each time he had to be admitted to Howard County General Hospital. The last time, as he was dressed to leave, the doctor told him, and I heard it, that his liver and kidney functions were not normal. He had two referrals for specialists but I knew Mikey wouldn’t go. He had no insurance and Social Security had cut him off and demanded he repay every dollar he’d received even though he had qualified. He was a young man destined from the minute he was born to never have an even marginally normal life, and I knew it was over when I heard the doctor tell him his kidneys and liver were failing.

But I thought we would have more time. He did visit me on Christmas of 2017. The day was over too fast, and I never saw him alive again. We talked, but he wasn’t well, and on Valentine’s Day of 2018 the street drug won. He died and wasn’t found for hours. He had already gone cold and blue.

His mother didn’t have a funeral or wake. They planned a barbecue in the yard of their mobile home. Seemed more like they were celebrating being rid of him than mourning. I thought, Fuck them. That’s some cold shit.

All that’s left for me is pain to go with my memories. A broken heart so beyond repair that I shun closeness and I’m deathly afraid of losing someone, anyone else, that I love. I had cruel words for my siblings when they didn’t really react to his death. But that was my fault, not theirs. I wondered what would happen to me if any one of them died next. I did not wish to find out. Distance was good, isolation even better. I’ve grown adept at avoiding pain. I have enough of it.

New York

The man died with a half-empty syringe. Nobody who has a reliable connection does that. You don’t horse out unless it’s junk laced with shit. Additives have always been used to cut junk. Some would do it shitty, like with rat poison. In small amounts that can be tolerated, but that’s with ingestion; injection leaves no room for fucking around. You drop.

Sometimes it’s just a hot bag, too pure, and the respiratory system is so repressed that the heart stops.

But that’s not happening much now. The death toll from fentanyl is no joke; this bag was hot because fentanyl was added to the smack.

The first thing I asked was, “Why? Why the fuck would anyone do that and kill their own customers?”

There is no sensible answer.

The goal is to provide a more intense high because the H is cut too much. It can’t give the satisfaction a customer needs. Being addicted to heroin is a road trip to Hell. And you can’t control it; you get terribly sick between hits. “Getting well” is all you think about and until you do you’re a mess. It twists your gut with the first moments of withdrawal and gets horrible from there. Pain. Shaking, sweating, nausea, vision in and out, vomiting if it goes on too long. And a deep hunger like nothing else. You’re in Hell.

When the man in New York bought his bags of heroin he could not have known some were hot. You’d have to test it to know that. And you’re going to be surprised that many users do test for fentanyl because it’s too common a problem these days. Getting off methadone and free of drugs and the System is a desirable goal, but most end up in the program for years. You can’t travel. They won’t give you the supply for it. You can’t get snowed in, catch the flu, miss the bus. The methadone becomes the drug you’re now a slave to.

I know why he was doing H again. It’s bad logic, and it got him killed. But this is how it ends for so many. He’s not the first and will not be the last.

As I write this, the DEA has just seized 50,000 counterfeit percocet in Vegas laced with fentanyl. That’s potentially 50,000 deaths. No, that’s not hyperbole; the drug is used for severe pain and can only be dispensed by doctors and then as sparingly, with as much supervision, as possible. Doctors don’t relish losing a patient; therefore when administering this drug they take pains to see that everything is done by the book. Without a doctor’s supervision, fentanyl cannot be safely used. It simply kills people.

Morphine was a popular 70s drug on the street. Fentanyl is dozens of times more powerful, yet look at the statistics for morphine related deaths and the picture in your mind should be scary as hell. And fentanyl is everywhere now. In everything. Now, not a single street drug is remotely safe.

A good man died in New York. His mother and twin sister are devastated; they now know the pain I know. The pain too many of us know. He’s not even a name anymore. He’s a statistic. Just another fucking number to the feds and the state of New York. His girlfriend lies in a hospital, broken. No one knows her pain but her. And she’s not talking.

I understand death. I do not fear it. Not for myself. I fear it for others; I know the hell visited upon the families and friends of those who leave us. The people we love the most.

God damn drugs.

On February 14th I passed the third anniversary of my son’s death. I miss my kids. It seems like yesterday that I held them in my arms. That I talked to them in baby talk while they hungrily drank their formula and with tiny hands reached up to touch my nose.

Yet…it was a lifetime ago. And I never saw anything bad back then. Only blessings wrapped in soft blankets. They deserved so much more. So much more.

I sometimes play this song and wonder.

Did my Mikey see his sister in Heaven?

Did they run and laugh under a cerulean sky, barefoot in lush green grass?

Are they there, will they know me if I make it there someday?

Will my tears stop…in Heaven?