He didn’t listen. He could no longer hear.

Father and Son at the end of the journey.

From a Facebook post two years ago this day, December 21, 2017…

He still dreams. He can do that. I’ve always believed that as long as someone can dream, they can live. Because to know a dream is to have hope. With hope, anyone can survive.

Well, I may have been mistaken. And I’ll get to the why part in a minute. Right now, I feel like telling anyone who will pay attention that for two years running, the life expectancy of an average American has dropped. I remember when it was supposed to be rising. It doesn’t seem like it was very long ago. But the reason, or most of the reason as I understand it, is drug use. As in, opioid addiction.

Overdoses cause traffic, work and domestic deaths, and the numbers are staggering. But the drugs under the opioid nomenclature also cause death from long term use. I’m not going to pretend I’m a health expert, and it’s really simple anyway. In the long term, doses need to be increased to maintain efficacy. The body gets resistant. And alone with a bottle of Percocet (oxycodone) and a nasty set of withdrawal symptoms, anyone will take more than their prescribed dose. It happens. It is not restricted to any demographic. It crosses every line into every corner of our country regardless of education, intelligence, income, race, religion or occupation. And there’s not really anyone to blame, because it’s past time to bother with that. When this many (NHCS reports 63,600 deaths from drug overdoses in 2016) people are dying, it is time to figure out what to do to stop it. Nothing else matters.

Recently, the surge of an old enemy, the street drug known as Scramble, has become dangerously available, and people scoring what they think is heroin with a few added ingredients, but nothing exotic, are really buying a substance that’s about to drop them. And sometimes when they drop, they can be saved. And sometimes they can’t be.

First responders need to know things, really before they arrive to a scene, what’s going on. If they can get Nalaxone, or Narcan, into a patient fast enough–or better yet, if a family member or caregiver can have it handy–then respiratory function can be kept up until oxygen or a respirator, as necessary, can be used. In too many cases, heroin mixed with fentanyl causes almost instant reduction in respiration rate, and if it gets low enough, or stops, the cardiopulmonary process stops. Death is minutes away without CPR.

Well with all that, you’d think that once around the block with an experience like that would scare someone into being less inclined to risk it again. But that’s not what happens.

The Scramble combination is powerful. And usually there was already an opioid addiction, and the supply runs short because they have to take a thirty day supply in a few days, or because a doctor has suddenly cut them off–oh yeah, that happens. Not all doctors are necessarily nice people. So an addict looks to the street dealer for help. With fentanyl involved, it’s a dead end street.

I understand this. I’m going through it with someone close to me. I’ve gotten three calls in one month informing me that this family member has overdosed and is in or on the way to the hospital in an ambulance. Three times. Two were within three days of each other.

The reason I may have been mistaken about my philosophy on dreams and hope and survival? He has dreams. But he’s going to do it again. Getting him help depends mostly on his willingness to help himself. Then there’s the kind of help available. If the problem was alcohol, it would be no problem. They would do detoxification at the hospital. Here, that does not apply to drug addiction and repeated overdoses.

All substances allow you to keep your dreams when you’re not at the extremes of a high or withdrawal. But they’re not enough, dreams. Neither is anything else. A spouse, fiancee, loving family, a great job…once the opioid use goes into overdrive, not much can stop it. The numbers say it plain: Death is stalking the user.

I hear an old man’s voice in the throat of my son. I see Hell in his face. And sure enough, the word came: kidney and liver function are off. That’s one of the long term results of being hooked. And I have had to watch it, and I’ve begged, warned, cried, expressed my deepest fears to him…and it does no good. I don’t want him to die, of course. But I can’t stop it from happening.

I’m not here to give anyone advice. I don’t have any to offer. I’m not here to educate; I’m not qualified. I’m not even complaining; no one cares. I’m just saying that we are facing too many crises at once, and it seems we’re losing a couple of battles here. We can’t have that. But instead of hearing reasonable talk and thoughtful discourse, all I seem to be getting is people who are bigoted saying things like “it’s poor people, let them kill themselves”, or “that’s a black problem. So what?”

On the other hand, big pharma doesn’t want too many restrictions, it’s bad for business. Corporate heartless protocols.

Well. We’re dying. That’s what I know.