i've seen the needle and the damage done

I love pictures of people as children.  It's such a pure time in life, riddled with innocence, happiness, and laughter.  My brothers and I had a great childhood.  My parents were loving, involved, and always answered our questions.  Trust me, we had a lot.  Here's a pretty accurate description of us:

That's me, my little brother Connor, and the oldest, Kienan. I was always smiling and posing, Connor was always making faces--typically angry ones, and Kienan was always super excited about something and forever curious.

When we're born, we start our journey of life.  We begin our story.  We grow and change and evolve; we never stop this process.  You need to trust this journey and understand that sometimes, even if we don't agree with the life someone else is living--they are on that journey for a reason.  Their story is just as valid as yours.  Although I cannot tell you the full story about my brother's downward spiral into heroin addiction, I can tell you the story about how it has changed me.

For as long as I can remember, Kienan was so insanely curious.  He wanted to know EVERYTHING.  He and I are similar in this regard, yet as talkative as I am, I could never get a word in edgewise when he was near.  I always held him to a high regard.  As soon as he could talk, he was swearing himself to the Marines.  He had no other dream than to follow in the footsteps of my father.  He wanted to fight for our country.  He was always so unbelievably smart, able to hold a conversation with anyone about literally anything.  Take a look at this picture.  He was seven here and gripping a book called Eye Deep in Hell.  It's about trench warfare in WWI.  See me over there?  Yeah, my basket is full with more age-appropriate kitten Beanie Babies, idiot that I was.

I wanted to briefly paint a portrait of us growing up.  It's hard to relate to drug addicts when we forget that they once had dreams and aspirations, that they once were children giggling and loving and hoping.  In high school, Kienan and I were close.  We had some of the same friends and hung out together.  He was "straightedge" until late into junior year of high school.  His report card was pretty much pristine until around that time, too.  His life started changing for the worse his senior year.  He started doing pills, which were initially prescribed to him for a surgery, tripping on cough medicine, drinking recklessly, smoking cigarettes.  The Marines took him, but within a month he was medically discharged for his asthma and allergies.  He came back a shell of himself.  Depressed and disappointed, he continued his drug use.  I continued to lie for him, for a short time, thinking that my brother would be able to just stop.  I was mistaken.

He began shooting heroin when he was around 19 years old—I was 18.  I couldn’t deny the rift that had started separating us the year prior, when he returned from the Marine Corps, depressed.  I also could not deny the story that his whole body showed—veins retreating from his flesh, needle marks where he poked and prodded, infection at the worst spots, and a graying of his skin, which alluded death.  For four years, I wrestled with him, fought, screamed, begged, cursed, cried.  I cried a lot.  I got nowhere--he got worse.



Heroin had become his story.  Let me tell you one thing about heroin, though.  When someone involves heroin in their life, heroin involves everyone around them.  Heroin not only became his story, it became mine.  For as long as he was awake, I was awake, pacing my room, wondering if he'd nod out while smoking a cigarette, or if the rattling breaths he took while high would give way to a cold silence, like it had done for so many before and since.   

I judged him... hard.  As I grow as a human, and as a nursing student, I have realized more about myself and my calling as a nurse.  Nurses need to be nonjudgmental to deliver the best quality of care, and it is my firm belief that people, as individuals should follow suit.  I knew this truth.  Judging others is not a good quality to have—rather, acceptance for that person should be given freely.  Yet I still found myself denying this to my brother.  I once told him he was already dead, no longer the brother I knew, and we were waiting to bury him.  He looked at me and simply said, "I'm sorry I can't be the brother you want me to be right now."

Finally, I realized this judgment I passed upon him every time I looked at him in disgust was not doing either of us any good.  Researching and learning about heroin addiction has, in a way, become an addiction of mine.  I have accepted him for who he is, who he wants to be.  I do not condone his drug use, but I no longer look at him as a heroin addict.  I look at him as my brother, with immense potential.   I have educated myself on the risks, the potential problems, the statistics, the success stories, the failures all surrounding this evil drug.  I know as a nurse I want to work with vulnerable populations.  I want to give a voice to those who aren’t accepted.  I want to listen to the pain in their stories and in their hearts, and I want to make a difference.   

So today,  I say "FUCK HEROIN", wearing this shirt from The Force Clothing.  If profanity offends you more than the overdoses and deaths, diseases, and dependencies that have resulted from this drug, please educate yourself. 



I know that most people reading this blog will know, have known, or will come to know someone who is/was/will be addicted to heroin.  Maybe they have found peace in sobriety.  Maybe they have found peace in death.  Maybe they continue their story with heroin.  

But just know it is not just their story.  If you care about them, it is your story as well.

Heroin addiction does not just infiltrate the poor.  It is a cheap drug, but it is affecting children of wealth, the middle class, and the poor.  It is killing people from good families, people without pathologies of a "fucked up" childhood.  It is imprisoning intelligent minds and people you love.  My brother did not just wake up saying, "I think I'll shoot some heroin today."  The problem often begins with the signature of a doctor.

Educate yourself and those you love.  Promote harm reduction or sobriety, provide a shoulder to cry on, and listen to their story without judgment.  Healing does not occur in a place of resistance, rather in a place of acceptance.