I've been thinking about writing about the "Opioid Epidemic," but never around got to it, and then I came across Andrew Sullivan's article in NY Magazine. Definitive. Beautifully written. Masterful. You should read it.
I guess, you can distill my thoughts on the subject down to Nancy Reagan's (no, really, not kidding!), quite ridiculous and pithy slogan from the 80's: "Just Say No!"
Just like Oscar Wilde, I can "resist anything but temptation." I have learned that sometimes, (usually), the best policy when it comes to many, or probably, most intoxicants, is to just say NO! Nancy wasn't cool, but probably wasn't wrong either. When you pick your poison your poison also picks you!
Here's Sullivan:
"To see this epidemic as simply a pharmaceutical or chemically addictive problem is to miss something: the despair that currently makes so many want to fly away. Opioids are just one of the ways Americans are trying to cope with an inhuman new world where everything is flat, where communication is virtual, and where those core elements of human happiness — faith, family, community — seem to elude so many. Until we resolve these deeper social, cultural, and psychological problems, until we discover a new meaning or reimagine our old religion or reinvent our way of life, the poppy will flourish.
We have seen this story before — in America and elsewhere.
The allure of opiates’ joys are filling a hole in the human heart and soul today as they have since the dawn of civilization. But this time, the drugs are not merely laced with danger and addiction. In a way never experienced by humanity before, the pharmaceutically sophisticated and ever more intense bastard children of the sturdy little flower bring mass death in their wake. This time, they are agents of an eternal and enveloping darkness. And there is a long, long path ahead, and many more bodies to count, before we will see any light."