Overdose Awareness & Demon Copperhead

 

Almighty God,

we gather to mourn and honor
those who have lost in the battle to addiction.
May our collective witness
comfort those who grieve death to overdose,
be a beacon of light to those lost in the darkness of substance use,
and encourage those who walk the path of recovery,

Help us to stand with one another
Help us to help one another in our times of need.
Help us to believe in the transformative power of
empathy and love.

In your great Love, O God, we stand
hoping for a glimpse of heaven now.
Amen.

Adapted by Jacob Juncker from a prayer “For an Untimely or Tragic Death” found in The United Methodist Book of Worship (Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House, 1992, p.164).

This past Saturday was Overdose Awareness Day. Vigils, marches, and events were held in many communities to draw attention to the crisis of drug use and addiction leading to what are often fatal overdoses. While some people have been essentially brought back from the dead many times. others have died as the result for their first experiment with hard drugs, including opioids in various forms 

As it happens, I was in the home stretch of reading the Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver. This was my third and ultimately successful attempt to make my through what I found to be a relentlessly harrowing story. Kingsolver is an exceptional writer. I would like to read The Poisonwood Bible again and I have read Flight Behavior twice. Demon Copperhead is her reimagining of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Kingsolver considers the plight of orphans in the Appalachian region which is her home and she avoids the persistent hillbilly stereotypes, even as she addressed the generational effects of poverty and loss. 

I needed three attempts at reading Demon Copperhead because I have a visceral aversion to stories involving abuse of children, whether in fiction or non-fiction. At one point the  boy protagonist with the nickname observes that “a kid is a terrible thing to be, in charge of nothing”. And just when I figured that he was emerging from his trauma...well, let's say that the cancer of the opioid crisis in rural America spreads in this rural setting.

I first heard the term "Hillbilly Heroin" to refer to opioids when we lived in Halifax at the turn of the millenium when a popular Cape Breton radio host was arrested for the armed robbery of service stations for money to feed his addiction. Since then we have all become much more aware of the toll that these powerful drugs has taken on untold thousands and perhaps millions in North America. In the United States this is the leading cause of death for people under fifty. 

A few months ago there was a rash of overdoses in a matter of hours here in Belleville that shook civic leaders to the core. Several occurred almost simultaneously outside the drop-in centre at the church I served before retirment. For all the discussion at the time it seems so difficult to find solutions. Recently our Ontario premier demonstrated how little he understands about the dangers of overdosing even as he claims that his government wants to provide support.

I've suggested before that this is crisis of meaning that is deeply spiritual, but communities of faith are ill-equipped to respond even when they want to make a difference. I am convinced that it is societal evil when the owners of companies such as Perdue Pharma who falsely marketed drugs such as Oxycontin as non-addictive are able to ultimately escape personal prosecution. 

Demon Copperhead is powerful, and if you haven't watched the Dopesick series I encourage you to do so. The story of the Sackler family is well worth reading as well.