No Hallmark Card to Mark the Day

This is International Overdose Awareness Day. There will be a lot of speeching, preaching, perhaps some though not much teaching  and a large amount of writing (better than this I hope) as well as pearl-clutching about 'the problem.' 

I’ve never pretended to myself or others that living in Norwich is close to life in the fast lane or being a Big Noise in the Big City, and there’s no tone of regret when I say that. I’ve discovered I enjoy watching the Big World from the pages of a newspaper or via a TV newscast.

More than once in a while, sometimes it feels like more than once in a week, I’ll read about something or watch a report on a Six O’clock News and shake my head at what seem to be wild times somewhere else. There’s a lot to be said for living in Safe as Houses, Eastern Connecticut.

But no matter how often I shake my head, or (and I’m not proud to admit this) try to close my eyes, we have a public safety threat and, quite frankly, a public health crisis right here and now, substance abuse overdose. Let me repeat that for those in the back: It's NOT a problem, it's a public health crisis and we cannot begin to hope to solve it unless and until we admit it that it is. 

You’ve read the police reports, and more on point, the obituaries of neighbors and family members whose lives have ended because of overdoses, but we're really not accepting that it's happening here, where we live. 

If you think of your own circle of friends and acquaintances and do not know someone, or of someone, whose life has been shattered by a tragic overdose (and there are no other kind) you are very fortunate. Or, more likely, you are kidding yourself.

And substance abuse overdose is a plague whose growth no single agency or program can halt or slow. It is a ravenous fire dangerously close to out of control that will consume all that we love and all that we are if we do not sit together, speak from our hearts  about causes and solutions and truly listen to those who can help us end this horribly human tragedy.

This needs to stop being a yet another sad day on the calendar and instead, a call to arms.
-bill kenny