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Lately there's been a lot of local and semi-local news coverage about heroin addicts buying and injecting what they think is heroin but what is actually heroin laced with Fentanyl, a super high powered pain killer that's apparently also a junkie killer when mixed with their fix.
So everyone who cares about humanity and all the good people in the world are urging junkies not to buy heroin from untrusted sources and to be careful.
I'm just sitting over here like 'meh'.
These aren't innocent babies getting fed toxins because no one bothered to check their formula for rat poison. They're not starving Haitians making dirt cakes or mud cookies because there's no affordable food.
They're drug addicts, whose desire for another fix has killed them. Why is that so tragic?
I know I'm not a nice person, and I've genuinely tried to consider that the people dying of laced injections are someones children, maybe someones parents, and I've even tried to consider that it might someday be my children.
I'm sure everyone, except maybe junkies themselves, assumes their kids will never grow up to be so dependent on a chemical that they're willing to die for it. Of course, this is not reality, as there are still addicts and there are still people dying because of their addictions. So some people are obviously wrong about the paths their children will take.
It's pretty arrogant for me to assume, while my kids are still young-ish teens and therefore still as under my control as another person can be, that my kids will never be addicted to meth, or heroin, or cocaine, or whatever new thing comes out by the time they're adults. And yet, I kind of do.
Even recognizing how wrong some people must be, and the probability that at least one of the monkeys living with me will try at least one of the above-mentioned drugs, I still can't really find it in me to feel brokenhearted about the current rise in heroin-related deaths.
As a parent, do I feel there are unforgivable crimes my children could commit to make me write them off? Ummm, yeah, actually. Drug use isn't one of them, but I still don't think I'd blame myself or get all bent if as an adult, my child veered off the course I'd hoped (s)he'd take. I'm hopeful that my eagle-eyed husband and I are keeping a close enough watch and honest enough discussion running now to prevent any serious addiction issues in the future.
Eventually, though, the kids will all be grown and gone and responsible for themselves. If one of them decides to start running coke for the Mexican cartel and gets killed trying to cross the border, will that be my fault? No, because they were all warned against such things practically from the womb.
Once they start making their own decisions, they have to live with the consequences. Sometimes those consequences are pretty severe.
Deciding to inject a substance whose origins are completely unclear into their bodies for the sake of a high has the potential consequence of killing them- even without the Fentanyl.
I just don't have it in me to get all choked up about the fact that someone who knowingly and willingly participated in extremely risky behavior had their luck run out.
No one forced these people to start abusing heroin, and no one forced them to continue, especially after the news reports hit. Once the word was starting to spread about how dangerous heroin use was becoming, the people who continued to use were basically living on borrowed time anyhow, and it's not altogether sad to me that that time has expired.
This is just another thing that proves I'm a terrible person, and I'm mostly okay with that.
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