The Opioid Crisis - Plan to A Better Insight

“Sea to Shining Sea,” is said to be one of the most popular of the many American Patriotic songs. Originally written atop the pinnacle of “Pikes Peak” in Colorado, a mountain top where looking east to sea and back west to another shining sea, America can and was imagined.

I have my own memory of “Sea to Shining Sea.” It began with my journey from boyhood to adulthood when I left home for the first time. The United States Navy allowed me to visit many of the World’s Sea’s. At the beginning, it was the Pacific off the coast of San Diego. There I attended Boot-Camp, Hospital Corpsmen A-School in Balboa Park, and Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) Training in Coronado.

Upon graduation from BUD/S I was sent to Little Creek, Virginia, and my new Command, UDT-22. Having grown up in Northern California I’d seen countless sunset’s over the Pacific Ocean. I remember how special that first sunrise was above the Atlantic Ocean, the experience enhancing my journey toward understanding and meaning as the song title states, “Sea to Shining Sea.”

Nation's Opioid Crisis

I share this because of late I have been contemplating a social issue of epidemic proportions. In this case, the sun is not the only thing that transitions from the eastern seaboard to set in the west, here, too, a nation’s opioid crisis has followed the same trajectory. Like the song and the person my family and our military nurtured (me), I, too, am patriotic.

As a patriot, I share this thought with “we the people of America.” I do so because the answer to this problem is going to require a patriotic response.

I offer this perspective as a drug addict/alcoholic with 28 years of sobriety, one who has been licensed as a Clinical Social Worker for the past decade. I express this offer through an emotional, spiritual lens of experience, learned from all of you in the land between sea and shining sea.

What I know as fact is addiction is indiscriminate, not caring about color, ethnicity, gender, religious belief or sexual identity. Most of all it does not care if you’re a Republican, Democrat, or Independent. It cannot be reasoned with, physically confronted, psychologically manipulated, or intellectually justified. It can, however, be spiritually embraced and stabilized with mental toughness through appropriate love, compassion, and empathy.

Why You Can't Just "Say No"

What am I talking about, you ask? What I’m talking about is best clarified this way; I’ve been asked by people who do not struggle with addiction, why can’t you just say “No?” No one has ever really understood my answer that is not addicted themselves. What is sad is I am also utterly confused when I’ve asked these same individuals, how is it that you can just say no?

Since this is not an answer, I will attempt to answer a different question from the same perspective, hopefully to bring an essence of clarity. This question is far more important if someone truly wants to understand why I can’t just say no. The question, what do you feel emotionally just before you fail to say no?

The answer is pain, I feel pain and emptiness, I feel as though I am falling, losing sanity, or suffocating. The most important feeling, the one that’s overwhelming is “I don’t want to feel any of these things, I honestly don’t want to feel anything, I just want to escape.”

Sadly, with this feeling I became the center of the all-consuming universe, where only one thing matters, everything else is irrelevant. In this moment I cannot be deceived, manipulated, guilted, threatened or reasoned with. Not by any outside force can I be denied what I desire.

The reason for this is within me; inside I am deceiving, manipulating, feeling guilty, and threatening myself with a fear greater than any outside source: the loss of self.

I know hidden deep within is the ‘me’ that knows this is wrong, unhealthy, dangerous and illogical.

Without a spiritual intervention specific to the individual, stabilized with a foundation of mental toughness and supported with authentic love, compassion and empathy, I will never be able to just say no!

From the coast where the sun begins its rise over the sea, I’ve tracked the opioid scourge. I’ve observed the reporting by the FDA beginning in 2008 that held a series of meetings to discuss opioid risks, misuse and abuse.

From local news outlets, information started filtering out of businesses benefiting in the form of flower sales for so many funerals. There are the organ recipients benefiting from deceased youthful donors. Law enforcement making clear to the public if you’ll come to the station for Naloxone, no questions asked.

Continuing across the country there have been sharp increases of children, especially toddlers hospitalized due to prescription poisoning. As if it’s not enough, researchers have found that the opioid drugs interfere with the brains parenting impulse.

Finally, on April 26, 2017 in Santa Rosa, California five fatal heroin overdoses in a 10-day period were recorded on the coast where the sun sets upon our nation’s shining sea.

It’s there; I shared it in my offer of an answer using these words, “a spiritual intervention specific to the individual.”

The answer to this dilemma is local; creating a network that begins locally, links regionally and connects nationally.

It must be specific to the individual which is contingent to where home is located. Most importantly it requires a Patriotic embrace by “we the people,” that is all the people residing between sea and shining sea.

So, what say you? It’s simple, just say ‘yes’!