August 16th Newsletter
Hello! Welcome to Overdosed a weekly newsletter on drug policy and people who use drugs by me, Diane Roznowski.
This week, I won’t be doing a traditional newsletter. Last week my grandmother passed away after a short time receiving hospice care. The physical pain she felt at the end of her life reminded me that even though pain pills including opioids are prescribed too quickly in the US, they still have many beneficial uses. I want to talk about that further in another newsletter.
I was going to take the week off from sending anything out, but this Sunday would have been my older sister Emily’s 25th birthday. Instead, it is the third year I’m experiencing her birthday without her.
My sister died after receiving a packet of pure fentanyl after buying what she thought was heroin on December 3, 2016. She was 22 years old and left behind a nine-month-old daughter, our mother, and myself.
In the two and a half years since her death, the overdose statistics have only gotten worse, but that may be changing. Over the last couple of weeks, preliminary numbers for the 2018 overdose statistics have started being reported and they show that there may have been a decline in the number of overdose deaths. Policymakers, politicians, and pundits alike have been touting this as wonderful and while reducing these deaths is a good thing, there are still far too many people dying from overdoses. Far too many people have died and will continue to die if we do not strengthen our commitment to stopping these deaths and demand our government does the same.
In honor of my sister’s should be 25th birthday I’d like to ask you to do something in her memory or in the memory of someone you have lost to an overdose this week. I’d love it if you did a random act of kindness like paying for the person behind you at a coffee shop or if you did something related specifically related to substance use and overdoses. I’d love it if you decide to start carrying naloxone or make a donation to Safehouse in Philadelphia. Safehouse is working to become the first above-ground overdose prevention site in the United States. If you are uncomfortable supporting Safehouse financially I would love it if you donate to the Pennsylvania Harm Reduction Coalition or a non-profit in your community.
It’s impossible to describe everything Emily was and everything she could have been. At the end of her obituary we included the following quote which I think is the best way to describe her:
She was Brave
And Strong
And Broken
All at Once
- Anna Funder
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Until next time,
