Earlier this week, I was sitting at work scrolling through Facebook in a moment of downtime. As I passed by the ANAD week photo challenges, statuses about not wanting to go to class, and various advertisements and company posts, I happened upon a post from my favorite local news station, 6ABC. It was a video that was released by the Upper Darby Police Department that showed a young man having a heroin overdose on a SEPTA bus. I knew exactly what I was getting myself into when I decided to watch it, but I did it anyway. A minute and 30 seconds later, the video was over, and I sat frozen at my desk trying to process my thoughts. I spent the rest of the day thinking about that video, and this is why:
For the last three to four years, I've dealt with an extremely close friend of mine having an opiate drug addiction. It's not something that I chose or choose to associate myself with, but I believe that when you are someone's friend, you're with them for the good and bad. For better or worse, the stages of addiction and how opiates can destroy lives has been part of my reality. I used to have a negative opinion of those who suffered from addiction, thinking that it was a choice and that people who continued to use again and again were doing so because they truly wanted to. It wasn't until I was personally impacted and saw someone who I cared deeply about transform into a different person that I realized that it truly is a disease and a daily battle for sobriety ensues within those who are afflicted.
It was sometime around the summer between junior and senior years of high school that I became aware of my friend's use of percocets. It was like nothing I'd ever experienced before growing up in a mostly upper-middle class suburban area, and I didn't understand the seriousness of the issue. I thought it would be a phase that would end when the money dried up. It took me almost a year to talk to my friend's parents about it. It was after I heard a commercial for an opiate painkiller abuse treatment center, ironically, on a drive over to my friend's house. I had never known the link between the pills and heroin, and hearing that word was frightening.
Ever since then, the anxiety of what could happen has been something that sits in the back of my head. It wasn't until a few months into my freshman year of college that I found out that my friend had made the jump to heroin. From the time in between then and now, I've watched the ebb and flow of addiction unfold: multiple trips to rehab, periods of little to no communication, halfway houses, lies, and everything in between. I still recognize the person that I became friends with and care deeply about, but there's just a different set of circumstances that make things different. I know the battle that my friend is fighting, and I have the biggest respect for her that she's able to fight it every day.
When I see my friend, it admittedly is extremely different than what it used to be. No longer are we carefree and hanging out in town and going to Starbucks on Friday nights. Our conversations tend to revolve around how my friend's halfway house is going, the NA meetings, and me trying to figure out how she's doing. I often wonder what things would be like had things not turned out to be this way, had I said something sooner and tried to get her help earlier. I know it's not worth it, and I've learned from the speakers that I've listened to and the research that I've done that it's best to just be there as a support system for your friend.
I try my best to do that and to focus on the positive, but it can be hard at times. Unexpected phone calls from my friend always give me a rush of fear of what's going to come out on the other end. Add that to the fear of ever getting a phone call from my friend's parents. I don't think that anxiety will ever go away, but I can handle it and live with it more as I've met and become friends with others that experience the same thing.
One thing that I try to remember through all of this is that addiction is a disease and it needs the respect and attention that other diseases get in our society. I think our nation is starting to wake up to the epidemic levels of opiate and heroin usage and abuse across the country. Heroin is spreading its horrifying grasp from the poor inner-city neighborhoods to the tree-lined streets of the suburbs and beyond at epidemic levels.
I'm glad that more people are starting to wake up to the issue and are realizing that those who battle addiction are not 'less-than us' or 'bad people'. They want to be loved, understood and respected. As scary or taboo as it might seem to people, we need to educate everyone on the issue so that we can prevent this horrible drug from afflicting more and more families. Once the taboo of drug addiction is dismantled, and we continue the recent trend of starting to talk about the issue, we will be better equipped to make the eradication of drugs from our homes and neighborhoods a reality.
I feel that my experience with seeing the effects of drugs and addiction has given me a greater understanding of our world and it's people. I hope that in the near future, judgment, ignorance, and misunderstanding will be replaced with education, understanding and empathy. I also hope that it's because the dialogue of the issue is more open and abundant, and not because the grip of drugs has expanded and touched more lives in the way that it's touched mine.
We truly owe it to our friends, families, those suffering from addiction, and ourselves to face this head on and try to come up with a solution that works for everyone. I hope that from sharing my experience, that can start to happen.