Genocide by Opioids; North American Style.
“It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, wait on time.”
Right now you’re likely thinking, “is this chick really telling me that genocide and the current drug epidemic can be equated as the same?” I’m saying the same fabric of indifference that was woven through each genocide is the same fabric that today is woven through this health crisis, epidemic, and what some might call, a state of emergency.
I am personally heavily invested in this crisis. I have a daughter on the street addicted to Fentanyl and Heroin. She has been treated less than human, a savage, and a degenerate. The shame, indifference and ridicule that she has faced, is in my opinion inhumane. As her mother, I have also come up against this same judgement. This kind of judgement is a direct result of a complete lack of knowledge and understanding of the disease of addiction. I think it’s also vitally important for us to come to realize that indifference and silence to the suffering of others can perpetuate even greater problems. Doing and saying nothing is still an active response for something.
This is the stigma surrounding addiction that needs the light of love shone on it.
Let me be clear, I get it…When we don’t understand something or someone, it’s scary. The disease of addiction has been kept hidden like a recluse for as long as I can remember, and it’s always been safer that way. Keeping it hidden in church basements and community halls, never wanting our friends to know, or really the world in general, cause com’on, what would people think if they knew?
There are many advocacy groups out there now making their voices known for all the world to see and hear that, “HEY, it’s okay to be an addict, and/or an alcoholic.” Honestly I should know because I am one. Recovery is happening, a revolution in its own right. Hope is here.
Today as I write this sadly I feel like we still have so far to go. The deaths due to drug overdose are piling up higher and higher literally and sometimes each hour, body upon body, upon body.
This “genocide” isn’t what we would normally define as genocide. Maybe a better term might be collateral damage? My hearts intention in all this is that genocide holds the mirror revealing our indifference. Indifference is as dangerous as the genocide itself.
People are dying at an alarming rate, at alarming ages, and what really needs to change is not changing. Why? Is it because we see these individuals as less than human? Do we really believe they had it coming in some way or they should know better? We mourn over celebrities dying of drug overdoses but what of the many, many people we see every day? I know countless families that have lost their children to a drug overdose. Children…what is wrong with that statement?
How many people need to die for drastic measures and changes to occur? How many youth and young adults need to die, before we change the way we look at addiction? How many mothers and fathers? What is the acceptable number of deaths? So far these deaths have been acceptable, clearly, because still not enough is in place to properly help those suffering with this disease. Could this be called indifference?
Which leads me to this question again, are these individuals less than human? All these individuals, from Prince and Whitney Houston, to the boys I knew ages 17 to 24, and finally to my own daughter, who battles this torturous disease every day while we stare at her from across the street judging and thinking what? What are we thinking?
“I am not angry or sad or happy to see you. I could not give a shit. You don’t even ripple.”
Whose child has to die before things really change? What if we examined what it truly means to be a responsible citizen of this nation and of the world community? There is no “us” and “them.” There are no “less than” humans. Human is human, period. Addiction is a disease of suffering and all who connect with it in some way suffer. But ignorance and indifference can no longer justify the amount of people dying. Education and awareness open the door to understanding, which leads to compassion and empathy, which bridges the way to hope. When we can offer hope, shame dissipates, revealing a chance at redemption and recovery.
In the words of Martin Luther King, it has been said that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. Indifference cannot drive out indifference, only love can do that. Love never fails.