Original: Aug. 30, 2017
As I was scrolling through my friends list recently, I started to get overwhelmed by the number of people with accounts on Facebook who no longer exist.
No. Longer. Exist.
It’s about a dozen, maybe. While there a variety of reasons for that, most of these silent accounts have a lot in common:
- They’re from Indiana, PA.
- They’re under the age of 35.
- They’ve overdosed.
In the past year, I think I’ve taken PTO three times now to attend a funeral, and to my best count, it’s rapidly moving to two dozen deaths due to heroin overdose. With a town the size and façade of Mayberry, it’s just unthinkable. But anymore, when a high school friend calls, I don’t want to pick up the phone because I just assume it’s not good news. And I know I’m not alone in that.
With as sad and as terrible and as angry as it makes it me, we should all keep in mind that these were just neighborhood kids. It could have been any of us. Heroin isn’t this big, scary needle that’s portrayed in movies. That’s not how it starts. It’s a small and sneaky and unassuming simple pain pill and then it grows like a weed. And when you’re a kid – a kid! – and your brain is still developing, it latches on to that feeling and develops around it.
I’m certainly not defending drug use, and I’m not about to take anyone’s sass on the subject, but hope to inspire empathy for the addicted. Because these kids, as they’ll always be the kids I grew up with, were regular. They were the girls you rolled your eyes with in chemistry class and who liked the same boys, the kids you walked to school with and who had your back and you theirs when things got tough, the boys you went to prom with and sneaked cigarettes with in Smokers’ Alley.
They were you.
These lights have been snuffed out too quickly, but I want to remember the good because we’re talking about people who fought, fought for their lives to keep it together into adulthood– and shone so damn brightly while they were here.
Tomorrow, Thursday, Aug. 31 is International Overdose Awareness Day. And while, in general, I think awareness days are tired, I hope we can all take a moment to pause and reflect on the effects of these people in our lives, and not the ways in which they went.
Don’t forget the neighborhood kids – they are you.
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