Fentanyl Part 9: Conclusion

“When you open your heart, you get life’s 10,000 sorrows and 10,000 joys.” – Chuang Tzu

I started reporting on this series at the end of July when there were 169 overdose deaths in East Baton Rouge Parish, according to the EBR Coroner’s Office. As of Oct. 17, there were 227 overdose deaths.

That means that the overdose death rate rose 34 percent in less than three months.

Since I started reporting on this series, the Baton Rouge Police Department has identified eight gangs working within the city, and the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office Narcotics Division continues to arrest drug dealers and seize drugs (including fentanyl) and guns, regularly posting about drug busts and arrests on its Facebook page. Meanwhile, Keep Tiger Town Beautiful cleans up dirty drug needles off our city streets while the mayor continues to lose the trust and support of East Baton Rouge Parish residents, and local judges are being criticized for lax sentencing guidelines.

You need a breath? Don’t worry, I do, too. The news is overwhelming. The fear of fentanyl is overwhelming. Life, at times, seems overwhelming.

There were moments during the reporting of this series where I felt overwhelmed by the impact of addiction and opioids. It felt too big and too out of control.

In September, after I interviewed Tonja Myles at The Bridge Center for Hope on Florida Boulevard, I got into my car and drove from The Bridge Center’s parking lot through an adjacent parking lot where an abandoned building sat. At the front door, under an overhang, a man and a woman slept on the concrete, less than 100 feet from the entrance to The Bridge Center. They were lying on their sides, head to head, in the shape of a letter “L,” their bodies loosely covered by a white sheet, a pair of red Nike sneakers and a pair of blue Under Armor sneakers neatly placed on either side of their heads. Graffiti marked one side of the building. In black spray paint, the words “Hell Fire” tagged one of the exterior walls, while a city bike was propped below the graffiti. Plywood covered a few of the windows, empty and flattened dominoes pizza boxes sat on top of a flipped over gray bucket while a giant roll of toilet paper – like the industrial ones used in bathrooms inside of big box stores – sat nearby.

It was 11:15 a.m. on a Wednesday, and I had just left the city’s adult crisis center, funded by tax payer money and known as a one-stop-shop for anyone suffering from mental health or drug abuse. The Bridge Center’s website even states on its landing page: “The center employs a ‘no wrong door’ approach, meaning anyone who is experiencing a crisis is welcomed, whether they walk in, are escorted by loved ones, referred by a provider agency, or transferred by first responders or law enforcement. The Bridge Center for Hope is here to offer the necessary care and comfort to individuals in crisis.”

The juxtaposition of this scene blew my mind, and I debated taking a photo, wanting to respect the privacy of the people sleeping but also wanting to bring light to the issue. In the end, I did take the photo, and I texted it Jon Daily, the deputy finance director and director of special projects for the DA’s Office who also handles all of the DA’s office addiction outreach. I featured Daily in the seventh part of this series, “Law Enforced.” I wanted to try to understand why people weren’t literally walking next door to get help.

I texted him the pictures, writing Help is feet away.

He texted me back a couple of hours later: Pic says a thousand words. But, you know, ya can lead the horse to the water, but ya can’t make it drink.

I can’t fix the fentanyl crisis. There is no simple solution for addiction. It’s a beast, a fire that consumes everything in its way, and it fuels the business of drug manufacturing and dealing. Fentanyl is being sold because it’s being bought. And it’s being bought because it’s being sold. I do believe that those who are working with the impact of addiction and fentanyl every day – at a local, state and federal levels — are doing their absolute best, but the reality is that systems need to be fixed, collaboration is imperative and governments need to move quicker because people are dying every day. The pieces are all there, they just are not fitting together.

So what can we do? I say “we” because I am talking to every parent just like me, who is trying to keep their kids safe while providing them with the necessary tools to live their own lives, independently and successfully.

Here’s what I know from researching this topic: Pain leads to addiction and addiction continues because of pain. I can help with the pain by creating space for my family to feel it without feeling like I need to fix it.

We have to let our kids feel pain. We have to stand by them and allow them to grieve and grow and feel all the things. When we don’t allow them to feel things because we want to fix and protect and prevent them from being hurt, we are silently telling them it’s OK to numb what is uncomfortable.

We can’t do that anymore.

We have to show our kids that it’s OK to feel their feelings. How do we do that? By feeling ours. We have to teach them that pain is as much a part of life as joy is. We have to let our kids cry and hurt and go through some really hard stuff. That’s how they learn how to process pain. That’s how they learn that it’s OK to feel things. We are a culture of numbing. We have zero control over what is being dealt on the street. We have a lot of control over what we teach our kids to deal with when it comes to the hard knocks of life. It’s time we help our kids build fortitude and inner strength by talking about their feelings.

It’s OK to hurt a little bit. Life hurts sometimes. It’s hard, but I’ve learned that there is no exit ramp to the human experience.

November 14, 2022