A young poet and writer who lost his father to opioid addiction says there's nothing cool about what the drugs did to his dad. So why are peers trying to look like emaciated people with addiction?
A young poet and writer who lost his father to opioid addiction says there's nothing cool about what the drugs did to his dad. So why are peers trying to look like emaciated people with addiction?Guillermo A. Santos on his high school graduation day in 2021, with his father, Guillermo Jose Santos. The elder Santos died later the same year of a drug overdose.Guillermo A. Santos on his high school graduation day in 2021, with his father, Guillermo Jose Santos.
If you look up videos of the worst of the opioid epidemic, you will see Kensington's"zombies." People seem to fall asleep standing up, lingering under bridges and near subway stations. They stagger with needles still in their arms or hunch over in the pains of withdrawal, sometimes motionless in the middle of the street trying to keep standing. In those videos, you can see the house where I grew up.
I was angry, and I let people know. I was told to stop complaining; it wasn't that big a deal. One person said he knew what it was like to be a minority:"I'm used to weird looks on the street. I dyed my hair green." This is, of course, not new. The same impulse made previous generations long for television appearances and their own Warholian 15 minutes. It's a recurrent fashion trend for the affluent to wear the rags of the marginalized. When someone pale, thin, pretty and famous gets hooked, condemnation flips to adulation and imitation.and died there as well, of addiction just like my father.
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