Janisse, thank you for this piece. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. It takes a strong, loving person to hold space for the deep hurt that an addict has felt and an even stronger person to hold boundaries with compassion. Not many can do this. It’s holy work. Thank you for promoting all the questions. ❤️
Too late I came to believe that addiction is a disease of disconnection. Too eagerly I believed in tough love-- in my case it looked more like retribution for not living life the way I thought it should be lived. Too late I realized that, if you imbibe large amounts of alcohol, a strong depressant, every day, that your body acclimates. If you stop drinking it, your body is on high alert, anxious, on pins and needles, because it's calibrated to idle with the everyday dose of depressant, and it's been trying all along to make up for that depressant. My brother died in a dark parking lot across the street from Walgreens. He'd been dispensed 40 10 mg hydrocodone pills even though he was so stumbling drunk that the pharmacist said in the police report that he bumped his head on the counter and forgot his wallet. His blood alcohol concentration was 0.24 grams per 100 ml. I just copied and pasted that from his autopsy. Free oxycodone was 860 nanograms per milliliter or 86 grams per liter. I had to comb Google Scholar to figure out what concentration was lethal. It was a lot less than this. I loved my brother. I will never be able to talk enough about this, even though I don't want to. I hear the expression "bleed out"--we only contain a finite amount of blood. To "tell out," "grieve out," "regret out"...I don't know if that can happen. Seven years ago, and counting.
They were oxycodone pills, not hydrocodone. He had gotten a prescription for them to treat intense pain from pancreatitis, which stemmed from relentless drinking. Marijuana would have served him much better.
Cannabis/Marijuana is not a harmless drug. I am a therapist and have treated many patients with addictions that came through that gateway to other drugs. That is really not my biggest concern. We now know that 1 out of every 100 people who smoke a joint during adolescence (ages12- about 26) will develop psychosis that leads to mental health issues for life. I use to say to my patients-- "If you were going to a theatre with 100 seats and you knew that one of those seats had a weight activated bomb under it, would you go to that theatre. Would you skip that movie? Would you even hang out outside?" This is researched and true information. When the brain is still developing it is very sensitive to "pot" for that one person. That person may come from a family with drug addictions or a history of mental illness, suicide, etc. Is it worth finding out if you are the "one.?" I have seen too many lives either lost or ruined from smoking pot. I fear the rates of mental illness and addiction will skyrocket when every state "legalizes" marijuana . Marijuana is a much different drug than what was smoked in the 60s and 70s.
I don't think it should be a crime to possess or smoke it, but we've got a huge learning curve to overcome to get everyone knowledgeable about the risk involved just like we did with tobacco. Growing up, money made from the tobacco industry put food on our table, clothes on my back and paid for my college education. When my older sister and her husband died of lung cancer, it took on a whole different meaning to me. Addiction has been a struggle in my family as well. Mental illness is also in the genetics. Like you, I would never even try anything. At 76, I have never even had a cigarette in my mouth. I am not a goody two shoes, but I will go to my grave telling the truth I know about "drugs" and addiction.
I lost my nephew to fentanyl and I have much anger towards the Sackler family. Unbeknownst to us he became addicted after having appendicitis surgery. I have never publicly talked about this but I now havea mistrust of pharmaceutical companies.
I agree with your observation on the injustice of people sitting in jail who sold marijuana while now these huge dispensaries are in business. I grew up in the same area as you and I was told the lies about marijuana and I avoided it since my family history is riddled with alcoholism. Thank you for being so candid.
This really hit home for me. Last year I watched my 29 year old nephew, only child of my sister, pass away after his organs shut down one by one. I sat with them at his bedside in ICU while he struggled with restraints that were required as he detoxed from the volume of drugs in his system. I avoided his kicks and punches and warned others to be on guard. We prayed he would not hurt anyone in his struggle.
His parents endured so much silently throughout the last couple of years as he made his dark journey. He had been violent and evil and yet as he made this journey, I saw him return to the sweet little boy he was at heart. I hate that was too late to reclaim his abused body.
During the Covid lockdown, he lost the last job he would have. He lost hope, he and his roommates spent their time “recreating” with an assortment of drugs. He allowed some type of evil into his heart that craved more and more.
He finally pushed it too far. As his body struggled with sepsis, he left the emergency room where he had gone by ambulance, to spend his birthday in his home with his friends and beloved dogs. He celebrated by knowingly snorting cocaine laced with fentanyl.
He only returned to his home for hospice care. His already grieving parents, family and their trusted friends worked so hard to ease him on his last journey. From start to finish, it was 44 days.
My sister and I disagree about pot. She thinks that it is a gateway drug that will always lead to destruction. I do not. To me, the gateway is the fact that marijuana is only available illegally in some areas. Purchasing it exposes people to an underworld of people who seek to make money by convincing you to go deeper and deeper into drug experiences. I know so many people who benefitted from pot use for many reasons and who have used it for 50 years or more. They are moral and upstanding citizens. I can’t say what the difference in their experience is, but I think it might be the amount of hope they hold in their hearts. I want to remember Joey by consciously fostering hope and positivity in the world. Maybe it isn’t enough, or perhaps it is.
Thank you for sharing, for being vulnerable, for opening up a space for our minds to grow. It is complicated and messy. And people we love are helped and harmed. Sending up prayers that we will all see with eyes of Love and act as fierce guardians of the heart .
Thank you for your thoughtful post. This is my experience. My wife was a heroin addict, I can't even let myself imagine what her younger life was like. She has 30 years of sobriety and is an amazing mental health therapist, focusing on trauma. I think trauma is the main culprit, in its many forms. Also, as a public service announcement, there are many pot growing operations (due to a perfect storm of ambiguous laws and black market opportunists) that use lethal pesticides to protect their product from animals. I urge people to know where their pot comes from.
Wow, quite a piece Janisse. That must have taken a lot out of you. Hope you're outside in nature recovery!
I think a "war on" anything is a mistake. I'd rather declare peace and love and support and help. When my kids were little and "just say no" was a thing, it made me angry because I wanted them to have a full and frank discussion about the pros or con or dangers or benefits, rather than knee-jerk pabulum ignorance. How will just saying no help them when they have real decisions to make later on? It's been an open topic ever since.
I grew up in the liberal west, and was quite young when introduced to various drugs. I'm fortunate that all went well, that addiction is not a thing in my family, that I had no compulsion to try every last thing, and that I've been relatively untouched by near or dear overdoses and addictions. I don't know how.
As for Kingsolver, I love her writing and I loved this book, partly because she was right - my picture of Appalachia from a distance was skewed by popular media, movies, etc. It opened my eyes to many things. But I can understand how it can be too close. I struggled with the book Apeirogon, because as a Jew, it was too close, too painful. But I did read it. Interviews with Kingsolver may be of interest to you.
This country is all about war; war on women, on people of color, on LGBTQIA2+, on liberals or conservatives, and now, again, on Jews, plus a thousand other issues. It's exhausting and heartbreaking.
Oooooh Lawd Janisse, you opened up a can of worms with this post. Very courageous on your part I must say. For sure we were misinformed, pot is certainly not the Assassin of Youth or I'd have been dead 50+ years ago. Ever seen the old 1930's propaganda film Reefer Madness ? Nicotine and alcohol are much more addictive and harmful to our health but legal. Go figure. Weed is a medicinal herb, put on the planet for a reason. Do too much and rather than die you just fall asleep for a while or stuff your face with food. Nature provides herbs, peyote, poppys, not methamphetamine.
Keeping it short here I'd just like to say - Don't Hire the Meth head to work for you !!!!! PLEASE. You're asking for trouble. Been there, done that, tried to help. Secondly, read the Kingsolver book. It's excellent and will give you some additional perspective. Peace to you and stay safe.
Thank you for being so damn honest, Janisse! Very brave and bare. I’m with you on what you are at war with! We need to care and protect and pay attention to people. We desperately need more mental health services and increased acceptance of those disorders. Fight on!
Such an illuminating piece of writing Janisse! I have been reading Demon Copperfield for at least a year now. I am not even half way through because I have to metabolize the pain at times before I can forge ahead. Ironically, I was just about to pick it back up when I read your comment. I do recommend it in spite of the pain. This is a book that will change the reader.
Gratitude for your courage and clarity. We have so much unlearning to do. Our cultural paradigms are too often grounded in greed and in ensuring the hierarchy doesn't collapse.
The stigma connected to addiction is not healthy for anyone. I believe all humans have hankerings for altered states and that addiction stigma is related to fear. It's hard to heal from addiction when society labels addicts as subhuman and people fear them.
Janisse, thank you for this piece. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. It takes a strong, loving person to hold space for the deep hurt that an addict has felt and an even stronger person to hold boundaries with compassion. Not many can do this. It’s holy work. Thank you for promoting all the questions. ❤️
Too late I came to believe that addiction is a disease of disconnection. Too eagerly I believed in tough love-- in my case it looked more like retribution for not living life the way I thought it should be lived. Too late I realized that, if you imbibe large amounts of alcohol, a strong depressant, every day, that your body acclimates. If you stop drinking it, your body is on high alert, anxious, on pins and needles, because it's calibrated to idle with the everyday dose of depressant, and it's been trying all along to make up for that depressant. My brother died in a dark parking lot across the street from Walgreens. He'd been dispensed 40 10 mg hydrocodone pills even though he was so stumbling drunk that the pharmacist said in the police report that he bumped his head on the counter and forgot his wallet. His blood alcohol concentration was 0.24 grams per 100 ml. I just copied and pasted that from his autopsy. Free oxycodone was 860 nanograms per milliliter or 86 grams per liter. I had to comb Google Scholar to figure out what concentration was lethal. It was a lot less than this. I loved my brother. I will never be able to talk enough about this, even though I don't want to. I hear the expression "bleed out"--we only contain a finite amount of blood. To "tell out," "grieve out," "regret out"...I don't know if that can happen. Seven years ago, and counting.
oh no. oh my god no.
So hard to watch family go off the rails. Much love to you, Janisse.
They were oxycodone pills, not hydrocodone. He had gotten a prescription for them to treat intense pain from pancreatitis, which stemmed from relentless drinking. Marijuana would have served him much better.
That was thoughtfully and sensitively written. Quite thought provoking. Thank you, Janisse.
Cannabis/Marijuana is not a harmless drug. I am a therapist and have treated many patients with addictions that came through that gateway to other drugs. That is really not my biggest concern. We now know that 1 out of every 100 people who smoke a joint during adolescence (ages12- about 26) will develop psychosis that leads to mental health issues for life. I use to say to my patients-- "If you were going to a theatre with 100 seats and you knew that one of those seats had a weight activated bomb under it, would you go to that theatre. Would you skip that movie? Would you even hang out outside?" This is researched and true information. When the brain is still developing it is very sensitive to "pot" for that one person. That person may come from a family with drug addictions or a history of mental illness, suicide, etc. Is it worth finding out if you are the "one.?" I have seen too many lives either lost or ruined from smoking pot. I fear the rates of mental illness and addiction will skyrocket when every state "legalizes" marijuana . Marijuana is a much different drug than what was smoked in the 60s and 70s.
I don't think it should be a crime to possess or smoke it, but we've got a huge learning curve to overcome to get everyone knowledgeable about the risk involved just like we did with tobacco. Growing up, money made from the tobacco industry put food on our table, clothes on my back and paid for my college education. When my older sister and her husband died of lung cancer, it took on a whole different meaning to me. Addiction has been a struggle in my family as well. Mental illness is also in the genetics. Like you, I would never even try anything. At 76, I have never even had a cigarette in my mouth. I am not a goody two shoes, but I will go to my grave telling the truth I know about "drugs" and addiction.
I lost my nephew to fentanyl and I have much anger towards the Sackler family. Unbeknownst to us he became addicted after having appendicitis surgery. I have never publicly talked about this but I now havea mistrust of pharmaceutical companies.
I agree with your observation on the injustice of people sitting in jail who sold marijuana while now these huge dispensaries are in business. I grew up in the same area as you and I was told the lies about marijuana and I avoided it since my family history is riddled with alcoholism. Thank you for being so candid.
This really hit home for me. Last year I watched my 29 year old nephew, only child of my sister, pass away after his organs shut down one by one. I sat with them at his bedside in ICU while he struggled with restraints that were required as he detoxed from the volume of drugs in his system. I avoided his kicks and punches and warned others to be on guard. We prayed he would not hurt anyone in his struggle.
His parents endured so much silently throughout the last couple of years as he made his dark journey. He had been violent and evil and yet as he made this journey, I saw him return to the sweet little boy he was at heart. I hate that was too late to reclaim his abused body.
During the Covid lockdown, he lost the last job he would have. He lost hope, he and his roommates spent their time “recreating” with an assortment of drugs. He allowed some type of evil into his heart that craved more and more.
He finally pushed it too far. As his body struggled with sepsis, he left the emergency room where he had gone by ambulance, to spend his birthday in his home with his friends and beloved dogs. He celebrated by knowingly snorting cocaine laced with fentanyl.
He only returned to his home for hospice care. His already grieving parents, family and their trusted friends worked so hard to ease him on his last journey. From start to finish, it was 44 days.
My sister and I disagree about pot. She thinks that it is a gateway drug that will always lead to destruction. I do not. To me, the gateway is the fact that marijuana is only available illegally in some areas. Purchasing it exposes people to an underworld of people who seek to make money by convincing you to go deeper and deeper into drug experiences. I know so many people who benefitted from pot use for many reasons and who have used it for 50 years or more. They are moral and upstanding citizens. I can’t say what the difference in their experience is, but I think it might be the amount of hope they hold in their hearts. I want to remember Joey by consciously fostering hope and positivity in the world. Maybe it isn’t enough, or perhaps it is.
Thank you for sharing, for being vulnerable, for opening up a space for our minds to grow. It is complicated and messy. And people we love are helped and harmed. Sending up prayers that we will all see with eyes of Love and act as fierce guardians of the heart .
Thank you for your thoughtful post. This is my experience. My wife was a heroin addict, I can't even let myself imagine what her younger life was like. She has 30 years of sobriety and is an amazing mental health therapist, focusing on trauma. I think trauma is the main culprit, in its many forms. Also, as a public service announcement, there are many pot growing operations (due to a perfect storm of ambiguous laws and black market opportunists) that use lethal pesticides to protect their product from animals. I urge people to know where their pot comes from.
Wow, quite a piece Janisse. That must have taken a lot out of you. Hope you're outside in nature recovery!
I think a "war on" anything is a mistake. I'd rather declare peace and love and support and help. When my kids were little and "just say no" was a thing, it made me angry because I wanted them to have a full and frank discussion about the pros or con or dangers or benefits, rather than knee-jerk pabulum ignorance. How will just saying no help them when they have real decisions to make later on? It's been an open topic ever since.
I grew up in the liberal west, and was quite young when introduced to various drugs. I'm fortunate that all went well, that addiction is not a thing in my family, that I had no compulsion to try every last thing, and that I've been relatively untouched by near or dear overdoses and addictions. I don't know how.
As for Kingsolver, I love her writing and I loved this book, partly because she was right - my picture of Appalachia from a distance was skewed by popular media, movies, etc. It opened my eyes to many things. But I can understand how it can be too close. I struggled with the book Apeirogon, because as a Jew, it was too close, too painful. But I did read it. Interviews with Kingsolver may be of interest to you.
This country is all about war; war on women, on people of color, on LGBTQIA2+, on liberals or conservatives, and now, again, on Jews, plus a thousand other issues. It's exhausting and heartbreaking.
Yep. All that.
1. I think the war on drugs is an utter failure.
2. "Demon Copperfield" is the only writing that has made sense of addiction to me.
Blessings to you, kiddo.
a concurrent nonfiction take from an MD on what and who keeps the "war" on drugs ("game of drugs"?) going: https://substack.com/home/post/p-144403269
Virginia, I'll go read this. Also I've added a postscript of resources & I'll add this there. Thank you so much.
This just appeared as I wandered in the (sub)stacks. Most welcome.
Excellent - if horrifying - read.
Oooooh Lawd Janisse, you opened up a can of worms with this post. Very courageous on your part I must say. For sure we were misinformed, pot is certainly not the Assassin of Youth or I'd have been dead 50+ years ago. Ever seen the old 1930's propaganda film Reefer Madness ? Nicotine and alcohol are much more addictive and harmful to our health but legal. Go figure. Weed is a medicinal herb, put on the planet for a reason. Do too much and rather than die you just fall asleep for a while or stuff your face with food. Nature provides herbs, peyote, poppys, not methamphetamine.
Keeping it short here I'd just like to say - Don't Hire the Meth head to work for you !!!!! PLEASE. You're asking for trouble. Been there, done that, tried to help. Secondly, read the Kingsolver book. It's excellent and will give you some additional perspective. Peace to you and stay safe.
Thank you for being so damn honest, Janisse! Very brave and bare. I’m with you on what you are at war with! We need to care and protect and pay attention to people. We desperately need more mental health services and increased acceptance of those disorders. Fight on!
Such an illuminating piece of writing Janisse! I have been reading Demon Copperfield for at least a year now. I am not even half way through because I have to metabolize the pain at times before I can forge ahead. Ironically, I was just about to pick it back up when I read your comment. I do recommend it in spite of the pain. This is a book that will change the reader.
Gratitude for your courage and clarity. We have so much unlearning to do. Our cultural paradigms are too often grounded in greed and in ensuring the hierarchy doesn't collapse.
The stigma connected to addiction is not healthy for anyone. I believe all humans have hankerings for altered states and that addiction stigma is related to fear. It's hard to heal from addiction when society labels addicts as subhuman and people fear them.