Howling Up To the Sky: The Opioid Epidemic

By Pact Press

Pact Press brings you Howling Up to the Sky, the second anthology in our series designed to spark conversation, promote awareness, and generate funds for groups striving to improve our society. Pact Press is proud, through the sale of this anthology, to support the fine work of Shatterproof in assisting families and individuals struggli

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pact Press
• Release date: Jan 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9781947548336

Book preview

Howling Up to the Sky

The Opioid Epidemic

Anthology Copyright © 2018 Regal House Publishing

Edited by Jaynie Royal and Ruth Feiertag

First published as a Regal House paperback 2018

Published by arrangement with

Pact Press and Regal House Publishing, LLC,

Raleigh, NC 27607

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 13: 978-1-947548-32-9

Cover art by Mikadun/Shutterstock

Pact Press, an imprint of

Regal House Publishing, LLC

www.pactpress.com

https://regalhousepublishing.com

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018930047

All net proceeds from the sale of this anthology, without a

maximum cap, are donated to the Shatterproof for the duration of time that this work is in print. This nonprofit organization was selected due to its dedication to relieving the suffering associated with addiction. As its mission stipulates:

Shatterproof is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to ending the devastation addiction causes families.

Shatterproof

www.shatterproof.org

Additional donations can be sent directly to the Shatterproof at:

Shatterproof

135 West 41st Street, 6th Floor

New York, NY 10036

Contents

Acknowledgements

Forward

Introduction

A Bad Night

Oxy

Alex’s Teeth

Heroin Addiction: News From the Happy Valley

Sophie

Grade School Photo

Suburbia’s Downfall

Apology to a Heroin Addict

Hart’s Cove

To a Dead Friend

A Doctor’s Perspective

A Visit From Reality

Chicken

Modern Blue

Intersects

Not Just Pills for Pills

Screaming Really Loudly into van Gogh’s Severed Ear

Soul-Rot

Roots of Recovery

All the Junkies on Carr Avenue

Graveyard

Deal

Make Green the Lawn

Some Good Has Come of This

Hopeful

Overpass

Good Morning, Death

Junky Obituary Newsfeed

Pyramids

Brother-in-law

A Pharmacist’s Choices and Their Impact on the Opioid Epidemic

Acknowledgements

Any book is a work of collaboration and co-operation, but an anthology, especially one expedited to speak in a timely

manner to an ongoing nightmare, requires exceptional efforts from many people to see the light of day. We cannot thank the contributors to this volume adequately. Many of them bared their souls in their desire to prevent addiction and heal the wounds caused by this scourge. There is real risk in announcing to the world that one suffers from this affliction and we stand in awe of our authors’ courage and compassion. All were responsive to our truncated time-table and turned around their revisions at warp speed.

We owe huge and particular thanks to Alma McKinley and Anna Schoenbach for joining us in writing an effective introduction that provides the background readers need to bring to the articles, stories, and poems contained in this volume. Without their invaluable research, Howling Up to the Sky would be a much less cogent contribution to the discussion raging through our society about this epidemic and how to find effective and humane solutions for it.

We also want to acknowledge the inspiration provided by Shatterproof and Roots of Recovery, two groups facing down the storm and offering different kinds of refuge to addicts and others affected by the ravages of the opioids that are coursing through the body of our country. Their heroic efforts cannot be overstated.

Gobs of gratitude go to Avery Feiertag for his perspicacious observations and assistance in the late stages of preparing this manuscript. Especially since he was supposed to be on vacation.

And finally, exceptional and abundant gratitude goes to Jeffrey Royal who, if he is not careful, is likely to become the sine qua non of Regal House Publishing.

Ruth Feiertag

Boulder, Colorado

Jaynie Royal

Raleigh, North Carolina

Forward

— Catherine McDowell —

I have been in the center of the addiction crisis and battleground of recovery since 1984. In 2016, while working with a group of women, the concept of Roots of Recovery began to develop. Our mission is to offer a peer support program for women who have become hopeless, helpless, and homeless. At Roots of Recovery, we are building a cottage community to serve women with alcohol and other drug addictions and their children.

Opioid overdose deaths more than quadrupled between 1999 and 2014, and have only continued to rise in recent years. In total, more than 63,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2016, according to the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC NCHS Data Brief No. 294, December 2017). Numbers like this have created what is now known as the Opioid Crisis.

This crisis has been a long time coming, and it is not the first of its kind. Over the past fifty years, a period that sometimes seems like only a blink of the eye, a number of different substances have held the position of society’s most-favored drug of choice. We have passed through the 1960s, which were influenced by the popularization of LSD and, in the 1970s, marijuana grew in popularity. Powder cocaine became the trend in the 1980s, which morphed into the crack epidemic of the 1990s. We welcomed the millennium with methamphetamine destroying families across the country. By 2010 we were a nation addicted to pain relievers and left us today standing at the center of the Opioid Epidemic.

We have to ask ourselves what have we learned and why has nothing changed in the last fifty years. Those answers do not lie entirely with the medical profession, but with changes in how we treat and think about addiction. If we look at the road which leads to opioid addiction for many people, beginning with first being prescribed opioids for chronic pain relief, in many cases, opioid prescriptions aren’t well suited to the conditions for which they were prescribed. In long-term studies of opioid use for lower back pain, for example, opioids don’t work very well at relieving pain. (JAMA Intern Med. 2016;176(7):958-968. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.1251).

We have to look at our society as a whole and the changes in our livelihoods, family structure, and societal pressures. Those afflicted with Substance Use Disorder, use essentially to obtain the ease and comfort that comes at once with the next use. As opioids became much more prevalent in society, many who took them also noticed and enjoyed the obvious side effects. Opioids have a profound impact on the brain, including facilitating sleep and reducing anxiety, leaving many people to feel a sense of well-being after taking them. It’s that relief from suffering that appealed to most people, who perhaps didn’t realize they were plagued by more than a physical injury.

The question for our society today is How do we navigate our way out this latest crisis? The first giant hurdle we must overcome is the stigma associated with Substance Use Disorder. The concept of stigma describes the powerful, negative perceptions commonly associated with substance abuse and addiction. Stigma has the potential to negatively affect a person’s self-esteem, damage relationships with loved ones, and prevent those suffering from addiction from accessing treatment.

Becoming dependent on drugs can happen to anyone. It’s important to keep in mind that we can all do a better job of decreasing stigma around drug use. When people experience stigma regarding their drug use, they are less likely to seek treatment, and this results in economic, social, and collateral medical costs. Integrating addiction treatment into general health care settings, where addiction could be treated like other chronic conditions, would be ideal, but it’s not likely to happen. Treatment is also counter to the way the medical system traditionally framed recovery from addiction. Traditionally treatment programs were designed with addiction as an acute illness, providing the typical thirty-day program. You get people in, you fix them up, and you send them out. Today, the consensus of health care professionals is that’s not a realistic depiction of addiction, which is a chronic, often lifelong, condition.

In regard to addiction treatment, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Most people don’t know what treatment approach will work for them and they have to try more than one, and more than one time. Very few people find an approach that puts them into long-term recovery on the first attempt. Given that the majority of people with addiction will need to attempt recovery multiple times, accessibility and affordability are key.

Additionally, we need to view the person as a whole within the context of his or her living environment and what is required to sustain long-term recovery.

When the country’s poverty and unemployment rates are high, when childcare and safe housing are expensive, and when access to education, quality jobs, and opportunities is limited, there’s a feeling despair that settles in. All of this has helped create a culture of hopelessness, which makes long-term recovery incredibly difficult. When the fear of financial insecurity and the possibility of becoming homeless becomes overwhelming, individuals will seek to find comfort the only way they feel they can, by using drugs and alcohol once more.

We