OPIOID SOUNDS TOO PRETTY, CALL IT WHAT IT IS

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Imagine it on BBC: “Oh, Countess, could you please have your man-servant retrieve the opioid?”

You’ve heard it before: Too much of a good thing is a bad thing.

Painkillers fall into that category. After they kill pain, they choke out the person you used to be.

If you don’t stop the opioid, the opioid stops you.

This came up after a dentist pulled two wisdom teeth and gave the new non-opioid pain management:

Ibuprofen and acetaminophen, Tylenol and Motrin.

Two years ago it would have been Vicodin.

Today it’s CNN interviewing opiod advocates in New Hampshire.

Trump won 18 of the top 25 states with the highest number of drug overdoses in 2015, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now you’ve to ask yourself, ‘Is my state on that opioid list?’

Well, is it? Is it?

Spoiler: States with statistically significant increases in drug overdose death rates from 2014 to 2015 included Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Washington, and West Virginia.

What to step up, Washington. You drug the entire west into a membership no one wants a part of.

Now we can’t pretend the opioid epidemic is ‘over there’, just another weeping wound to ignore.

Instead, it’s right on top of Oregon, an opioid calamity on the inter-state bridges. And no one talks about building a wall on the Columbia River?

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Three men with grown children talk about opioid addiction:

“They ought to take all of those addicts out in the desert and shoot them,” one said.

“Then you’d be shooting my son.”

“Well, that’s not what I meant.”

“It’s what people say who haven’t had the shit walking their kids around.”

“You know what I mean.”

“What you mean is you think these people choose to live like animals, scavenging sex for money for junk. Who makes that sort of decision? Heroin. Do what you got to do or get sick like you’re dying. Everyday.”

“I’m sorry, I said the wrong thing.”

“Not really, no. Until you see drug addiction like cancer, it’s all about eliminating the person, not the disease. You don’t catch cancer from a toilet seat any more than an addict accidentally sits on a needle.”

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Opioid overdoses have reached epidemic levels, according to the CDC.

A study from the agency found that 25% of all drug overdose deaths were related to heroin in 2015. That number was just 6% in 1999.

“If he had really asked and listened to anybody close to the issue, they would tell him that he has done everything wrong so far,” said Dean Lemrire, a recovery advocate who used to be in treatment for alcohol and heroin addiction.

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Back to the BBC:

“We appear to have had a small set back. Nothing major, really, but still urgent in the sense of doing something. An action of some kind, while it could possible help, certainly wouldn’t hurt.”

What do drug addicts with a life threatening habit want most?

The same as anyone whose life is threatened.

What would you want?