For those we leave behind

how the opioid crisis became the preferred prescription for the american condition (read fine print for side effects, alternatives, and dangerous contraindications)

I don’t often return to the town where I grew up. It’s only a few miles north of where I live today but it might as well be ten thousand. A town belongs to its youth in a way it never could to the adults, not even the developers and tycoons. Once upon a time I had a hefty claim to mine, but now whenever I go back I feel unwelcome there. Like an intruder. The residents today, strangers to me, they all give the same foreboding stare followed by a hurried look away. Their demeanors full of hostility and fear. It could be in my head, but it makes me uncomfortable either way.

It’s not just them. When I'm there the memories and the feelings that accompany them emerge from the little places inside of me where I've tucked them away safe from sight and I'm forced against my will to reckon with things I've worked hard to forget. I feel unhappy there. I feel the loss of my innocence. My optimism. The wonder of the child I used to be. I feel grief and sorrow for him. I want to shake his parents, his teachers, his community and implore them to wake up. I want to tell them that the world is not how it was when they were young. “The kids still need you.” I would say. “All of them need all of you.” 

     I feel that same sorrow for so many other young ones like me. For my old friends. I feel the absence of the ones we lost. The shock of their passing can still take breath from my chest. It takes blood from my heart and stills its beating for moments at a time and I feel sick. I remember them as they were before it got so dark and I hurt for them, for their families left behind. 

Of those who are still with us, I think of their lives squandered, lost in the streets, in seedy motels and shooting galleries, suffering and scraping the filthy floors of this existence for heroin, fentanyl or any of the other pills that might do the trick. I wonder about the ones who disappeared, like I did. Did they wind up in prison? Are they homeless? Have they died? Or did they make it out too? I hope they have, but hope doesn’t carry the same consolation it once did. I try to remember them all fondly but the guilt and remorse swell up so big inside of me they swallow my nostalgia whole. 

        To the townspeople today, we never existed. They’ve swept us all away. Us and those who’ve come since. Those who are dying under their noses right now as they live and breathe. They want to see only their clean sidewalks and manicured lawns and the quaint veneer of tree-lined streets and we are only small stains on their american dream. I know they protect secret places inside of themselves too, where they’ve stowed the things with which they do not want to reckon. I can feel the denial in the air, read it on their faces. “Not in my town” they say with their eyes closed and noses turned up. What choice do they have? There’s no use fretting about it, so they don’t concern themselves at all. I feel sad for all of us, for the situation we’re in, but it comes like a punch to the gut when I return home. That’s why I try not to go back. 

Today I live in a town that neighbors my hometown to the south with my wife and our daughter, Satya, who in recent weeks made two life-altering developmental leaps in quick succession. First, she learned to walk and the world opened up to her. She could get anywhere. And into anything. Suddenly her mission in life was to create chaos. Exploration and destruction became her favorite pastimes. We gave her a long leash, but when her antics would become unsafe or unsanitary we would have to intervene. This is when she began the new practice of expressing her frustration with our interference by throwing wild and violent tantrums eerily reminiscent of Linda Blair’s young Regan in the Exorcist. And while I’m assured this is normal, to me it is without precedent and more than a little unnerving. 

Last week, her furies were exacerbated by a case of covid I brought home with me from work and passed along to her. And of course, as Satya and I were on the upswing my wife began to feel ill and took to the bedroom to rest, leaving me to wrangle this mercurial and mischievous little toddler for several days from the too-early morning until bedtime did us part. 

By day four I had run out of creative distractions, ideas, and patience. So had she. The summer heat was heavy in the house and we hadn’t been able to leave in more than a week since getting sick. We needed to get out. I packed up a day bag, loaded her in the car, turned up the AC, put on some music that she would dance to and started driving with no destination in mind.

An interesting phenomenon of parenthood has been this persistent impulse to revisit my own childhood. In daydreams. In therapy. In long and sleepless nights. In every chance I get to look into her eyes- which are undoubtedly my eyes, only brighter, bolder, and still possessing something vibrant that mine surrendered long ago. This reparenting instinct conspired with muscle memory and my own exhaustion and before I had taken the time to employ any real rationale, we were on the freeway headed north- en route to the epicenter of my childhood stomping grounds.  

I let my reflexes lead the way. I still know this town as if it were a book I’d read a hundred times. I know every walking path and place to hide. Every shortcut. Every street. I know where the rain pools in the roads and exactly how long it takes to walk the railroad tracks from one end to the other. But all the colors in my memories are washed out like an old polaroid. When I picture it, the light is harsh, unforgiving. The sounds are always jarring- car horns and demented laughter. All of the scenery is cold and severe. I was surprised to see that in reality it looks so warm, inviting. Charming, even. It has matured since I've been gone. New high tech digital display signs welcome people to town. The trees on the sidewalks have aged. They are no longer held up by stakes and straps like they were when they and I were still young. 

I watched this town grow from a seed. The elementary school I attended used to be a collection of portable trailers used for classrooms and picnic tables behind a temporary chain-link fence. I remember when the first permanent structure, an impressive concrete gymnasium, was built in the front of the school. The gym’s construction coincided with the establishment of the town’s very own high school, a major chain supermarket to complement the old independent grocery store, and a full collection of stop lights along the main drag to signify that this once-rural subdivision intended to become an actual municipality in its own right. In the mid-90s Windsor, California poured some concrete and declared that it was here to stay. 

Windsor’s central shopping center consists of a pair of adjacent strip malls separated by a short avenue and a third, smaller strip of storefronts. This gives the illusion of choice so the townsfolk can say things like “oh i’m tired of that store, let’s go to the other one instead.” It’s important to the spirit of a town that people are given the impression they are living in a real place with character and variety, otherwise it’s just carbon copied tract homes with a grocery store the same as can be found anywhere off any highway in the country and it’s hard to distinguish property values to prospective buyers. 

I made for the neighborhood park just behind the central shopping center. I knew that the shaded play structures on the east end would be a great place to kill some time and let my daughter safely explore the world, sheltered from the hot July sun. We pulled up and got out of the car. Save for some minor upgrades, it felt like this place had been frozen in time. The ghosts from my youth still wandered here, I could feel them. 

I used to play on the grass here as a child. Imagined worlds on the playground. Ships at sea, spacecrafts in flight, castles under siege. In middle school we would ride our skateboards across the street at the curb and loading dock behind the supermarket every day. Once on a valentine's day I serenaded a girlfriend on a picnic table in the shade with my guitar. It was a terrible performance and she broke up with me shortly after. I can’t say the two were related, but I can’t say they weren’t either. 

In high school I smoked cocaine on a cigarette for the first time on that picnic table and the sky turned purple. Someone called it a cocoa-puff but I've always hated cute nicknames for hard drugs. A year or two later at that same picnic table I watched one of my friends shoot heroin, throw up on himself and then sleep for hours, hunched over but never quite laying down. The rest of us laughed about his odd repose while we chainsmoked and schemed on the remainder of the day. Periodically we’d hold a finger under his nose to be sure he was still breathing. We were only kids.   

Today, nearly twenty years later, I was sitting at that same picnic table watching my daughter chase the sparrows that skipped along the ground staying out of her reach like they were taunting her, or maybe playing with her. She would squat and point and shriek excited greetings in the candy-sweet pitch of a pure and perfect child. 

The memories suffocated me. As expected, they had emerged from the compartments where I tried to keep them and they came to life, projected on the surface of my eyelids. Dancing on the inside of my skull. All around me I could see the faces of my old friends. Figments of the kids they once were loitered in the park around us. My daughter didn’t know they were with us- someday she will learn that she shares the world with devils and other unwanted company, but today this park belonged only to her. She looked up at me and smiled her big gap toothed smile and through wet eyes I smiled back at her, “That bird just called you slow. Are you gonna let him talk to you that way?” 

The last time I was in this park I was 19 or so, though for reasons which may not require explanation, my recollection for details and dates could vary by a year in either direction at any time. I wasn’t exactly counting the days, or even always aware of their passing. I think this is due to the nature of youth itself as much as it is the insobriety in which I spent mine. To the young, time feels endless, limitless, boundless, eternal. The days don’t matter. In each year, a lifetime. 

Either way, it was probably 2007 or 2008 and I was in the park just after sunset. It was a safe place to hide out and smoke cigarettes and I had nowhere else to be. Two police cars pulled up to the back entrance and three officers emerged and advanced toward me at an awkward fast-forwarded looking pace as though they were afraid I might vanish if they didn’t hurry. I might have fled, but I had nothing on me and they had caught me so off guard that I didn't have time to worry much beyond that.

One of them called me by name, though we’d never met. Not a good sign. The other two flanked him silently, observing and whispering police jargon into the little radios perched on their shoulders with their necks cocked and suspicion in their eyes fixed on me. The leader of the trio told me a friend of mine had been found on a bench near the back of the grocery store, overdosed on heroin and hanging on to life by a sporadic heartbeat and shallow breath. My friend probably would have died there, he said, if he hadn’t come across him and called an ambulance. 

“It’s a good thing you were there”, I said. I wasn’t sure what he was looking for.

“Yeah, and where were you?” He asked me.    

Puzzled, I said nothing and waited for him to make his point. 

He took my silence as an invitation to say what he had really come to say and so he began his speech. He told me about his years as a police officer in this town. Told me what he liked about working in a small town like Windsor and what he didn’t. He said that drugs had always been a part of the job. Said it used to be that with the kids you just had to worry about pot, underage drinking, and DUIs. Vandalism, fighting, petty crime. Kid stuff, he said. He said it was the older folks you had to worry about with the powders and the hard drugs. He was backing into his point and I could feel that his two sentries had repositioned themselves so that I was surrounded. I still wasn’t sure what he was getting at- but I knew that this wasn’t a friendly visit.

He told me that in recent months his colleagues had started finding hypodermic needles and small amounts of heroin on the local youth for the first time in his career. He said he never thought it would happen here. With dismay he mused “I couldn’t figure out how it was happening to our kids…like, what the fuck is going on here?” I remember how he looked vaguely off towards the center of town as he said those words. I thought it dramatic at the time and in youthful insolence I judged him for laying it on so thick. He didn’t care about us. But age has bestowed a similar sentimentality on me and now I give him the benefit of the doubt that the whole performance was sincere.

His wistful gaze drew back towards me and hardened. 

“I’d be careful who i trust out here, these friends of yours are quick to give you up” he said. I still said nothing, but my heart beat heavily in my chest and my face betrayed the fear I felt. 

“If your friend had died there on the bench last night, you’d be looking at charges. We know it came from you. We’re watching, we know who you are and what you’re up to. Take care of yourself - and maybe choose different friends, if you’re not going to choose a different life. We don’t even have to press them to get your name out of ‘em.” 

The three turned and walked back towards their patrol cars. They left me alone in the park to shoulder a burden I would carry with me for years. The implication was that I was in some way responsible for the burgeoning heroin problem in town. In hindsight, the idea that any one person could bear responsibility for such a thing is preposterous - but I was naive, arrogant, and always too sensitive. Also, there was just enough truth in what he said that I have never been able to fully assuage my own guilt, even now.

In 2004 I dropped out of high school and took a job at a local fast food joint, where I had struck an odd friendship with an older coworker on parole whose family was involved in heroin trafficking. That chance connection is how heroin came to be available to my circle of friends and I. So, that much was true. But what the deputy and I didn’t know at the time was that this scene was playing out in cities and towns across the country. 

He wanted a simple solution, someone to blame. I didn’t know better but to take it on. None of us knew what was coming. We were all blind to just how much bigger than us the problem actually was. We didn’t realize we were sitting on the precipice of an epidemic that would grow exponentially as it claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the years ahead. 

I checked into my first drug treatment center in January of 2006, two weeks after turning 18. At that time juvenile heroin addicts were still relatively uncommon, though as time marched forward, between heroin and OxyContin, young opioid addicts like me would start filling treatment centers by the busload. It would be another decade still before the full threat of fentanyl would be realized in staggering death tolls climbing dramatically year over year. In 2017, the President would declare the Opioid Crisis a national emergency, and in the years since, the instances of opioid addiction and related deaths have only continued to rise- not yet reaching something resembling a peak. 

I am one of the lucky ones. I made it out. Barely, and after many long years lost to addiction- but I did. And though I'm far from that chapter of my life, I keep a front row seat to the horror and tragedy of it all. I stay close to the recovery community - people like me who have made it out of lives of active addiction. Together we support each other and make ourselves available to those who are still trying to get off drugs. In our circles we have to get used to the reality that on any day a phone call will come in, a distraught friend on the other end alerting us that someone else we know has died. It’s a call that comes too often.

It’s not hyperbole to say I’ve lost count of the people I know who’ve died in recent years. The further I get from the problem, the more I feel compelled to understand it. When I was young it almost didn’t matter- whether in ignorance, arrogance, or both there was a nihilistic tendency to dismiss that compulsion. We didn’t need to understand why. Fortunately, I’m not young anymore. I have discovered concern for my well-being, and for that of my family, my friends, and my community. I find myself today from time to time, like the deputy in the park, staring sternly into the heart of civilization and pleading with it to return some answer. How did we get here? What the fuck is going on?

There is no simple answer. No one-size-fits-all explanation that will resonate with everyone and lead us to a satisfying solution. But that alone doesn’t preclude us from exploring some of the contributing factors. It doesn’t mean there is nothing we can do. First, we have to look with unflinching scrutiny at the environment in which this crisis has been able to grow. America, the greatest nation on Earth.

We are a nation of addicts, after all. It’s not just the junkies and the speed freaks, the people scamming pills, or the ones hiding liquor bottles around the house and getting tipsy in secret after everyone else has gone to bed. All we know today is “more”. If one is good, two is better, and no one has ever had quite enough. Wants and needs have become conflated. We’re all so overstimulated and craving content. Bright lights and big noises. It’s all quick fixes and cut corners. New and improved. Effortless convenience. Easy to Use. Simple and fast. Cheap and easy. Point and Click. Results today. Instant gratification. Comfort and ease over everything. 

Explicit and subliminal messages from every direction tout ambition, extravagance, and career achievement as the highest measures of a person. The economy is built on consumption, and there is no room for growth in contentment. From the early days of television, radio, and billboard advertising to full scale targeted mind-meddling on social media platforms, the Goliath marketing machine is leaving an imprint on the American psyche like a tattoo which may never heal.

 Our primary examples of success are social elites, platformed and commodified themselves to sell the ideal life as being measured by one’s wealth, wardrobe, and worldly possessions. We accept this pageant as a routine evil of our society. Many of us try to hold fast to the belief that so long as we see the charade for exactly what it is, we might be exempt from the pressure to conform. It’s a comforting delusion, though none of us are exempt. Coded into the fine print of the contract for American citizenry is a simple disturbing truth: Opting out is not an option. Those who try will end up paying, one way or another. 

Today, one of my oldest friends wanders the streets and camps under the bridges of Santa Rosa, the town where I live. I see him occasionally outside of gas stations and grocery stores, a wraith of the boy I knew when we were young. Sometimes he recognizes me long enough for me to offer him a hug and a few dollars. Other times he looks straight through me like he can’t see me at all. His mother and I have become close over the years. Together we keep tabs on his whereabouts if only to assure one another he is still alive. I asked him once about recovery; if there was anything I could do to help him get clean. He looked at me in a frustrated indignance, gestured around at the strip mall parking lot where we stood and said “Get clean? For what? To do what?” 

I couldn’t answer him. What could I say? I could remind him that he is flirting with death every day, but that’s no threat to someone who sees no value in life. I could try and spin some story about the rewarding aspects of holding a job, paying bills, finding some hobbies and trying to enjoy life but it’s just not a compelling enough pitch to drag back the dead into the world of the living. And how does one convey the endless possibilities for growth and joy available to us once we are willing to treat our wounds and open ourselves up to new experiences? Most people walking the streets today can’t even pull their faces from their phones long enough to breathe deeply the free air and experience a moment of gratitude solely for life itself - so how could i possibly hope to sell such a lofty notion to someone who isn’t even looking to buy in the first place? 

And the truth is that it was a relatable sentiment, his resignation to cynicism. I remember when my youthful exuberance cocooned itself in adolescence and emerged a cold indifference. It’s no secret that a sense of discontent has been growing among the youth since before my lifetime. A vague dysphoria has become commonplace among American youth. It’s always the young people who seem to vocalize it clearly and without inhibition. They haven’t been beaten into submission yet. Or killed off, locked up, and left behind for their unwillingness to participate in a system in which they have no faith. 

There is some incongruence between what we are told and what we see. I know the disappointment and frustration that comes with it firsthand. It used to drive me. Now I see it on social media, and in music and TV as a common theme in the pop-culture zeitgeist of today’s youth. So many of us feel that we’re being misled, but there doesn’t seem to be another way. So it’s get on board or get left behind, and we resent the ultimatum.  

The American brand of individualism has become a plague of isolation. In the relentless pursuit of personal fulfillment we are subtly encouraged to deprioritize one of our most basic mammalian needs, that of Community. Family. Meaningful social interaction. The implication is always that there should be no one to blame for our failures, and no credit to share in our triumphs. At the bottom of it all, everyone must go it alone.    

The side effects of living this way are not unpredictable. Depression. Anxiety. Distraction, Restlessness. Malaise. Frustration. Stress. Emptiness. The whole galaxy of mental and emotional disorders borne of work-life imbalance, excessive screen time, sedentary days, poor diets. The pressure to remain stoic and steadfast contradicts our innate emotional natures. Those who can sever themselves from their feelings the most seem to be rewarded in turn. We feel like failures when we do not perform like such automatons. 

An internal conflict is bred and then passed down epigenetically through generations, producing and reproducing people with inherited low emotional IQs and no idea that there is anything wrong until after they’ve suffered decades of difficulties in relationships and in their personal lives, and likely passed it along to their children as well. It may sound dramatic, I know, but the generational consequences of America’s systematic psychological exploitation are evident all around us. 

Drugs are the ideal commodity for the American condition. Simple and fast. Cheap and easy. Results today. Between the corporate interests and the international crime organizations- both of whom seem to be allowed to operate largely without intervention- anyone can find a chemical solution for whatever ails them. And we do. 

Antidepressants. Anxiety meds. Sleeping pills. Stimulants. Relaxants. Metabolism boosters. Cannabis for the mind. Alcohol to unwind. Cocaine and ecstasy to spice up the party. Psychedelics to stimulate creative thought. Speed to go fast. Opiates to slow down. Celebrating the good times, grieving the bad, or simply taking the edge off- drug use is a near universal custom in our culture. Of course the children are going to use drugs. They are in the bloodstream of our society. 

It would be so easy to limit blame to the Sacklers and Purdue pharma, the cartels or the international fentanyl trade for the opioid epidemic. It is always simpler to burn a witch or two and close the case. But it is as ineffective to pin the deaths of 500,000 people onto some drug manufacturers as it was to pin a town full of kids using heroin onto one juvenile delinquent with a dope connection. Though that does not mean they, or I, are not without our own responsibility- the Sacklers' negligence and callousness unleashed a plague on an unwitting nation for profit and I split a few gram bags with my friends. Different scales, sure, but there were lives lost in both cases and we will never be fully absolved of those. 

But the drug trade, both legal and otherwise, is subject to all of the same principles as all the markets of the world. Supply and demand. Consumer sovereignty. Profit incentive. I’m not sure where ethics fit into the fundamental tenets of capitalism, but I can only imagine from what I’ve seen that they are a secondary concern, at best. This is the market we created and that we defend with our lives. The market does not discriminate, it only responds to its audience. And at home, its audience was craving relief long before the OxyContin and fentanyl hit the streets. 

If we really want to understand the problem, and not just to find a political talking point and a scapegoat to pin it on so we can feign progress and claim victory, we first have to admit to ourselves that the opioid crisis itself is only a symptom of a much larger problem. The children of this country- my childhood self and my old friends included- have been trying to express it in every way we know how for years and it’s time we acknowledge the cries for help and accept that the kids aren’t fucking alright. 

Body dysmorphia. Eating disorders. PTSD. Depression. Anxiety. Conduct disorders. Suicide. The list goes on to include growing numbers of children with what are likely inherited neurological and mood disorders- ADHD, Bipolar disorder, OCD, and so on. I’m not sure that we can’t include the growing frequency of school shootings and other instances of violent radicalization on that list as well. Substance abuse disorder is only a bullet point in the mental health crisis in America today- though the opioid death toll screams loud enough to be heard in popular discussion, unlike many of the others which can be medicated and ignored. The longer we allow the factors which led us here to continue without addressing them- the more devastating the results will be. 

   We cannot expect to shield our kids from the environment in which we raise them. The children always reap what is sown by their parents. Without concerted effort to break out of our individual patterns of distraction and denial, our communities will continue to erode. We will become a nation of individuals sharing only space and nothing else. The inertia of perceived scarcity and competition, qualities intrinsic to capitalism, will serve to widen the schisms between each of us. We will become lonelier. We will transmit the values we share to our children- though they will not be the values we espouse. They will be the values we demonstrate. 

I have no doubt my parents loved me. They taught me to walk. To talk. To tie my shoes. They taught me how to grit my teeth, hold back my tears, and do whatever need be done to pay the bills. I learned that there is no place for my feelings here, that they will not put food on the table. They showed me that money is more valuable than time. Career stability over family intimacy. I learned from watching and listening to the adults around me that I would need to figure this life out on my own, and that if I failed, I would have no one to blame but myself. 

They didn’t tell me any of this, of course. They just lived their lives as best they could and I absorbed the rest. They were unequipped to contend with the rapid developments in technology and unable to predict how the influences of the modern world would affect me. They still hadn’t resolved the issues from their upbringing and reconciled their own discontent. They started the race from behind. We all do. 

The world continues to change, more rapidly all the time. We haven’t had time to catch up to our progress and evaluate the unintended consequences of our way of life. A whole new level of oversight and education is needed to raise a responsible and well-adjusted child today, and we have proven ourselves unprepared to rise to the occasion. In many cases, we are unwilling to even have the conversation. To a large contingent of stubborn reactionaries, even criticizing unmitigated consumption is nothing short of treason. 

To be fair, I don’t know what the answer is. But I know we need to be willing to talk about the problem with an open mind. I am not an economist, a political strategist, or even a high school graduate. It doesn’t take an expert to know that sustained existence requires the ability to adapt as the environment changes. 

If we are unwilling to look critically at ourselves, we are- in no uncertain terms- doomed.  It is time that we do the uncomfortable work of self-reflection. We as a people must take responsibility for the monster we’ve created. We must educate ourselves on the perils of religious adherence to an economy based on consumption. We must be willing to admit our failings and alter course to ensure the safety and survival of our youth and the future of our country. And maybe even our world. 

If the American value system has taught us one lesson that will be relevant here, it’s that no one will be coming to rescue us. It’s up to us now. We’ve already surrendered our democracy to the influence of the elites - and they do not give a fuck about you or me or any of our children, regardless of our political affiliation. They have a system to protect. One that is working well for them.

It is up to us to combat the ills of our society by moderating our addiction to ourselves so that we can be available, present and active in our communities. To be practical in our expectations of ourselves and each other. We must begin to reverse the mass degeneration of our collective mental health. We must teach our children to challenge our ways of thinking and the world around them. We have to invite them to get curious about their feelings, fears, doubts, and needs before anything else they do in life and hope that they will grow to be equipped to make the changes that we have been so far unable to make. We must stop prioritizing career skills over basic emotional intelligence. And we, as adults, must do what is necessary to see that each of us are emotionally available to them now. If we can’t assume responsibility for one another, how can we expect our power structures and elites to do it for us?  

My wife and I have made sacrifices to our lifestyle in the year or so since our daughter was born to try and ensure that someone is always home and available to her. We are fortunate that we have been able to do so but the bills haven’t stopped coming in and already I’m unsure how long we’ll be able to keep it up. It’s not realistic for many Americans to live on a single income for any amount of time, no matter how tightly they moderate their spending. But neither is it practical to place the whole onus of a child’s well-being on their parents alone. 

We’ve already identified that there are pervasive cultural influences at work which are so great they will douse the spark of any single effort. But again, that can’t deter us from our responsibility. We have only one recourse. As individuals, we must begin to act as if we are accountable to our communities and the communities must in turn feel accountable to us. In an ironic reversal of American ideology, the paradigm shift away from individualism must start with each of us. So, America got it right- almost. The individual does bear personal responsibility, but for more than just our own pursuits- for our contribution to the world around us. Not all problems are so simple as to be mine or yours. Some problems belong to us all. 

When I walk through the town of Windsor today, I feel contentiousness in the air. I feel like I’m walking on some old curmudgeon’s lawn, about to be chased off by his drooling hound. I smile at people I pass and I feel their fear, their uncertainty. It isn’t just in my hometown- it’s so often elsewhere. On buses and trains and in passing cars on the road. In line at grocery stores and waiting in restaurant lobbies. We avoid eye contact or timidly acknowledge each other with awkward gestures. We look at our phones or pretend we don’t notice one another. It’s like we share nothing other than the moments when we’re passing each other by. I know that can’t be true, even among strangers. 

We share the spirit of freedom. We share dreams. We share a concern for those we love and the future of our country. We share pain, grief, and joy. We share hope and fear. Whatever our beliefs, however they may differ, we share a growing impotence in the wake of a monster that we can’t control. The consumption machine has only us to feed on, and it can’t be stopped now. The global economy depends on it. And we like our comforts, don’t we? We can only do our part to contend with it by being willing to admit where we have been wrong. By standing together as we figure out how to adapt and survive. How to heal the damage we’ve done. How to change course before it’s too late.

This morning I watched my young daughter scream because she didn’t like the breakfast I made for her. She writhed on the floor, arching her back and hitting herself in the face. She pulled at her own hair and bit me when I tried to console her. Typical behaviors of a toddler in a rage, I hear. But as I watched I couldn't help wondering what she has already inherited from me. My anger? My stubbornness? My stifled relationship with my own emotions? My addictive behaviors? I wonder if I will be able to impart the aspects of myself that I've found with age and healing. My lust for life, my joy, my sense of humor, my deep and unconditional love for humanity, in spite of ourselves. I wonder if I'll be able to protect her from the world that beat me down so hard when I was young and left me to pick up the pieces. I wonder if there’s anything I can do to guide her through safely into adulthood, happy and well-adjusted. I wonder if anyone is well-adjusted anymore, or what that even looks like. 

Maybe it’s out of my hands. Maybe it’s already too late. Maybe someday she will find herself disillusioned by the world, as so many of us have. Maybe she’ll be unable to reconcile what she sees with what she feels. Maybe she will resign to apathy. Maybe she will be like me and turn to drugs to self-medicate for issues that she doesn’t understand. Maybe she will get strung out young and be lost to the world. Maybe I will have to grieve for her like the thousands of parents grieving their children today. 

Maybe we will enact new laws to curb the opioid crisis. Some will say decriminalize, let the drug addicts figure it out themselves. Others will push for harsher punishments to deter would-be offenders. Maybe a politician will campaign on promises of change, and maybe they’ll do their best to follow through. Maybe we’ll invent new drugs to treat the side-effects of the old ones. Maybe nothing will change at all. 

Maybe she will be forgotten. Swept away like the rest of us. Maybe she will become a statistic. One more child absorbed into the cautionary tale of straying from the fold. Maybe no one will do anything. After all, she’ll be an adult some day and then she’ll be no one’s responsibility, really. This is America, and we’re all so god damn busy chasing the dream, or whatever it is we’re doing. We can’t afford to be worried about those we leave behind.