Community Connection – Opiate Nation

All Souls, All Saints, All of Us

(Translation into most languages at tab to the right.)

This year, the All-Souls’ Procession in Tucson, where I live, is today. The traditional date for celebrating All Souls’ Day (the Day of the Dead) is November 2nd. It was delayed this year because Halloween was on the same weekend. Tucson has one of the largest processions in the country with several hundred thousand people participating. Preceding this is All Saints Day on November 1^st.

All Saints Day had its beginnings in Roman Church tradition dating back to the early centuries when Christians were martyred for their faith or who had publicly confessed and somehow survived the Roman persecution. The belief was that they were saints and immediately taken up into heaven. By the mid 800’s, Pope Gregory IV assigned Nov. 1^st as the holy feast of All Saints.

All Souls’ Day evolved sometime around 1000 as a time to pray for the souls of all who had died. This is tied in directly with the Catholic Church belief in purgatory and those who are awaiting the joys of heaven. In pleading for them, we are reminded of our own offenses and so inspired to lead purer lives.

My husband, John, and I have walked many times in the procession here in Tucson although we are not Catholics and we believe that all those who have faith in and follow Jesus are saints, as the New Testament teaches.(1) Many Evangelical Christians think it is wrong to participate in All Souls’ events because it is not biblical to pray for the dead and they reject the concept of purgatory because nothing we do can alter ones destination in the afterlife. (2)

While we hold to basic New Testament beliefs, we do not find it contradictory to be part of the All-Souls’ procession in remembrance of our son, John Leif. The procession is a public ceremony to honor the dead and celebrate their lives, allowing participants to release and integrate their grief. Our son’s death from a heroin overdose – a reason many others are there – continues to be a source of sadness and regret. To remember and celebrate him as a person worthy of love is important for us. We do not want to shame him and do not want him to be forgotten.

What is sad to us is the way in which this holiday is treated with similar vitriol that partisan politics infiltrates so many areas of American life these days. There are “Christians” who stand along the procession route shouting out ugly and sinful – yes, sinful – rebukes to those walking in remembrance of their loved ones. Sadly, many people feel it necessary to take a side on almost every issue – and supposed Christians are some of the leading voices. The unholy mixture of politics and “faith” in our country is deeply disturbing to us and absolutely un-Biblical.

While we hold that our beliefs are true and worthy of sharing with others, we also feel it imperative that we respect others’ beliefs and faith traditions without mocking or denigrating them as all New Testament writing demonstrates. This is especially important when it comes to how people choose to remember and honor their loved ones who have died.

In the past several decades, opioid addiction has taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of beautiful young people. We believe they are worthy of being remembered without shame and with love in whatever way their loved ones choose. And in so doing, we hope their lives stand as a warning for other young people tempted into experimenting with increasingly deadly drugs.

I Corinthians 1:2, Romans 1:7, Philippians 1:1, Ephesians 2:19
Hebrews 9:27
History behind All Saints and All Souls:

https://www.osvnews.com/the-history-behind-all-saints-and-all-souls-days/#:~:text=Remembering%20and%20praying%20for%20the%20faithful%20departed&text=He%20instituted%20this%20commemoration%20on,All%20Saints%20DayAll%20Souls

The Importance of Friends – Part 1

(Translation into most language at tab to the right.)

Approaching what would be my son’s 36^th birthday, I thought about the last year of his life. I don’t think about it often because it is painful – so many wishes that things had gone differently for him.

One sadness is that when in active addiction, he was very alone. It’s not that JL didn’t have lots of friends – he did. He was friendly and likeable and the large group of friends who came to his memorial is a testament to that. But most of his high school and university-era friends were not involved in his life during the last few years of his life, and the last year in particular. After his accidental fall and relapse to opiates in 2008 and the next seven years in and out of recovery programs, his life became narrower and something he was ashamed of.

An event that stands out was during a time of heroin use that we were not fully aware of as he lived in our rental house, and we thought he was attending his classes at university. We received an urgent call from two of his friends telling us that they knew he was back to spending all his time with his friend that used heroin with him and they were not getting an answer to their calls. They were at his house and he wasn’t responding to their knocks on his door – did they have our permission to break his door down? Our frightened response was “Yes!” They found him deep in drugged sleep and alive but very startled when they burst in. They confronted him with what they knew and their concern about his drug use. He of course was defensive and pretended that nothing was wrong.

Gradually, these friends, along with others, were no longer part of his life. JL did make a good friend or two in his recovery programs, but he always kept his addicted friends and dealers separate from his sober friends who were mostly not aware of his use and relapses – he had a pretty good poker face. Most of them were shocked to hear of his overdose death because he had been in a sober living house for six months and doing well.

Many of the friends who had such good times together when JL was clean (although not necessarily sober, as they enjoyed drinking with him not realizing how that always led back to drugs for JL) felt guilt after his death. Guilt because he called several of them the week before his death when he had just relapsed. It seems he wanted a friend to talk to and perhaps perceive that he was struggling. And guilt because they wished they had stayed in touch with JL and not distanced themselves from him when he continued to struggle with addiction.

But there’s the rub: How do sober friends stay involved with a friend who is in active addiction? I think it is especially difficult for young people, who don’t know what they can do, who may be more concerned with their own lives and issues, and who are not yet mature. This is not to suggest that any human is ever totally selfless regardless of how old we are – I know myself too well to hold this delusion. But the passing of years does bring relational experience and can help us focus more on those around us.

Next month I will try to share some insights and ideas for teens and young adults for how to truly be a friend to someone who is struggling with addiction and sobriety. Just remember:

Don’t ever give up on your friends or family who are trapped in addiction. They need good friends more than ever. King Solomon gave this wise insight 3,000 years ago: Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. (1)

Many people will walk in and out of your life,

but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.

—Eleanor Roosevelt

Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

Frankenstein Opioids

(Translation into most languages at tab to right)

Just when we thought everyone was aware of the fatal danger of fentanyl and it being mixed into every drug of abuse available on the street, a new threat arises. Nitazene or Isotonitazene (ISO) or Protonitazene, new lab-made opioids, are showing up at hospitals and morgues around the world in the bodies of people thinking they were taking their drug-of-choice only to find it was laced with one more deadly drug. It is being mixed in with cocaine, or formulated into fake Oxy’s and other pills. In the US, it first showed up in 2019 in the Midwest and spread rapidly.

Nitazenes were developed in the 1950’s by pharmaceutical companies as an alternative to morphine but shelved due to the risks of overdose. There is still no approved medical use for nitazenes today. Another ‘Designer Drug’ being made in illicit labs around the world, Nitazenes are up to 40 times stronger than fentanyl. Fentanyl is already 50 times more powerful than heroin and up to 800 times more powerful than morphine.

No wonder these drugs are referred to as ‘Frankenstein Opioids’ – only an insane, evil intentioned scientist would work to create such a drug. But in reality, the motivation is greed more than insanity because synthetic drugs are cheap to make and easy to ship and deliver – and highly profitable. But evil is the correct description for the immoral heads of the drug syndicates and cartels around the world whose entire life and business is dealing death.

What can be done?

For parents with children still at home, community connection and education are the best preventative measures. As I have said before, my husband and I were totally unaware of what substances were readily available to our middle school son in the early 2000’s. Our concern was smoking and marijuana. Little did we know. General discussions about drug abuse were the extent of our educational conversations. But we would have been much better prepared and had much more information if we had been involved with our kids’ school community. Instead, we were insulated from vital resources because we spent so much time with our church community. But make no mistake. Many of the families at church with kids in youth group were just like us – unaware and ill prepared and sadly many of them suffered the same loss as we did.

There are other important aspects in raising self-reliant kids who are not subject to the lures of the “cool” kids or “in” crowd. Below is a link to a previous blog dedicated to the perils modern teens and their parents face with important resources. I hope it will be helpful to you and those you love.