I overdosed on fentanyl. I barely survived. A radical solution could save thousands like me.

Slate ^ | MARCH 24, 2024 | James T. Morrison

[nickcarraway]

FENTANYL KILLS. That’s what the billboard says. That’s all the billboard says—FENTANYL in a cold, light blue, KILLS in stark white against an all-black background. Below is a woman on a gurney, treated with the same dead-blue tones as the script above her. She’s covered to her armpits in a sheet, arms at her sides, awaiting an autopsy. Anyone who has seen a cop drama in the past 30 years knows the image.

When an opioid user overdoses, their lips turn a cold, light blue. That was the color of my lips when I lay slumped in a pile outside the automatic doors of an emergency room. Jenny, the girl I had absconded from rehab with just days before, shouted for help, and once she saw the staff stir to action, jumped back in the car. Gustavo, who Jenny had guilted into driving, stepped on the gas, bald tires searching for traction before squealing to life, catapulting them into a night drowning in coastal fog. I imagined the diffuse light from cherry-red plastic growing faint, the EMERGENCY dissolving in their rearview. I’m sure it was traumatic for them. I’m sure they went back to our wretched motel room and immediately got high to blunt the terror. That’s what I would have done.

Splashed across the bottom right-hand corner of the billboard are the insignia of several city agencies proudly supporting its message. What is noticeably absent is any reference to a single resource—not a website, not a phone number, not a mention of how someone might stop using fentanyl and thus avoid their impending death. The billboard looms large over a dirt lot dotted with tarps and tents and other telltale signs of DIY shelters in a southwest

[cyclotic]

Provide help and services to addicts, up to a point. Three strikes and you’re out sort of thing.

Get narcan’d by EMS, it’s an automatic three weeks of cold turkey in a cell.

Third time is the last time.

Dealers, at any level get a speedy trial and a speedier execution, with their own product.

[logi_cal869]

Street drug dealers not only don’t care about their customers they sometimes intentionally spike some of their supply hoping to overdose someone so that other addicts think their “product” is better than the other pusherman’s supply.

Too generalized. The cartels put out the word that death would follow if its dealers spiked their cocaine/meth with fentanyl.

[telescope115]

I have a nephew who has had behavioral problems since he was old enough to walk. He’s now in his 30s, homeless living on the street. He’s stolen from everyone close to him to fuel his drug habit. He’s also been kicked out of every shelter that’s taken him in. Part of the reason is his dad, one of my brothers in law, who’s had problems himself throughout his life, but not nearly as bad because his parents ( my mother and father in law), who were WWII generation, managed to somewhat keep him in line. He terrorized my wife (his sister) to some degree, and was a model for what his son would become. So the kid is already a felon who has done time in prison, and I don’t want him coming around here. I don’t trust him because I don’t know what he’s capable of doing . Actually from everything I’ve heard about him I’m afraid of him coming around here on his own. I’m afraid for him as well. Every time I see something in the news such as a body being found in the river or some other bad thing locally, I think it just might be him. If he keeps going the way he is, it will not end well.

[telescope115]

I have a nephew who has had behavioral problems since he was old enough to walk. He’s now in his 30s, homeless living on the street. He’s stolen from everyone close to him to fuel his drug habit. He’s also been kicked out of every shelter that’s taken him in. Part of the reason is his dad, one of my brothers in law, who’s had problems himself throughout his life, but not nearly as bad because his parents ( my mother and father in law), who were WWII generation, managed to somewhat keep him in line. He terrorized my wife (his sister) to some degree, and was a model for what his son would become. So the kid is already a felon who has done time in prison, and I don’t want him coming around here. I don’t trust him because I don’t know what he’s capable of doing . Actually from everything I’ve heard about him I’m afraid of him coming around here on his own. I’m afraid for him as well. Every time I see something in the news such as a body being found in the river or some other bad thing locally, I think it just might be him. If he keeps going the way he is, it will not end well.

[Jimmy Valentine]

It made me want to choke the living s$$it out of the night duty nurse.

[Noumenon]

Let God and Darwin sort them out.

[liberalh8ter]

The first step in overcoming an addiction is for the addict to acknowledge reality, that they have an addiction. The first step in tackling the fentanyl problem is for the U.S. government to acknowledge that Mexico and China are not our friends.

[Rowdyone]

Yep. They have long memories. It was wrong then and it’s wrong now.

[Jeff Chandler]

Are you on drugs?

I wish.

[ifinnegan]

Hee hee.

I don’t, though. Glad I’m not.

[ifinnegan]

“ You must be on drugs. The person who posted said “the west” not the US.”

They’re sending it to us.

[Keyhopper]

Execute the dealers and all confiscated drugs delivered to a tent city far from population centers.
Simple possession and you go to tent city.

[nickcarraway]

US didn’t have anything to do with opium in the Qing Dynasty almost 200 years ago. Are you on drugs?

Sorry, ifinnegan, you need to brush up on your history. The U.S. was ABSOLUTELY involved in selling Opium in China during the Qing Dynasty. The U.S. got involved almost immediately after the Revolutionary War ended, and it was called Old China Trade.

By 1820, the U.S. had passed France as the no. 2 seller of opium into China.

Among those those involved was John Jacob Astor, Washington Irving, John Murray Forbes (Great grandfather of John Kerry.) FDR's maternal grandfather made his fortune in selling Opium in China.

And the U.S. signed a very unequal treaty with China in 1844. They got everything the U.S. got, and more.

[Eagles6]

They are afraid of getting sued and also of the FDA.

[ifinnegan]

Yes.

US traders had some of the market.

But the United States had nothing to do with the Opium War.

Even Britain had nothing to do with Chinese using Opium in the first place in the Ming and Qing eras. That began well earlier with most coming from Thailand. No “western” involvement at all.

UK and Spain took over an already existing market.

I don’t know if you are trying to endorse the ludicrous idea that Chicoms flooding us with fentanyl is payback for the Opium War.

[ridesthemiles]

Frankly-—IF you are too stupid to still use Fentynal after all the recent publicity:

NOT going to miss you.

[ridesthemiles]

AGREE FULLY

WILL DONATE FOR DIESEL FOR REMOVAL

[Nifster]

All true

[Paul R.]

What’s considered a safe per day dosage to keep an addict happy?

[Paul R.]

The reason for the question is that I’d be interested to compare that to the effects of NorCo that was over-prescribed to my Mom, some years back.