Fighting Words

For the past two decades of my life I have been constantly on the receiving end of messages telling me that there is something wrong with me.  I heard it from my parents growing up, when I stopped being their perfect little angel daughter.  I heard it from my friends as an adolescent and a teenager, when my behavior didn't conform to what was "cool" at the time.  I heard it from just about every man I ever dated.  Then I became a heroin addict, and that became the perfect scapegoat for my "wrongness."  Everything I did that was not deemed socially acceptable, every character defect I possessed, every bad behavior I engaged in was automatically attributed to the fact that I was a junkie.  I went to jail, to rehab, to church, to therapists, to doctors, to psychiatrists...all of them agreed that there was something wrong with me.  "Yes, Juli, you are not right in the head.  You are 'off.'  You don't belong anywhere, you only fit in with the othe...

I recently learned that there are people in our communities opposing the administration of Narcan to those experiencing an opiate overdose.  The logic behind their opposition is that states and counties are footing the bill for this reckless behavior, and taxpayers should not be fiscally responsible for saving the lives of people who, in their opinion, don't value their own lives.  Essentially, they are saying money is more important to them than human beings are.  This makes me physically ill, the idea that a person's life is not worth saving if they are an addict.  Clearly these misinformed individuals don't know anything about addiction, and I've always adhered to the idea that if you know jack shit about something you should shut your fool mouth and get educated before spewing an opinion.  Just saying.  Unfortunately we live in an era where misinformation is touted as fact and people are too lazy to question it, hence the circus sideshow ...