“Perceptions,” by Gerry Warner

Op-Ed Commentary

I know where I was when the opioid crisis began although I didn’t know it at the time. I was in a hotel room in Bath, England when the shocking announcement erupted on BBC – Michael Jackson was dead.

Jackson, of course, was making a comeback and there were huge billboard signs of him moonwalking all over London from where I had just arrived. I wasn’t a big fan of the “King of Pop,” but I knew this was a big deal. A huge deal, in fact, that shocked the world. Little did I know that Jackson was an opioid addict and that he died of an overdose given to him by his personal physician, the first shocking news story about the deadly pain killer with many more shockers to come.

The fact that Jackson died of an opioid administered by a physician shows just how deadly the drug is. Imagine, then, how deadly it must be for people taking it on the street. Actually, there’s no need to imagine because B.C. public health officials tell us the province is on track to record more than a thousand opioid overdose deaths this year with fentanyl being the major killer. The situation is so bad that a public health crisis has been declared and policeman and firemen are carrying Naloxone kits with them and injecting it into overdose victims because naloxone temporarily reverses the effects of fentanyl and saves lives, at least for the moment. Pharmacies in Ontario are offering naloxone kits for free in a desperate attempt to stem the overdose tide and some school boards in B.C. have been calling for Naloxone kits to be made available in the province’s schools.

What the hell is going on?

Without trying to be too hyperbolic about it, I think I know and it pains me to say it. How can any reasonably intelligent and honest person look at the opioid crisis, which is rapidly becoming world-wide, and avoid the thought that society is unraveling? We’re on the threshold of a crisis that’s threatening to undo our civilization as we’ve known it and nobody really knows how to deal with it.

Go ahead and call me an alarmist if you want, but how do you explain a society that’s asking police officers and firefighters to become doctors administering drugs as if their jobs aren’t tough enough as it is? Or schools providing overdose reversal kits? Hell, when I went to school in the 1960s a trip to the school’s sick room meant you might get an aspirin. How do you explain free Naloxone take-home kits being distributed in several provinces now or the 978 overdose deaths in B.C. last year?

Still not convinced? How do you explain B.C. Health Minister Judy Darcy and other health ministers in Canada and the U.S. calling for heroin and other hard drugs to be decriminalized so they can be used to treat fentanyl victims? What’s your bright idea to deal with the crisis?

I have to admit I don’t have one other than avoiding all drugs as much as possible and exercising every day. But I do think I have an inkling of what’s causing this world-wide breakdown and it’s not rocket science. We are witnessing the breakdown of the nuclear family as it has been known through the millennia.

Mom, dad and the kids. Mom, the homemaker and arbitrator of family values, dad the breadwinner and protector and kids being raised in a loving, nurturing environment that leads them to develop into self-directed and productive members of society. I know it sounds idealistic and even a bit corny – the Ozzie and Harriet televised family of the ‘50s – but hey it worked as opposed to what’s happening today.

Today’s society is for the most part affluent and secular with both parents working and their latchkey kids left alone to their own devices (literally) at home or in daycare to be looked after by strangers making the minimum wage. Family meals are no longer common anymore. Nor the parental guidance and direction that went with them. And when kids lack direction, the slippery slope is never far away and they become lost and vulnerable to whatever gives them a lift and I don’t need to tell you that the “lift” is often drugs.

If you’ve got a better theory why so many kids grow up to be adults deliberately taking a drug they know could kill them, I’d like to hear it.

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist who’s experienced his share of the anomie that today’s society often provides.

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