Things I still want to say

Today I was a panelist on the KATU news opioid crisis town hall. It was my first live speaking event. I have some things I wish I could have said, so I’m writing them here.

I went to jail for the first time in 2013. I was addicted to heroin but had recently been started on suboxone, but I was still using heroin. Knowing that I was going to jail, I got a letter from my doctor, where he extolled the importance of maintaining me on the medication. I was 23 and naive. I thought the jail would prescribe me my medication, because, well… It was medication. When I arrived at the jail, after the strip search, I began asking for my suboxone. They asked me why I was prescribed it, and when I said it was for my opioid use disorder, they informed me that was not a legitimate use and they only continue it for pain patients. I detoxed cold turkey for a week. I was then released, still feeling sick and with a diminished tolerance. I’m lucky I didn’t overdose. What I surely didn’t do was show up 48 hours later clean for my drug court check-in.

At the town hall last night Sheriff Reese told me the jail has updated it’s policies and no longer destabilizes people off of their medication. This is perceived as a radical and progressive policy—that is basic common sense. Not torturing people is radical, it seems.

When I was eventually revoked out of drug court, I received my first felony conviction. Up until that point I had been attending PCC for emergency medicine. I had gotten my EMT and was then working on the prerequisites for paramedic school. After the felony, what was the point? I could never work in the medical field, get a professional license, or rent an apartment. A felony is a lifelong brand that I could never overcome, no matter if I overcame my addiction. Hope for my future was dashed out of me. I resigned myself to a life and death of heroin addiction. Today I have hope but I still have felonies that I can never overcome. This is not a system based on rehabilitation and redemption. This is never-ending punishment.

People have to be alive to get clean. Portland’s harm reduction measures kept me alive long enough for me to get clean and be here today. I accessed syringe exchange services and twice was revived with Narcan.

Drugs come into the country through legal border checkpoints. The DEA admits this in their own literature. A wall will not stop the flow of drug. Where there is voracious demand, there will be ample supply.

America fiercely values independence. The other side of independence is loneliness. Substance use, suicide, and overdose are all increasing simultaneously. Meanwhile we live increasingly disconnected lives and stare into our phones hours and hours a day, foregoing authentic social connection. Disastrous coincidence or related phenomena, I am unsure. We are a lonely people. The antidote to addiction is community, love, and purpose.