Tag: addiction

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Grieving ‘Normal’

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“Four years ago, this week was the last normal week of our lives.”

I saw this unattributed quote on Facebook yesterday. Of course, it’s in reference to the start of Covid, when “lockdown” and “quarantine” crept into our everyday vocabulary. But four years ago this week, I was visiting my friend Kristin Burge in the hospital. I sanitized my hands after touching the elevator buttons to get to her floor, kept my distance from people coughing down the halls — confusion added to an already crippling experience. It wasn’t a normal week for me at all. And her memorial service on March 14th was far from normal. Few were masked in the church; some cautious loved ones opted not to hug. Her death marked the beginning of a year of grief for me, one that started with losing my friend, but one in which the whole world grieved the loss of “normal.”

Below is a condensed version of the piece I wrote for her, “Heroin, the Thief,” which was published in the Flyer on March 19, 2020. May all who’ve loved an addict and all who’ve lost a loved one to addiction find peace.

Kristin Burge, 1982-2020

I lost my friend to heroin this week. It was not quick and painless. She did not push the needle in and float off on a peaceful cloud into the ether. The last sound she made was with her body — heavy and limp, falling to the floor with a thud. She had overdosed on a batch cut with fentanyl. First responders arrived 20 minutes after the 911 call was made. She was without oxygen for too long. She went into cardiac arrest and had to be resuscitated four times the first day in the hospital, her chest and ribs broken to bits from the compressions. She spent nearly a week on life support as tests were run. Scans showed severe brain damage. She was completely unresponsive. A week, unable to communicate, twitch a toe, or even flit an eye. I sat at her bedside, talking about everything and nothing, joking and crying, and holding my phone up to her ear, playing some of our favorite songs. Her family gathered, her mother and children, friends, women from church — praying, pleading, mourning a life cut short … hoping for a miracle.

I lost my friend to heroin two years ago. It was not quick and painless. She was running from a contempt of court warrant for a bogus case that just wouldn’t end. She’d go to jail, 30 days, 60 days, be released. Repeat. Fines piled up. She couldn’t pay them. She was buried by an endless cycle, a broken legal system. She was running from a man who wanted to hurt her and wound up in Louisiana. She fell ill there and went to the emergency room. Diagnosis: endocarditis, likely a result of shooting up. Doctors performed emergency open heart surgery to replace a valve — they gave her a pacemaker. She came back home to heal, but didn’t stay long.

I lost my friend to heroin four years ago. It was not quick and painless. I drove her to Heroin Anonymous meetings. Sometimes she’d be high, but I’d pretend not to know; showing up was the first step. Once, after her boyfriend beat her badly, I took her into my home, where she detoxed for a few days — angry as a hornet, her insides churning, wanting more and more and more of the drug. She took a bunch of generic sleep aid and ibuprofen, hoping it’d knock her out; perhaps she wanted to dream through the worst of it. She slept for days, but the urge remained.

I lost my friend to heroin a decade ago. It was not quick and painless. It started when her dad died from cancer. She couldn’t cope, and his pain pills helped. It progressed with an ATV accident. Surgery, metal pins in her leg. Doctor prescribed pain pills. They helped, maybe too much. She took them for too long; now she needed them. When the doctor said no more, she got what she could from a methadone clinic. At some point, it became easier to get drugs on the streets. Heroin felt good — even better than pills.

I lost my friend to heroin. It was a slow death, and it hurt like hell. Her mother lost a daughter. Her sons lost their mother. The drug took her from them long ago. We mourned her in life, for years. The urge writhed through her blood, guiding her every move for more and more and more. Her kids were taken away, she couldn’t hold a job. She ended up on the streets with who knows who doing who knows what, all for more dope.

She was a good person. She was smart but made bad decisions. Her path kinked along the way and rerouted her aims. In moments of clarity, she tried damn hard to kick it. She loved her kids. She wanted to get better and spend time with them. She wanted to help people with her story of recovery. She’d been in rehab (this time) since December. A couple of weeks ago, she snuck out. The urge won.

I lost my friend to heroin this week. It was not quick and painless. We watched her die, slowly, for a decade, but she pushed the needle in for the last time. We watched her body swell and convulse on life support as it shut down day by day. As I write this, doctors are doing the necessary work to find donor recipient matches for her salvageable organs and tissues. By the time you read this, she will be at peace.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

2020: The Year We Grieved

CREDIT: Herbert Goetsch | Unsplash

I started this year as many do — ready to embark on new goals, embrace new beginnings, welcome a new year with hope. 2020 vision, we all said. What could go wrong?

My birthday is in January. I can’t remember what I did on what must have been an uneventful turn of age in 2020. February, too, is a bit of a blur. What marked the real start of this year — at least where my lasting memory of it will forever be marked — was grief.

A longtime friend overdosed on heroin in early March. She’d struggled with opioid addiction and substance abuse for years. I tried to help her through much of it, offering a place to stay, clothes and food when she’d lost everything (which was every few months), and connecting her to resources that could help with recovery. She had at least two false starts in rehab. After a couple months in the last one, she snuck out and had her final dance with a needle. I remember the moment I read the Facebook message: “I just wanted you to know that Kristin is in ICU in Methodist North from a heroin overdose. Doctor said that she will more than likely not make it.”

Herbert Goetsch | Unsplash

Looking with hope toward 2021

The punch in the pit of my gut, the pang in my heart, the panic. I spent the better part of that week at Methodist visiting my friend, who was in a coma, as doctors ran tests to be sure nothing else could be done, to sort out possible organ donation in the likely case that nothing could. Between my visits, the news was abuzz with the novel coronavirus. Cases had spread in Washington and it was beginning to look as though it was going to be a pretty big deal, even here. Face masks weren’t a thing yet, but every time I walked into the hospital, I wondered if I was at risk for COVID. Was someone infected there? Was this all being blown out of proportion? I stopped at sanitizing stations and rubbed my hands down to be safe.

At the end of an emotionally draining week, my friend was taken off life support. Her memorial service was the last large gathering I attended this year. I carried hand sanitizer, avoided hugs with anyone aside from Kristin’s mother, and winced when someone coughed or sneezed nearby. Had they not heard of coronavirus yet? There are too many people in this room, too close together, I thought.

I grieved for Kristin, of course, but not in the way I would have if it wouldn’t have coincided with the emergence of a worldwide pandemic. I’ve grieved for her throughout this year, but with no hugs, no face-to-face conversations with friends who knew and loved her, too. My sadness over her loss was inadvertently overridden by a new punch in the gut, a different type of panic — one I wasn’t familiar with at all. How many people will die? Will I die? How bad is this virus? How far will it spread?

As the next few months unfolded, we all grieved. We grieved for lost jobs, loved ones who succumbed to COVID. We grieved in the absence of friends and family, for the loss of “normalcy,” whatever that might have been. We pined for gatherings, concerts, theater outings, for any thread of hope that this mess would right itself. We longed for conversations, handshakes, workplace camaraderie, a beer at a damn bar. The world turned upside down, and we were given no clear instructions on how to best proceed. There was no united front.

In some ways, I’m relieved that Kristin’s struggle ended just before the world’s battle with COVID began. She’d likely have been on the streets, risking infections of all types, but perhaps especially the virus. She wouldn’t have had a safe haven like some of us have, nor easy access to soap and showers and sinks. There are many others like her — homeless, struggling with addiction or mental illness, isolated in the truest sense.

With all that’s been lost this year, I’m more grateful than ever for what I do have. A roof over my head, a job (though we’ve been working remotely since March and I miss the shit out of my co-workers), a partner who handles my COVID-fueled existential crises in stride, and so much more.

If you’re reading this now, you have survived this year, too. Perhaps we’ve been through the worst of it. At the very least, we can look at these broken pieces and be thankful for what’s left and how far we’ve come — and to look with hope toward 2021.

Shara Clark is managing editor of the Flyer.

Categories
News News Blog

Navigating Addiction and Recovery in Quarantine

CREDIT: Photo by Thomas Picauly on Unsplash

Photo by Thomas Picauly on Unsplash

Memphis began a slow reopening this week, but many businesses are choosing to remain closed.

Many Memphians have voiced that they’ll continue to stay at home — even as orders are lifted — until science-backed data proves the coronavirus threat has waned. While most of us have already been sheltering in place for seven weeks and have felt the strains of isolation, some in recovery have found it harder to stay sober.

“We’ve been told — mandated — to isolate, yet they tell us to isolate as an alcoholic is basically to dig your own grave,” says Jim, who has 24 years of sobriety and before the pandemic attended in-person, 12-step meetings daily. He understands the added pressures amid COVID-19.

“We’re going against everything the program has taught us as far as not being that lone wolf and being open and transparent to others,” Jim says. “Now, we’re kind of in a position where we can’t do that. It’s a tough time.”

Jennifer* had been sober for 116 days before she cracked open a beer in April.

“It was partly out of boredom,” she says. “But there was a lot of anxiety there, too, that built up over a couple of weeks of reading news stories and seeing stats. It has been a scary time. I felt like I needed a reprieve.”

She also saw a lot of people posting on social media about day-drinking or having a nightly glass of wine to get through the stress.

“I thought, ‘It should be OK for me to do it, then,’” Jennifer says. “But I ended up falling right back into my binge-drinking. Where some people can just have a couple, I have six or seven. It does not feel good the next day.”

Jennifer did not attend support meetings, but others who normally do have felt the pang of missing personal interactions with fellow addicts in recovery.
[pullquote-1]
Robert* is a recovering heroin addict who regularly attends 12-step meetings here in Memphis.

“Just about every meeting right now is being run on Zoom,” he says. “It’s definitely a thing being shared about — how hard it is staying sober and working a program during this time.

“You don’t get to feel the energy that’s in certain rooms, but I and plenty others are grateful for the Zoom platform. The step work that comes with working a program and the fellowship in general is a lot more difficult to navigate because most people don’t really want to meet [online], but people stay on Zoom after meetings for people who want to talk and need to talk.”

Dr. Joseph Sitarik, a medical director at Addiction Campuses, which operates the Turning Point alcohol and drug rehab center in Southaven, Mississippi, agrees that these are trying times for addicts.

“The basis of this disease is that it feeds on fear, isolation, separation, boredom — and the whole country is going through that right now,” says Sitarik. “So, people in recovery, especially, need to focus on their mental, physical, and emotional health; develop routines, get up, get dressed, get out of the house if they can, go walk in the park or a rural area, get some exercise, but also try to remain connected.

“Just certainly resist the urge to self-medicate,” Sitarik says. “Reach out to people, call … I’m in recovery, and I call my sponsor often. Stay connected with your support groups that have helped your sobriety.”

Jim points out that it’s hard for all addicts right now, not just those in 12-step programs for alcoholism.

“It’s not only [alcoholics] who are struggling,” Jim says. “There are people in [other programs] who are coming off the needle and they can’t find a meeting and they don’t have a laptop or a phone.

“So, all the fellowships are seeing it. All the casinos are closed now, what about the gambling addicts? Is it a flip of the coin, literally, for a gambler — ‘do I go to an online meeting or an online gambling site?’”

He also points to those who normally attend support groups for families.

“Those who have to live with a guy who hasn’t been to a meeting in weeks, who’s going nuts,” Jim says. “The families are affected and are getting the brunt of it, too.”
[pullquote-2] Sitarik says those in addiction may certainly feel a greater need to self-medicate as they’re made to sit alone with feelings of fear and uncertainty.

“This is a disease that hijacks your brain, and when you’re out there alone with your disease and active in your addiction, you’re not in control,” he says. “Your disease pretty much dictates where you go, who you’re with, what you do, and how long you’re going to do it.”

Sitarik says there is no shame or guilt in receiving treatment, if needed.

“Getting into a facility is as safe as it’s ever been and certainly safer than it can be at home,” he says. “If there’s a fear and a resistance to come into a facility at this time, it may be the safest place for them right now.

“Many of the barriers to treatment have been removed. Some people are off work. Some people do recreational activities, their vacations have been canceled.”

In the meantime, Sitarik recommends to “stay healthy, mentally, physically, and spiritually. Stay connected. Reach out. And don’t be afraid to ask for help if you slip.”

If you’re struggling with alcohol addiction, the Memphis Area Intergroup Association of Alcoholics Anonymous is answering phones 24/7 during the COVID crisis. They can be reached at 901-454-1414. For information on local online support meetings, click here.

*Some names in this story have been changed for anonymity.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Congress Cashes Out

Lakeland resident and Emory University student Tim Kopcial won almost $50,000 playing online poker his freshman year of college. But with a new bill passed by the United States Senate, Kopcial’s luck may have run out.

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was added onto the Security and Accountability for Every Port Act, expected to be signed into law by President Bush on October 13th. Though the bill doesn’t explicitly outlaw most major forms of online gambling, it prohibits credit card companies and other payment providers from processing online gambling transactions.

The bill’s passage was sparked in part by horror stories about the prevalence of online gambling, especially among college students. The country was shocked late last year when Greg Hogan, a class president at his university and the son of a minister, robbed a bank to pay gambling debts he accrued during his freshman year. An estimated 1.6 million of the nation’s 17 million college students have gambled on the Internet at least once.

Andrew Meyers, director of the University of Memphis Gambling Clinic, attests that gambling addiction is a very real issue.

“When you look at the numbers, it’s pretty startling,” he says. “One to 2 percent of all Americans have a serious gambling problem, and another 3 to 5 percent have some degree of damage in their lives due to gambling.”

Those gambling addicts who use the Internet can be especially difficult to treat.

“It’s very fast-paced, especially sports betting. You can lose a lot of money very, very quickly, and there’s no human element present to help spot an addiction,” says Meyers. Still, he says, the Senate measure may be an overreaction. “In other countries, [online gambling] doesn’t seem to present the threat that it does to the United States. I suspect that the legislation has more to do with economic concerns than it does a moral attitude.”

Congressman Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican who pushed through an anti-online-gambling bill in the House earlier this year, says the Senate measure should prevent some of the $6 billion from “getting sucked out of the economy.”

Gamers themselves are receiving the news with mixed reactions, though many are looking to fight the legislation. The Poker Players’ Alliance argues that poker — the most popular form of online gaming — is a skill-based game that should be exempted from the provisions of the bill.

Others say that the issue isn’t worth fighting because it is so difficult to enforce. Many avid gamers stopped using credit cards years ago, opting to route their funds through payment services such as BillPay.

“There are so many alternate means of payment that it is not going to stop what is happening here,” says Frank Catania, former director of gaming enforcement in New Jersey and president of Catania Consulting Group. “We are going to be spending a lot of money for enforcement, and it is going to be worthless.”

As for Lakeland’s Kopcial, he doesn’t see it affecting him. “I’m over it,” he says.