Saint Narcan

There's been a rise of heroin users in my part of the world. It's actually a fascinating phenomenon. First, an area or group of people becomes severely addicted to pain pills. It's usually a group that are low-income and have some sort of free/low cost heath insurance program, mostly people on disability for chronic pains and problems. So these high-level pain pills are being distributed to people with real pain and not much money. These people find that their pain is pretty easily taken care of with less pills than they were prescribed, so the extras get sold for around $5-$20 a pop(depending on dosage). Some doctors become hesitant to prescribe them-Which leads to doctor-shopping, changing docs until you find someone that will give you the pain pills you ask for. For awhile there's a booming med market, everyone has a few extra bucks and no pain, but everyone's gotten right addicted. Then, the local law enforcement gets involved, does a few raids, cracks down on who gets the pills and who doesn't, and pills are costing the average buyer anywhere from $30 to $80. Fortunately for the average addict, there's a much cheaper drug becoming available: heroin.

Heroin is widely regarded as the King of all drugs, the most addictive illegal substance you can possibly get your hands on. I've seen hardened users draw the line at heroin-People that would do three lines of coke without blinking an eye. The biggest problem with heroin(you know, other than it's extreme addictiveness and reasonable price) is that the majority of cheap heroin is cut with something to fluff up the amount and earn the dealer a few extra bucks. Then, every once in awhile, a pure dose comes through. People get used to a certain dosage of heroin, and try to take as much as they would with a cut dose, which is a frightening thing to expose your body to. Usually, you don't know it's pure until you're on the floor foaming at the mouth.

Recently, I submitted an application for Narcan training. Naloxone/Narcan is a drug that reverses the effects of heroin, especially during an overdose. It's a free course offered by the Health Department, and you come away with two intranasal(up the nose) doses and knowledge on how to use it. I know people that do heroin, I know people who have died via overdose, and I know for a fact that these are people my mother associaties with. She swears she isn't doing heroin, but how long until she does?

So, I let my boss know that I needed to leave just a few minutes early for my training today. And that was fine, I'm always twenty minutes early anyway, but she and another woman who works here had plenty to say about me being trained.

"What are you gonna do if you go in to help someone overdosing, and there's dirty needles everywhere, and they stab you for ruining their high?!"

"Babydoll, I'm just looking out for you. You need to really think about what you're doing here."

Fuck. Off.

I'm not getting this training because I'm a silly little girl that wants to traipse through the Hood(capital H) and save the poor heroin sinners from their fate. Saint Naloxone, bestowing her nasal spray of life, performing great works in someone or another's name.

I'm getting this training because I care about the people I know enough to take a free opportunity to learn how to keep them from dying. And honestly, heroin dens with needles everywhere are something you only find in a large city-Raids are too frequent around here for anyone to be that stupid. This is training that has been proven to save lives. Knowledge is power, power to help.

I know more about the people I'm doing this for than you. I'm tired of people assuming I don't know what I'm doing. This is for my own reasons, and I hope I never need it, but one day I might. And when that day comes, I'll shove that naloxone up someone's nose and I'm gonna go ahead and bet no one is going to stab me.

Indescribable Moments of your Life

Seeing the fireflies rise up from the grass just after sunset. It's like swimming through the stars.

The burst of motivation that hits you only every so often, and leads you to clean your entire house in a couple of hours.

One day, you eat nothing but eggs. The next, you eat nothing at all. You think in numbers, measuring your progress religiously. You feel defined, but it doesn't hurt as bad as it used to.

Having a mini-ritual with someone, like the way you and the nice boy from work talk while you get your coffee in the mornings you work early.

Falling asleep next to your beautiful boy. In that moment between sleeping and awake, where Tink always waits for Peter Pan, and you admit to yourself that it will never be the same. You and him are changed, in ways both good and bad.

Learning how to fix a car yourself, and remembering that you've also learned to stand alone.

The nice boy texts you random things sometimes and compliments you(on your hair and your cleverness). You feel a ball of happiness tucked away inside, that you pull out and look at sometimes when no one is around.

Sometimes, the world is an awful place. It feels like everything is going to come crashing down. You have a moment where you remember that the world has felt like this before. Your grandmother survived the Depression, your father survived Vietnam, you will survive this. This too shall pass.

You go down to the boathouse to take stock of your boat trailers for work. The guy that runs the operation tells you about his band and his songwriting, how to take out the kayaks and the combination for the shed. He reminds you of the 80's, when things were loose and free. It's nice. He admits to having a few tags on the wrong trailers, having a few in his office, losing the stickers for the ones that he doesn't take on the road. You let it slide.

You first heard this song while you were working in the print shop. The muse turned it up, either not knowing or caring that you were there. It's wonderful, and cathartic, and you love it. It describes something in you that you haven't named before. You play it at full blast in the car, and it reminds you of him sometimes. You hope he believes in you like you believe in him.

                      

Flying Away

It's finally clicked. Me and my new car, Jupiter, have finally bonded.

Yesterday, I was riding along on a back road. My windows were down, the music was turned up, and I was going 60. It was great. Lovely. Wonderful.

And then this asshole, which had been riding my bumper for a few miles, decides he's going to pass me in a no-passing zone.

I'm not competitive. I don't have anger issues. But at that moment, something clicked in my brain. Who the hell did this guy think he was, passing me? When he shouldn't be passing anyone at all? Who the fuck-And that's when I floored it.

Now, you're probably thinking "Hey, Cass! That's dangerous!" You're not entirely wrong. But, there are two mitigating factors here. A.) I could see well in front of us and behind us, and I knew there was no one else around. B.) When I say "floored it", I don't mean I gently increased speed to play with him, I mean that I got up to 80 in a few seconds and left his ass in the dust.

There's something special about being able to out-drive someone with an arguably better car. Sure, yours is fourteen years younger and has heated seats, but do you know how to take your turns?

The poor sap tried his damnedest to keep up, but there was no help for him. He would almost catch up, and we'd hit a curve. He'd get close again, and we'd run into the stretch of that road littered with potholes. Eventually, he was a speck in my rear view mirror. I thought That's right, motherfucker. I'm better than you and I know it.

The important part of this story, though, is that the way I reacted showed a huge amount of trust and familiarity with the way Jupiter moves and handles. I made the decision to race this guy without thinking about it, because on the deepest level, I knew we could handle it. Let me explain it better with Chris Pratt:




(Sassy, Mr. Pratt).

I know my car. Not fully-there's still plenty to learn-But I know him and trust him on an intuitive level, one that allows me to make snap decisions. If I ever find myself in an emergency situation, I'll be that much safer. I'm that much happier. I'm that much freer.