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Poetry – for all our needs

In March, I wrote a blog about fentanyl that featured a poem by Carol Bialock: Breathing Under Water. I knew almost nothing about the author other than that she was clearly a deep thinker and an excellent poet. After that post, I was contacted by Fernwood Press, to let me know that for Carol’s upcoming 90th birthday, they were publishing a collection of her poems.

I have since learned more about this remarkable woman who was a sister of the Society of the Sacred Heart in Chile and a lifelong activist for human rights. (To learn more about her, please go to www.CarolBialock.com.) I want to share some highlights from Coral Castles, her newly published book.

I am no poet and I confess, I struggle when reading most poetry – I do better hearing a Continue reading “Poetry – for all our needs”

GMO Poppy Seeds & Opium – Thanks to China and the Taliban

In 2007, Afghanistan – which supplies approximately 80% of the world’s illicit opium – had an estimated world market value of $4 billion for their crops. Then, in 2015, there were reports of mysterious new high-yield opium poppy seeds resulting in bumper crops of opium. What would the value of these crops be and where were these super-seeds coming from?

In 2016, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported that there was a 43% surge in Afghan opium production in that coincided with a genetically modified organism (GMO) seed that was developed in China and farmed ‘legally’ for the pharmaceutical industry. The GMO seeds allow poppies to be grown year round instead of the normal 1-2 crops per year while using less water. The bulbs of the poppies grow bigger and the bulbs can be scored to extract resin twice, almost doubling yield. It is clear that China lost control of their new seed to the Afghan illicit opium industry, which has had beneficial consequences not only for the worldwide heroin market, but for the Taliban. Continue reading “GMO Poppy Seeds & Opium – Thanks to China and the Taliban”

BEING A FRIEND WHO CARES

The pervasiveness of opioid addiction was made clear to my husband and I, once again, on a recent trip. We were in California at one of our favorite Italian restaurants having a chat with one of the owners – catching up after not seeing each other for a few years. Somehow, yet very common for us, the conversation turned to the opioid epidemic and our son’s death from overdose. Our friend remembered us telling him about it, paused, and asked: “Do you mind if I tell you a personal story about heroin?”

Continue reading “BEING A FRIEND WHO CARES”

ANXIETY, Part 2: Appeal of Opioids to Millennials

Is there a particular reason that opioids have such an appeal to Millennials? In an article in the New Yorker Magazine (http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/02/americas-opioid-epidemic.html) entitled “The Poison We Pick,” Andrew Sullivan discusses the modern American life that we pioneered and how “epic numbers of American are killing themselves with opioids to escape it.” Sullivan goes on to say: “It is a story of pain and the search for an end to it. It is a story of how the most ancient painkiller known to humanity has emerged to numb the agonies of the world’s most highly evolved liberal democracy. Just as LSD helps explain the 1960’s, cocaine the 1980’s, and crack the 1990’s, so opium defines this new era. I say era, because this trend will, in all probability, last a very long time. The scale and darkness of this phenomenon is a sign of a civilization in a more acute crisis than we knew, a nation overwhelmed by a warp-speed, postindustrial world, a culture yearning to give up, indifferent to life and death, enraptured by withdrawal and nothingness.” Continue reading “ANXIETY, Part 2: Appeal of Opioids to Millennials”

ANXIETY, Part 1

In the summer of 2005, we discovered our 16 year old son was smoking “BT” ––Black Tar Heroin. A few weeks later, while we were in the midst of his withdrawal and simply putting one foot in front of the other as we searched everywhere trying to find the next step, I was rushed to the ER. After going to bed one night, my heart began racing and pounding out of my chest. After an hour, John called 911. At the hospital, I was given tests to see if I was having a heart attack. No. The diagnosis: extreme anxiety––deep, un-verbalized, foreboding. I was given IV morphine and as my heart rate slowed down, I slept. Who else but our children can affect our hearts at such a fundamental and unconscious level? Continue reading “ANXIETY, Part 1”

American Pain

From my earliest memories, I have had leg aches. They come on fairly suddenly for no apparent reason. It wasn’t until my 20’s when I figured out they related to the weather and changes in barometric pressure. I know, it sounds like folk-magic. But it’s true . As I was growing up, my parents would wrap my knees in stretch bandages and rub my legs with witch hazel. One thing they never did was offer me a pill for my pain. Never. In the pre-1980’s world, pain was part of life and mostly bearable.

My how things have changed. America–with 5% of the world’s population–went from consuming less than 5% of the world’s prescription opioids in the 1960’s to now consuming some of the highest percentages of prescription opioids such as oxycodone, morphine, fentanyl, etc.

In 2015, John Temple, an investigative journalist and journalism professor, wrote American Pain. It was one of three key books released that year in response to our opioid epidemic, the other two being Dreamland and The Big Fix. The title is taken from the “king” of the Florida pill mills, American Pain, a mega-clinic expressly created to serve addicts posing as patients. From a fortress-like former bank building with security guards, American Pain’s five doctors distributed massive quantities of oxycodone to hundreds of customers a day, mostly traffickers and those addicted, who came by the van load. Former strippers operated the pharmacy, counting out pills and stashing cash in garbage bags. Under their lab coats, the doctors carried guns. Continue reading “American Pain”

MYSTERIOUS WAYS

I love mysteries. From the time I began reading on my own, I gravitated toward mysteries: first Nancy Drew, then Agatha Christie, Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle. My husband and I continue to read and watch mysteries covering topics from historical to crime to espionage. Maybe my penchant for asking “Why?” is at the root of this affinity. The challenge of figuring out a conundrum and the satisfaction when the mystery is finally solved. Continue reading “MYSTERIOUS WAYS”

KNOW YOUR ENEMY

“Know your enemy” is a phrase that repeatedly returns to my mind when I am looking back on the years of our children’s adolescence. Regrettably, what we have learned is too late for our son, but not for millions of other sons and daughters. I believe that we are at war with an enemy that, as it is taking the lives of our children, it is also taking the future of our nation and our world.

If you know the enemy and know yourself,

you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

If you know yourself but not the enemy,

for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.

If you know neither the enemy nor yourself,

you will succumb in every battle.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu (Chinese military strategist, 5^th century BC) Continue reading “KNOW YOUR ENEMY”

Fentanyl & Breathing Under Water

BREATHING UNDER WATER

I built my house by the sea.
Not on the sands, mind you;
not on the shifting sand.
I built it of rock.

A strong house
by a strong sea.
And we got well acquainted, the sea and I.
Good neighbors.
Not that we spoke much.
We met in silences.
Respectful, keeping our distance,
but looking our thoughts across the fence of sand.
Always, the fence of sand our barrier, always, the sand between.

And then one day,
-and I still don’t know how it happened –
the sea came.
Without warning.

Without welcome, even
Not sudden and swift, but a shifting across the sand like wine,
less like the flow of water than the flow of blood.
Slow, but coming.
Slow, but flowing like an open wound.
And I thought of flight and I thought of drowning and I thought of death.
And while I thought the sea crept higher, till it reached my door.

And I knew, then, there was neither flight, nor death, nor drowning.
That when the sea comes calling, you stop being neighbors,
Well acquainted, friendly-at-a-distance neighbors,
And you give your house for a coral castle,
And you learn to breathe underwater.

(Sr. Carol Bieleck, RSCJ, from an unpublished work)

I first heard this poem as it was read at our son’s memorial by the director of a recovery program we had attended with JL in Tucson. It is full of spiritual metaphors and allusions to addictive behaviors. It came back to me this week as I received the latest information on fentanyl deaths in a report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), summarized by CNN:
Fentanyl deaths skyrocketed more than 1,000% over six years in the US.
By Nadia Kounang, CNN, 03/21/2019
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/21/health/fentanyl-deaths-increase-study/index.html

Continue reading “Fentanyl & Breathing Under Water”

A Missed 30th Birthday

Tomorrow would have been our son, John Leif’s, 30th birthday. Sadly, he is not here and we are not celebrating. Instead, we are remembering his life and honoring our son by sharing his story with a local recovery group.

In anticipation of our time with a group of 18 and over individuals, including parents or partners, who are trying to recover from a variety of drugs including alcohol, John and I discussed what we might possibly have to say that would be helpful.

We looked back at our journal and our upcoming memoir for options. And we asked a young friend who has been clean and sober for the past five years after over a decade of intense drug addiction. We all had the same idea: discuss shame and its role in addiction and recovery. Because the sense of shame that hangs like low black clouds gathering over our lives any time we as humans engage in something we know is not good for us – or others – is the ultimate loss of self-worth. As shame erodes the very core of our being, I believe it is the hardest obstacle (aside from the physical addiction) for addicted individuals to surmount in seeking recovery. Shame paralyzes us. Continue reading “A Missed 30th Birthday”