My dad didn’t abuse oxycontin. But with no health insurance and Congress making prescriptions impossible to get, he had to start buying his oxy on the black market. He was physically dependent on it. But NOT working was not an option he had. Then they shut down the pill mills.
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When oxy became impossible to obtain even on the black market, my dad’s back was already so bad he was losing feeling in his legs. Being physically dependent on opioids, he started buying heroin from a friend of his and snorting it twice a day to keep from getting sick.
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So that’s how my dad ended up using heroin. Never injecting. But enough to where I could tell he was nodding over the phone. He was a hard worker. A gifted builder. He LIKED working. A simple surgery could have fixed his back and shoulder pain. But never had the money for that.
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When we finally took him to a nursing home, the doctor took one look at his x-rays and said: “Your dad has what we call ‘exuberant osteophytes’. I’m surprised he was walking. Hell, I’m surprised he’s even continent, with all that nerve pressure.” Prescribed him one oxy, daily.
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All my dad wanted to do was work. A job with benefits was out of his reach, thanks to a felony conviction for marijuana in the early 70s. He did TWO YEARS in prison for a plant that grows naturally all over New England. The crooked cop’s sister? She was a customer of my dad’s.
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The hood where I grew up was called the Highlands neighborhood in Lowell, MA. You might know it from the movie “The Fighter”, or the HBO documentary “High On Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell”. I grew up seen dozens of friends’ lives cut short by heroin or by gun violence.
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Too many of my friends lived through the crack epidemic, and the gang violence, only to end up using prescribed opioids so they could keep going to work with serious injuries. All fixable with surgery. Many of my friends became dependent on heroin and later died from fentanyl.
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I don’t know how my dad managed to avoid overdosing on fentanyl. It was just luck of the draw. All the man ever wanted to do was to swing a hammer. He was a damn good builder and draftsman. He did exquisite work. A lifelong bookworm. A jazz and blues fanatic. A good dad.pic.twitter.com/AT6uv3Osap
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I have so much rage towards this system. A system that took my dad away from his family and locked him in a hole for two years and branded him for life. Over a medicinal weed. A system that denied him medical care and sold him addictive pills instead of providing an easy cure.
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My dad had no access to medical care. They gave him oxycontin instead, so he could work through pain. Then they cancelled his scrip. Then they shut down the black market. Finally in my dad’s last years, the nursing home doc sees his X-ray, and writes him an oxy scrip like THAT.
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The system chewed my dad up and spit him out. At least he was white, so he got 2 years for weed instead of 20. Our so-called “health care” and “criminal justice” systems are weapons of exploitation and brutality. The Sackler family who pushed all that Oxy? They’re billionaires.
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On top of all that, because of our government’s genocidal mishandling of COVID, we couldn’t see my dad for the last year of his life. He got COVID anyway, and “recovered” but his breathing never was the same. I got 60 seconds with my dad in hospice, before he breathed his last.
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Here’s my dad. Keith. Tweed. Chief. The Big Kahuna. Papa K.
I miss him.pic.twitter.com/cTLOBlzq6h
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One more word. So many of the elderly people like my dad who caught COVID and then “recovered” — only to die gasping for air a couple months later because their lungs never returned to normal? Those aren’t being counted as COVID deaths. They should be.
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