Book 248 - A Year of Magical Learning (Part 2/2)

Reflection Title: Community is the Antidote to Pain!

Book – Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones (Part 2 or 2)

Book Description: From a small town in Mexico to the boardrooms of Big Pharma to main streets nationwide, an explosive and shocking account of addiction in the heartland of America.

In 1929, in the blue-collar city of Portsmouth, Ohio, a company built a swimming pool the size of a football field; named Dreamland, it became the vital center of the community. Now, addiction has devastated Portsmouth, as it has hundreds of small rural towns and suburbs across America--addiction like no other the country has ever faced. How that happened is the riveting story of Dreamland.

Reflection:

“In our isolation, heroine thrives” – Sam Quinones

Heroine, opioids, and benzos all have one thing in common…isolation.

They are lonely drugs that are designed to take us further away from this world and the people around us the more we consume them. The author draws a fascinating corollary to our modern day increasingly isolationist society as to why opioid use has found such a natural home amongst our people. That is because heroine is the definition of isolation. That drug is meant to be consumed by yourself, alone in your room, and as far away from the world as possible. You are don’t see opioid addicts dancing at a rave with thousands of people all around them, you find them passed out by themselves in a room.

Trust me, I get it that pain sucks! I’ve lived it, and I will always be living with it for the rest of my life. 30 times a day at least I think of Emilia, what she went through, and what we are all missing out on together today. It hurts because pain is…PAINFUL! Pain is isolating. Pain is hard. Pain is personal…at least that is what we think. It is very easy for me to think to myself, “What does so and so understand about my pain? Have you ever had to make the call to pull your 39-day old first born child off life support and watch her take her last breath in her mother’s arms?”

So, we retreat. When we are in pain, whether it be mentally, physically, or spiritually…we pull back because we think people will never understand or be able to help us. We pull back, we stop talking, we stop going to social gatherings, we stop answering the phone, we stop responding to messages, and we eventually get what we want...isolation. I get it, I did the same thing.

It isn’t a huge stretch of the imagination to think of myself as one of those statistics that dot the opioid epidemic we hear about every day. All I had to do was to go to my doctor, therapist, hospital counselor and tell them that I was in pain after Emilia died and I would have had my prescription of choice. From there, roll the dice on what happens next I guess. Maybe I find a way back to this world, maybe I don’t.

So, what will? The author says, “The antidote to heroine is community”!

He’s right, but I would slightly modify that statement to make it broader and say “The antidote to pain is community”!

The one thing I know for certain is that no drug will never take the pain of losing Emilia away. The only thing that has come even close to providing some relief has been sharing her and my story with the world through our writing. This is my pain reliever of choice, and it has helped to connect me to so many others already in this world and will do so for many more to come.

If you find yourself in pain, do yourself a favor and choose community over isolation. Run as fast as you can toward anyone and everyone with opens arms wide open. It won’t take the pain away, but it just may make life a little more bearable by sharing your story.

Question: What do you do when you are in pain, retreat or embrace the world around you?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? - An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones