Do You Like Oxycontin?

“Do you like Oxy?”

This question was posed to me recently by a friend, completely out of the blue, and it caught me a little by surprise. I had never taken Oxycontin, therefore; I had no opinion on whether or not I liked it. Regardless, I told him that I was a fan of the pain-killer, and gladly accepted the gift.

Sometime later, I started thinking about the pill I now possessed, as well as the interaction that led to me having it. My friend with the tablet could just as easily have asked, “Hey, I have an extra dose of the most dangerous drug in America… Do you want it?”

In the name of writing, I said yes. However; it should be noted here that me using my blogging as an excuse to do whatever I want, so that I might accurately pen the experience, has become a concern for some friends. I did recently suggest that because I write about race from time to time that I had a responsibility to my future readers to have at least one relationship with an African American woman, for no other reason than she is an African American.

My friends may be right.

I also pride myself on being an adventurer, so I was a little excited when the night to conduct my experiment had finally arrived. My test was not very scientific; it was just me and the dog, so I decided that she would have to be my control group. I explained the role thoroughly to her, but I am not sure she understood me. She may be adorable, but she is not a very smart dog. I popped the pill into my mouth and washed it down with a long sip of water. I made a refreshed sigh while cracking my knuckles, and then settled in my chair to start writing this post, as I awaited the effects.

Here are the numbers, while I can still understand numbers. In 2013, 22,767 people died from prescription drug overdoses. In that same year, 14,775 people died from overdosing on all other illicit drugs combined, including heroin, meth and all forms of cocaine.

Marijuana did not kill anybody in 2013.

If I wanted to put the butcher’s bill for prescription drugs in perspective, I could say that it is the equivalent of 9/11 happening over and over, every forty-eight days. If you didn’t already know this, and care enough to find the total upsetting, you will likely be disgusted when you discover that the number isn’t really all that accurate.

Many of the deaths on heroin’s rap sheet partially belong on the pharmaceutical corporation’s tally as well. Whether it starts from prescription or recreation, people become addicted to pills, and then as their life starts to collapse under the weight of that addiction (inevitable job loss coupled with the cost of the drugs themselves), they become heroin addicts, because heroin is the cheapest version of that high.

I spent over three years of my life as the executive vice president of a logistics company that delivered pharmaceuticals, including literally tons of narcotics, so I’ll go ahead and call myself an expert on their legal transportation. If the fact that processed latex from a plant growing in some of the most dangerous places in the world, can make it half-way across the planet to America, but still be cheaper than a pill made in America, doesn’t prove to you that something fishy may be going on, you are not paying attention.

You might think of heroin as an inner-city problem, and it is, but not always. Just north-east of Saint Louis is a county called Madison. This is one of the more affluent suburbs of Saint Louis, and certainly the most prosperous on the Illinois side of the river. In 2014, twenty-six people died of confirmed heroin overdoses in Madison County (the county’s total population is around 270,000). Thankfully, this number does not include many children, but that is nothing to celebrate.

Many of the addictions that end in young adult heroin deaths begin when those addicts are children. The addiction initiates when a kid grabs a few pills from their parent’s stash, or one of their peers makes the swipe and shares what he or she has stolen. As this behavior continues, an addiction to the high develops right along with a profitable market for the pills themselves. Like adults, the young people eventually switch to heroin because children cannot typically afford fancy pharmaceuticals, even if they do have a job at McDonald’s.

This scenario is happening every day in communities all over this country, but it is more than a little confusing when you consider the socioeconomic status enjoyed by many in Madison County. The schools in that county are some of the best in the Midwest, and many of the parents are wealthy and affluent, so why does that area have such a heroin problem?

I can find part of the answer by looking at my own life. If you looked at my list of possessions, you would likely consider me poor (you and I probably have vastly different definitions of the word “poor”, but that is a separate discussion). One of the side effects of my financial poverty is my lack of health insurance. Because I have no insurance, my access to doctors is limited. Should I find myself in a hospital, and in pain, any request for pain medication is met with cynicism. The doctor doesn’t know me and therefore chooses a pain management regimen that is the least likely to get me high.

However; if you are a normal member of society, with insurance and other adult stuff, you probably know your doctor well. People with money, too much time, and only made-up problems; tend to believe that they are not healthy if their bodies do not always feel as if those bodies are operating optimally. These fears have been cultivated to extremes over the last two decades, thanks to television advertising. It should be noted here that allowing pharmaceutical companies to market to consumers directly, is so dangerous that only two countries in the entire world allow it (New Zealand and the United States).

If you have insurance, the doctor you have been seeing for years will be much more likely to give you the medication you request, including the good pain-killers. Is this is why heroin addiction is running rampant in upscale communities? Is there simply more access to legally prescribed drugs, thanks to resources?

Regardless of my thoughts on addiction, I still insisted on taking my Oxy. My primary goal for life is to be well-rounded, and have a deep understanding of this world before I leave it. I cannot do that unless I experience as much of it for myself, and Oxycontin just got scratched off of the bucket list. I have never tried heroin or crack, but just to be on the safe side, I am waiting until retirement before I test them.

If you think this is irresponsible of me, you should know that I feel exactly the opposite. If everything you have learned about drugs originated from a Dare commercial, or your preacher; I have absolutely no use for your opinion. Furthermore; if you like to rail against drugs, while downing your Lexapro with a night-cap, you are even worse; a hypocrite. I, along with the rest of America, listened to Rush Limbaugh condemn all illegal drugs for years, while he simultaneously struggled with an addiction to legal ones.

I can certainly understand how Rush became addicted; opiates make you feel pretty amazing. The effects of my Oxy seemed to crawl in through an itch on my foot, and then slowly cover my entire body in a warm blanket. Thanks to my bipolar disorder, I have terrible anxiety most of the time. Twenty minutes after consuming my Oxy, I suddenly feared nothing. You could have shown me images of mangled toddlers and puppies that night, and it would not have bothered me. I truly can’t remember ever feeling that good before, and that is extremely dangerous.

I think I understand why doctors consider opiate addictions the most difficult to recover from. My personal experience with opiate addicts, as well as the opiates themselves, reminds me of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movies. It doesn’t take very long for the person you knew to be replaced by an alien with no use for social conventions. And, like movie aliens, the new pretend-human will consume resources until there are none left. Parents of addicts know exactly what I am talking about.

I just don’t understand why we cannot control the prescription drug problem a little better. Addiction and the drug war are both forms of slavery, and we need to begin seeing them that way. It may seem counter-intuitive, but I think it is time to surrender, while we can still make demands. Politicians want only victories, so if our leaders need to feign triumph to make this happen, so be it. Great job guys!

Many Americans believe that all drugs should remain illegal because being high serves no purpose, and they may be right. It is difficult to argue against that point, but when you consider the fact that drugs have been a part of our civilization for thousands of years (at least 3000 before Jesus Christ was even born), the argument itself seems pointless. There are some aspects of the human condition you are just going to have to accept, and move on.

The first and most obvious step toward fixing America’s drug problem should be to remove marijuana from the list of schedule one drugs, because it does not belong there. In addition to the many illegal drugs I have tried, I have also been given many legal pills by doctors attempting to battle my bipolar. If I were to put all mind altering substances I have tried, in order of danger to my health, marijuana would lie at the safest end, just after coffee, and just before cigarettes. Alcohol would be at the very far end of that spectrum.

Proof that marijuana is not only safe, but medically useful, is everywhere, so why is it still illegal? This is America after all, so in order to answer that question, we have to look at who benefits from the status quo. The most obvious group includes the current legal peddlers of mind altering substances, like alcohol and pharmaceutical manufacturers. These companies have been given the opportunity to legally corner the market on drug use, and have failed us; miserably.

I am not as concerned about Big Pharma as you might think. Although the U.S. government holds the patent on medical marijuana, pharmaceutical companies are already filing patents to cover different uses of cannabinoids, including THC. Money is the only ideology these corporations understand, so if something is profitable, they will figure out a way to make it legal.

The most dangerous foes to legalization are the many groups whose jobs are directly affected by the current marijuana rules, like police orders, lawyers, guard unions and the giant corporations that now operate many of our prisons. These groups are motivated to denounce marijuana, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, over fears of lost revenue, seizures, and wages. I get that. Capitalism, in a free society, insists that these voices be heard, but I will never believe that a non-violent marijuana farmer, rotting in prison, should be the cost of an up-tick in your stock price.

What is most odd about the police’s stance against marijuana is that it contradicts law enforcement’s commitment against violence. Non-violence is one of the oldest and most accepted side-effects of cannabis. If you are a police officer responding to a domestic call, would you prefer the people you encounter to be drunk or stoned, if those were your only two options? Stoned, of course; if I was a police officer I would want all of my criminals slow, easily distracted, peacefully paranoid, and extremely hungry.

One of my very favorite quotes of all time comes from author and philosopher, Edmund Burke. Over two hundred years ago he said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

That quote makes me wonder what a good man looks like. Is the pharmaceutical sales-rep, with whom you play golf a couple of times per year, a good man? It’s possible that you don’t even like him, but you golf anyway, because you have business together. Are you a good man? Maybe, you are the pharmacist that owns his own store, and never misses church on Sunday, so he pays for the round. Are you a good man now?

Oxycontin was invented in Germany in 1916, but wasn’t manufactured in America until 1996, when a company called Purdue Pharmaceuticals decided to give it a try. In May of 2007 Purdue pled guilty to misleading the public about Oxycontin’s risk of addiction, and agreed to pay $600 million in one of the largest pharmaceutical settlements in U.S. history.

Oxycontin led the wave of opiate resurgence in America, and all of the deaths that came with it, but not one single person from Purdue did any jail-time for their crimes. They were given probation. In fact, Purdue Pharmaceuticals still exists. Do good men run Purdue Pharmaceuticals? If a man has enough money to own private shares of Purdue, is he a good man? As a waiter, I often serve at pharmaceutical sales dinners and gladly accept the generous tip I receive. Am I a good man?

Maybe a short history lesson will help us understand the definition of good men. On April 12th, 1945, General George Patton toured the newly liberated concentration camp called Buchenwald. Three days later Patton had American GIs walk two-thousand citizens from the town of Weimar, five miles away, at gun-point, to see what was happening inside the camp. Most claimed that they had no idea that such atrocities were occurring so close, but that sounds like horse-shit to me. I am also certain that at least a handful of those citizens earned a living supplying that camp, but never missed church or took drugs.

Note: I apologize for going Nazi in my argument. I also think it is kind of douche-like of me. You cannot compare hundreds of thousands of drug deaths, with millions of deaths in the name of genocide. Just pretend I am a politician, those guys see Hitler everywhere. Also, it should be noted that Adolph Hitler was given daily doses of drugs like cocaine, heroin, meth and opiates. I wonder what history would look like if he had been given marijuana instead… just saying.

I think it is safe to say that we are all good men doing nothing. That needs to change.

I can do something. I can publish this blog post. Nothing good can come from me boasting publicly that I smoke marijuana, or that I am willing to pop the occasional pill. My drugs of choice, in order of consumed quantities, are: nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, Zantac, marijuana, Xanax and ibuprofen. I have also taken cocaine, Seroquel, ecstasy, LSD, Celexa, mushrooms, and almost every type of pain-killer.

Thanks to my bipolar, I can only smoke marijuana when I am by myself due to its exacerbating effect on my anxiety. Marijuana has three very specific purposes in my life; as a sleep aid, going to the movies (without my kids), and to make my two hour bike-rides more interesting. Marijuana is distracting, so my Huffy is the heaviest equipment I operate stoned.

I have children, ex-wives, bosses and friends that might not be pleased by the above revelations. So, why do I admit these things? If a handful of readers are entertained by my idiotic confession and it allows even one of them to open their eyes to see the wasteful hypocrisy of the drug war, as it actually exists, haven’t I done something? Is it not only worth the risk, but imperative that I admit these things?

Well, that sums up my review of Oxycontin and the drug war. Oxy will make you feel absolutely nothing, which is fantastic, but I do not recommend you try it more than once. In order for society to operate properly, we need to all be on Oxycontin or none of us at all. As for the war on drugs, we should probably take a little advice from the pot smoking hippies and consider giving peace a chance.

Now, somebody please pass me the Advil. I have a headache.

Post Script: I am in no way suggesting that anyone start smoking pot, drop out of their lives, and start a religion based on The Dude, from The Big Lebowski. You can’t, somebody already has. It is called The Church of the Latter-Day Dude, and they have hundreds of ordained priests. They even let women be priests! Those people are crazy.