Aubri Esters, an advocate for safe drug use on the streets, dies at 35

Boston Globe via MSN ^ | 6/14/20 | Bryan Marquard

[Libloather]

Aubri Esters treated with compassion those whose lives many consider disposable, such as drug users she sometimes could save - and sometimes couldn’t.

“I have lost a lot of friends to overdoses, many in front of my eyes,” she once said during an academic panel discussion as she pushed for safe injection facilities that could reduce risks for those coping with addiction.

Informed by her own experiences using drugs and living on the streets, and fierce when necessary, she let her eloquent voice ring out in City Hall, on a state commission, and in groups advocating on behalf of those who suffer, often unseen, at society’s neglected margins.

On Thursday, Ms. Esters was found dead at home after her mother, concerned when she couldn’t reach her by phone, asked police to perform a wellness check at her apartment near Boston Medical Center.

[GaryCrow]

Do you mean to tell me that transvestite heroin addicts don’t all live to ripe old ages?

I’m shocked, shocked I tell you!

I’d have thought that this guy would die in a nursing home somewhere north of 100.

[Gen.Blather]

A doctor was discussing drug overdoses. He said, approximately, the high is so intense that the user just shrugs off the possibility of death as worth it.

They used to talk about “gateway” drugs. The problem is that your body adjusts to each drug so it takes more and more to get the same sensation of high. This leads to trying more and more potent drugs. A former user I knew at work once told me, “the disappointing thing is that nothing, ever, is as good as the first time you took it. It’s called ‘chasing the high.’”

[fwdude]

Sounds like bad life choices. Why would someone advocate for something so destructive?

I’ve always likened efforts like this to trying to make playing Russian roulette “safer” by adding a few extra chambers to the cylinder of the revolver used to play.

[fwdude]

Do you notice how the article LOVES to write “Ms Esters?” Something like two times per paragraph.

[petitfour]

Sounds like the liberal system killed again.