Sunday, November 16, 2025
1969 British House of Commons voted 343-185 to abolish the death penalty
In bed at 9 and up at 5. Geri's already up with some insomnia. 36°, wind chill 22°, high 45°, NW winds at 13 mph, gusts to 30 mph
Meds, etc. Morning meds at 8 a.m. No coffee or caffeine after 8 because of a chemical stress test tomorrow morning and an echocardiogram tomorrow afternoon.
Legal and illegal drugs, addiction and overdose risks, pain, trauma , and despair, and WWJD? There is a long guest essay in this morning's Sunday New York Times titled "I Am a Drug Historian. Trump Is Wrong About Fentanyl in Almost Every Way." It's written by David Herzberg, a professor of history and director of the Drugs, Health and Society program at the University at Buffalo. It's an excellent reminder of the historical ubiquity of drug use in our society and culture and the often, even usual, fecklessness of our attempts to deal with its common dangers, i.e., overdoses and addiction. most notably by Richard Nixon's "War on Drugs." The sentence that most caught my eye, however, was this:
The only place we can see real policy creativity in action is in ad hoc innovations by drug consumers themselves and the pragmatic harm reductionists who know and care about them.
The author barely develops the fact that drug users and drug 'abusers' are human beings, that they ingest drugs for a reason, and the reason is often the reduction of pain of some sort. For many, the pain is physical and persistent; for others, the pain is spiritual, psychological, or emotional and persistent. Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, starting in 2015, came up with the term "deaths of despair" to describe the significant increase in deaths from suicide, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related liver diseases among middle-aged, non-Hispanic, white Americans without a college degree. We know, too, that drug use, legal and illegal, and drug-related deaths are relatively widespread in minority communities. In short, drug use and 'abuse,' addiction, and overdosing is a problem throughout American society, and it's because of the unmet need for relief from pain or some sort. The people with these unmet needs are us, our friends and family, our fellow Americans, or, as Jesus put it, our "neighbors," those we are to love as we love ourselves. How much of our national drug policy is driven by love of those particular neighbors? Of helping to meet their needs for pain relief? Of giving them some hope of a life worth living? I suspect that the answer is not much. We, and our political power holders, are inclined to view drug 'abusers' as weak, self-indulgent, pleasure-seeking, social deviants. I think of the crackhouse scene in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever and the meth houses in Winter's Bone. Is it foolish to wonder "what would Jesus do" if he were designing American drug policies? What are the Christian Nationalists' drug policies? The Evangelical churches' drug policies?
I reacted to this op-ed essay for a couple of reasons. First, I think of the boats and crews we are blasting out of the water in the Caribbean and on the Pacific because they are allegedly carrying illegal drugs to the U.S. Official reports tell us 80 men have been killed,- murdered - by these attacks. I think of the armada Trump has assembled in the Caribbean and in Puerto Rico. Will Trump attack Venezuela, using "narco-traficking" as a pretext, a "wag the dog" act of war to deflect attention from his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein? I believe such an act is clearly possible from both him and his regime - Vance, Bondi, Hegseth, Noem, et al. Ideally, destructive raids could be accoplished with no loss of American lives, only Venezuelan casualties, all the better for Trump. Need I wonder what Jesus would do in this regard?
Second, I think of all the days and nights when I contemplated suicide over the last 15 years, when I suffered severe pelvic pain from interstitial cystitis and lesions in my bladder, and severe multiple joint pain from polymyalgia rheumatica. How I ached, literally, for anything to relieve the pain. How I willingly and gladly would have ingested OxyContin or some other opioid if any had been available to me. How I would have chosen addiction over the pain, and would have consciously risked death by overdose rather than the pain. I never did go seeking fentanyl or some other illegal analgesic - where would a ferkrempter old White guy go? - but would have if I could have. So I put myself as a wannabe in that class of drug abusers, and sympathize with others in that class.
I also sympathize with my fellow drug abusers who turn to illegal drugs not because of physical pain, but because of spiritual and emotional pain brought on by trauma in their lives, or by hopelessness, despair. I try never to lose sight of the truth of William Blake's Every morn and every night, some are born to sweet delight. / Every night and every morn, some to misery are born. / Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night.
When he arrived in the second year of my high school
He wasn't so much of a twist of fate
As a short turn up from a Southern state
He was born with a sweet tooth he couldn't beat
Always trying to find himself something sweet
All that he found was a trouble and me
Or maybe trouble just found him
It was hard to hide that his heart had scars
He would stay up late talking to the stars
People tried to blame him for making bad choices
When he was only listening to the voices
He's searching for some kind of deeper truth
Between the lines in the Bible and living proof
There's no point now to judge him in vain
If you haven't been there, you don't know the pain
He was a liar, but not a fraud
Living proof that there was no God
Just the Devil, stiff as a rod
A slave to a sugartooth
His life became more than he could take
He found a bad habit he couldn't break
Nothing could tame him and nothing could hold him
He only took the pills when the doctor told him
Looking too hard for the something sweet
To make his life feel less incomplete
What in the hell are you going to do
When the world has made its mind up about you?
He was a liar, but not a fraud
Living proof that there was no God
Just the Devil, stiff as a rod
A slave to a sugartooth
He wanted to be a better man
Then life kicked him down like an old tin can
He would give you the shirt on his back
If not for a sugartooth
They found him lying on his bed
With a gun in his hand and a quiet head
His broken heart now is finally gone
But I know that he had the hurt for too long
To think he had fought it all on his own
Just to lose the battle and die alone
After so many years of feeling the loss
He finally made his way back home
And I helped put what was left in a box
And took it to a place called Jesus Rock
And scattered him all over the jagged mound
As a symbol to all that the peace had been found
But not for a sign is left behind
With a hand stuck reaching back in time
To a place in which you can never unwind
I hope he found something so sweet
He was a liar, but not a fraud
Living proof that there was no God
Just the Devil, stiff as a rod
A slave to a sugartooth
He wanted to be a better man
But life kicked him down like an old tin can
He would give you the shirt off his back
If not for a sugartooth
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