#i love doing research on drugs despite being totally sober

[loonybun]

hi whump community let me tell you about a drug called datura!! because boy is it a doozy.

datura is a deliriant, which means it is a hallucinogenic drug capable of causing serious and often terrifying delusions and hallucinations that are literally indistinguishable from reality in the user’s mind.

It is poisonous and part of the nightshade family, and the dosage used to get high off of it is actually very close to the lethal dose. it is also not only entirely legal in most places but also very accessible. it’s grown as a house plant, actually. most people who trip off of it only do it once because of how awful of an experience it is. also trips last like a long time (anywhere from 12 hours to 3 days if i remember correctly?)

the hallucinations that come with this drug are incredibly horrifying, making it literal nightmare fuel. also the more long term effects from it can include permanent psychosis and lingering delusions. fun stuff.

common hallucination experiences from this drug include the following:

- heavy gore

- seeing corpses

- feeling like you’ve been transported to an alternate dimension (hell)

- seeing people or entities you know (but a little fucked up)

- parasites and bugs

- feeling as though your organs are falling out of your body

- shadows in the back of your vision

- smoking phantom cigarettes or eating phantom food (phantom in the sense that they aren’t really there)

- torture scenarios

all in all, i think it’s a rlly interesting thing that can definitely be used in whump. like imagine a whumper lacing someone’s tea with that. the whumpee wouldn’t even be aware that something was done to them due to the fact that they physically cannot tell the difference between delusion and reality. real fun stuff. probably need an immortal whumpee though just cuz if someone takes this there’s a high chance of them getting hospitalized.

[joshslater]

Putting Reek in Greek

Essentially just a repost of walkamongyou’s excellent What Happens in Malia... with few tweaks thrown in. I take his feedback “Love how plausible you've made it“ as high praise, as that was the goal.

Thank fuck the week is almost over. It all started because I booked a discount holiday to Malia, like a fucking egit. The flights were cheap and the advert promised it’d be a ‘Great Gay Getaway’. It started out with a delayed flight, adding 4 hours of waiting in a packed terminal on top of the 3 hour uncomfortable flight. We were late to the crappy hotel, my room had already been given to someone else, and I got downgraded to a filthy cupboard with a narrow bed and no shower. The indifferent staff told me the price difference would be reimbursed on my credit card within two weeks and that I could use the pool shower.

I could have lived with giving up my beach view room with queen size bed and marble bath tub if there were some great gays to get away with, but no. Had I done any research I would have known that the place is littered with pubs and chippy shops for plebs who want to get wasted and watch footie in better weather. To top it all off I’ve coincided directly with all the trashiest stag and hen dos known to man. Everyone’s a chav, everyone’s English and worst of all, everyone’s straight as a ruler. Definitely nothing to offer a cultured gay man from South London. So here I am, sat in a tacky cocktail bar with two nights left, and can’t wait to get the fuck back to work. I just got what might be the evening’s last Old Fashioned, contemplating going to bed early when they enter.

They’re a classic example of everything that’s wrong with the Brits. They stagger in, singing and chanting “OI OI” and “Lads! Lads!”. They’re young, comically sunburnt, with identical chavvy haircuts, short on the sides and long on top. A group of working class boys on a lads’ holiday. One of them’s wearing a t shirt that says ‘On it till we vomit’, another that says ‘Pussy Patrol’ and a couple of them, of course, have football shirts. They’re a ridiculous cliché, drunk and rowdy. One loud-mouthed guy, their leader, is particularly handsome. He’s topless despite this being a public place, revealing a toned, athletic body; he wouldn’t look out of place dancing on a podium in Soho. His hair is dark brown and spikey, he has a diamond stud in both ears and a mischievous expression on his face as he starts chanting ‘Shots! Shots! Shots!’ and soon they’re all joining in. A row of tequila appears from the bar and he cries out “What happens in Malia stays in Malia!”

I don’t want them here. I resent their misogynistic ways and the atmosphere they’ve created. Not to mention I’m having a terrible day, so the London boy in me does the only thing he can think of and seeks out the bouncer, a bald, robust figure in a tight black T-shirt stood by the doorway. “Is there any chance you can get those guys to leave? They’re making people uncomfortable.” He shakes his head “Sorry, sir, there’s nothing I can do.” “Are you sure? It’s not fair on everyone else in here” “As long as they don’t break any laws, pay their bills, don’t fight or break anything they are welcome to stay.“ Normally I’d give up, but I’m miserable and exhausted from sleeping with an AC unit rattling outside my room, so I feel a lie come to my lips. I even shock myself as I say it. “But they are breaking the law. I’ve seen them at another bar this evening and they’re dealing drugs.” He looks at me, the irritable expression gone from his face. “What did you say?“ “I said they’re drug dealers. They’ve been selling cocaine.” Suddenly, his expression is deadly serious. “Thanks for letting me know. You have a good evening now.”

I watch them covertly, with a slight smile as the security guard approaches them. There’s a confrontation, voices are raised, and like kicking a beehive they buzz around the bar collecting their shit. They glare around the bar, even in my direction, before they go and peace returns. I chuckle to myself. What happens in Malia stays in Malia… Stupid chav cunts.

I go back to the bar stool and finish my cocktail at a leisurely pace, sit for a while and listen to the music they’re playing. At least I think that’s what I do. Everything starts going fuzzier and fuzzier, warmer and hazier. I need to get out and get some fresh air.

“Mate, wake up…” I’m groggy, I’m parched, my head’s pounding and I’ve no idea where I am. “Wake up, fella!” I feel a strong pair of hands shaking me, gently at first, and then roughly. My eyes slowly open, but everything’s dark and for a second I’m terrified that I might have gone blind, until a pair of sunglasses is pulled from my face and I’m blinded instead by the bright Malia sun. It’s high enough for breakfast to be over. Leaning over me is a handsome man; he’s wearing a grey t shirt and a backwards cap, but I recognise him instantly as the topless guy from last night. I panic, try to move but my body doesn’t want to respond and instead I slump to the ground. “Whoa…whoa…”, the man says, catching me in his arms and holding me tight against his broad chest. “Thank fuck you’re a skinny bastard.”

He props me back up on the deck chair I was sleeping on, holding my head upright, his face close to mine. I can smell chewing gum and cigarettes on his breath. I’m sure it’d be erotic if I wasn’t so frightened. "Now dickhead, I want you to listen very carefully to me. Blink once if you understand.” He’s using a hushed, calm voice, but with more than a hint of viciousness. I manage to consciously blink, though even that is an effort. “Good. Now, it seems like you had your drink spiked. Unlucky for you, but fortunately I here to help you. I left you out in the sun for a bit to sober you up but clearly it didn’t work. You’re wankered…” He ruffles my hair and my head instantly slumps to the side without him supporting it, so he takes a hold of my temples and pulls me sharply back upright.

He barely whispers now. “OK, listen to me, you little prick. You messed with the wrong lads last night. We’re no drug dealers, but it cut close to home for some of my mates, so they are divesting certain personal pharmaceutical investments as we speak. Personally I ditched my stash of slow release growth hormones by giving you quite a liberal dose. It should have you set well into the next quarter, perhaps longer. Russians really now how to cheat...” He chuckles darkly and stares straight into my eyes. Back to normal voice again. “Don’t look so scared mate. My job is to keep you in sight and entertained until they are back. We’re going to have a great day together… Now, what’s your name again?” I try to respond, but can only groan. “Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that…” He laughs, coughs and then spits on the floor. “Well…my name’s Caine, and to be honest, fella, I don’t give a shit what your name is…But what I do give a shit about is that you ruined a proper good vacation for me and the lads.” My body tenses at this accusation “No worries though… tonight’s a new night, as they say… and you’re going to make it unforgettable. You’re about to become the newest member of our Lads on Tour group: Gaz. That’s your name, right? Gaz? Blink once if it is…" I sit there, not responding. My name definitely isn’t Gaz. He grunts and lands a hard slap across my face. “I said blink if your name’s Gaz!” This time I do blink. “Good lad. You’re not as thick as you look. Now, Gaz, let’s get you semi-functional. We’ve got lots to do today and a big night ahead of us. Drink this.“ He shoves gym water bottle in my mouth and squeeze it lightly. I can do nothing else but drink it, though I happily do. It tastes like an isotonic drink. Sweet, salty, slightly sour and slightly bitter all at the same time.

I’m staggering down the street, with Caine supporting me. A lot of passers-by are shaking their head or trying to not stare at us…well, me; to an outside eye he looks like a well-meaning boy helping out his mate who’s had one too many. Nobody would guess he was a straight chav with a perverse sense of justice, propping up a sedated gay man.

But it’s not only this apparent display of friendship that is making people stare. Despite not having had a good look at myself, it is clear even to me I’d been out in the sun for far too long. “You look a bit burnt there Gaz. I thought I lathered you up pretty well with sun lotion. Looks like I took the tanning oil by mistake.”  My usual pale skin was a painful, blazing red all aside from a tan line where he’d left a pair of sunglasses on my face and an equally ridiculous set of white lines where he’d dressed me in an old wife beater; I was now modelling what most Brits would call a ‘twat tan.’

It wasn’t just any wife beater either. In contrast with my normal, well accessorized shirt, chinos and brogues look, I only had a total of four items on my body. One pair of orange Jägermeister promotion flip flops. One pair of blue, slinky adidas football shorts as, perhaps not less expensive, but certainly cheaper looking stand in for board shorts. And finally, the crown jewel, someone’s black wife beater that read “I HAVE THE DICK SO I MAKE THE RULES” in outlandish red letters. All of it covered in traces of what must have been at least one out of vomit, food and cum, and I could definitely smell both sweat and alcohol wafting from it.

All of this I piece together painfully slow, as I’m practically carried by Caine along the scorching street towards God knows where. I’m paraded around town like an effigy of the worst of Britain, unable to do anything to shield myself from, or even look at the passerby.

Suddenly Caine steers me into a building. As he guides me through the door, I notice the spinning red, blue and white of a barber’s pole. It’s a Turkish barbers; the two men working there turn around and eye me up and down, one is unable to quell a small laughter, the other barely hiding his disgust. It’s a far cry from the warm welcome and prosecco I get at Toni & Guy in London. The decor is ugly and cheap, with neon lights and linoleum. The two men discuss something among themselves in another language, ignoring us, until one finally comes forward with a neutral “You want a haircut?”

Caine throws me in the barber’s chair. I notice whatever I’ve been spiked with is starting to wear off as I’m now just about able to support my own head. The barber is behind me, glaring and tutting like I’m an idiot. I see him take in the stains and slogan on the tank top as he puts the cape around my neck. “You look unwell.” he states. Caine’s voice comes from behind me. “Yeah man, he’s just taken a lot of shit. You’re a pussy but you’re right as rain ain’t you Gaz mate?” He slaps me hard on the chest. It’s agonising on my sunburn, but I can barely flinch. The barber seems appeased, rolling his eyes, and taking another look at the photo Caine is showing him on his phone. “While we were out Gaz gave me strict orders to get him a fresh cut before we hit the town again today. When he sobers up he’ll be gutted if he isn’t looking his best. He even said he’d pay triple, didn’t you Gaz mate?”, he laughs. “You stupid stoner bastard.” The barber nods OK. I’m sure he’s being deliberately rough as he sets to work, shoving my head from side to side and pressing the clippers tightly against my scalp, totally ignoring my sunburn. Still, while my muscle control is coming back, I’m feeling fatigued, and before I know it I doze off. When I come to, the barber is holding a mirror up to the back of my head and tapping my shoulder impatiently. “Your haircut, sir.”

I see Caine’s reflection appear behind me, smiling broadly, flashing his perfect white teeth, then see my own eyes widen as I take in this new look. Gone is my fashionable London haircut. In it’s place is a modernised fusey bowl cut; the top third of my head is covered, but below that is a harsh line where I’ve been shaved bald. The barber must have done something to the hair he left on my head, as it’s now blow dried into a ridiculous, voluminous mess. I look like a giant iced gem. It’s a style I’ve only ever seen on the stupidest chavs and builders trying to copy their favourite stars from The Only Way is Essex. “Oi oi, Gaz, a perfect lad’s haircut for a night out with the boys!” Cain shouts in my ear. “Great idea with a perm innit?! You get this do for half a year without any work in the morning.” He reaches across to shake the barber’s hand. “Thanks, I promise Gaz is smiling too, aren’t you mate? Thinking of all the pussy you’ll get with your new do ain’t ya?” Both men laugh as Caine reaches into his pocket and pulls out what I see is my wallet, cramming a handful of euros into the barber’s hand; well above what I assume is triple their going rate it. “Keep the change mate.” The barber smiles. “Have a good one lads…” He turns to Caine and lowers his voice. “Please help your friend take a shower. He really needs one.” 

“I can’t wait to tell the lads how you were too stinky to stay in that Turkish barbers! Classic Gaz! Gaz the Stinker! Must be all the growth hormone that is starting to kick in.” Caine howls as he leads me down the pavement, people are staring at us. The sun is above us, so it must be about lunch time.

“Now, Gaz, mate, we’ve got one more stop before we’re ready for our special lads’ night. But I want this one to be a surprise. Drink up.” He handed me the gym bottle again. Still thirsty I eagerly empty it. “Good lad. I added something extra, so it’s not just electrolytes and that mental patient docile stuff you had before. It’s time for you to have another little sleep. Not even a stab in your guts would wake you up…”

Eventually I do wake up, this time to the distant sound of buzzing. I know the drill by now; I try to speak, but no sound comes out. My senses clear and I feel the gentle touch of someone rubbing me with lotion. It stings. As I look around I realise with horror exactly where I am. He’s taken me to a fucking tattoo parlour. I don’t even have any tattoos…well, correction, I didn’t. I feel a lump in my throat as I dread to think of what Caine has in store for me. As if on cue, he appears. “Morning you lazy bastard! You’ve woken up just in time; quite a few helping hands worked together to sort out all those tats for you in time. But we got it just like you wanted, Gaz!”

I wonder what tattoo artists would work on an unconscious client, but I know Caine is a ruthlessly smooth talker. I remember articles I’d laughed at in the Daily Mail of people who’d had ridiculous tattoos done on holiday. Now, thanks to Caine, I could add my own name to that illustrious list.

“You guessed it mate, you’ve got some sick new ink. What’s better is Phoebe here is treating them with burn victim lotion. Seals those fuckers right in, so you can go swim tomorrow if you like. Makes them a bit blurry, but it’s no worse than any one year old tat. Let me show you on my phone…” With a manic glint in his eye, he slowly scrolls through the photos of the artist’s handiwork in front of my face with careful glee, enjoying how I can’t really react, but I still find myself gasping at what he shows me.

My body has been turned into a ridiculous canvas of male clichés; there are British flags and patriotic slogans, roses, poppies and images of football players I don’t even recognise on my arms, legs, neck and chest. There clearly is a wide range of styles and level of abilities represented. But the blazing centrepiece is a huge Celtic print of three letters across my back; a name, not my name, a name bestowed upon me today: ‘GAZ’, underlined with the grammatically incorrect phrase ‘Malia 2017. Lad’s on tour’

Caine locks eyes with me in triumph. “On other guys I’d think this much ink was stupid, but on you, mate, it’s fucking on point. I’m happy it came out perfect, since red and yellow can’t be lasered.” He swipes to the next photo, showing a gaudy glass stud in my earlobe. “It’s acid treated, so you don’t have to worry about the piercings growing shut.”

Everything is starting to blur together. Perhaps I’m in shock, and you would think for all the sleeping I’ve done today I would be on top of things. Caine has led me back to the cheap holiday apartment where this hellish day began. This time I can feel tingling, like pins and needles, of movement returning to my body. I’m able to stand up on my own, and I’m in the middle of a bedroom with Caine in front of me. He’s dressed really nicely in a white linen shirt, breathtakingly handsome. In spite of all that’s happening I can feel my penis bulging in the adidas shorts he put me in this morning. I don’t want to get hot for him, and perhaps this is another of his additions to the water, but I suspect he just is that hot. “Now, mate, let’s get the final touches for the finale. I want you to have a say in this, since you’ve been so good all day. Which footie top is it going to be for the big night? What do you say, Stinker? Red, or blue?”

He spins me around forcefully and I gaze up at two football shirts hanging on the wall. I assume they’ve both already been worn by one of my new ‘friends’ the night before. My shoulders slump in defeat and I quietly nod in the direction of the blue one. He pulls it over my head. As expected it smells of stale sweat. “Nice choice, mate. I think the red would have really brung out your sunburn. You really should get some aloe vera on that, you daft twat. No time for that now though, the lads are waiting and it’s taken you all fucking day to get ready.”

We’re in front of a club, waiting in a queue. Everyone is dressed nicely, in collared shirts and dresses, and I feel so conspicuous in my sweaty football gear. I’ve regained a lot of movement, but I’m lumbering and everything’s still fuzzy around the edges. “Sorry everyone!” Caine shouts “Gaz here has had five pints too many!” As we reach the front of the queue, a dapper bouncer blocks the way. “Identification, Sir.” The bouncer stressed the Sir a bit extra, dripping with disapproval. There was an awkward pause. I check the flimsy pockets of my football shorts, but they were as empty as I had expected them to be. “Oi, Gaz I have your new passport.” Caine handed over a passport to the  bouncer. It was one of those temporary passports embassies issue for people daft enough to lose it while abroad. The bouncer opened it, made a quick look, and handed it back. With far fewer pages than a normal passport it looked flimsy. I opened it and flipped to the identification page. Most of the fields were what I would expected them to be. Height, sex, number all as expected. The expiration date was only a month in the future. Again, nothing surprising for a temporary passport. But the photo made me nauseous. It was a photo from today, though I had no memory of it being taken. My mouth was slack jawed open, eyes bloodshot, sleepy and unfocused, skin unevenly tanned. To crown it all, that ugly haircut and two slits shaved in my left eye brow. I had no memory of that being done either. I raised my hand to confirm. I was painfully aware that had the photo been shot a few hours later there would also be a pair of cheap studs in my freshly pierced ears and an ugly tattoo snaking up from the tank top, on the side of the neck.

Just as horrifying as my run-down visage was the name in the passport. Instead of John Holland, my name, it says "Gaz Taylor". As if he could read my mind, though that wouldn't be that hard at the moment, Caine spoke again. “The lads were kind enough to submit a deed poll to correct your name before getting your temp passport. With any luck your new permanent ID card should be waiting for you when you get home. I say permanent, but you can of course change name again in like 2 years, or whatever their hold off time is.” The club is classy, expensive and busy. Caine guides me across the room, his hand pressing firmly into the small of my back, over to a group of men who are chatting among themselves. Of course it’s the same group of lads as the day before, my new ‘mates’. “Fellas…you remember Gaz? He’s very sorry about last night and really keen to make it up to you all!” They turn, and I feel their eyes on me, taking me in; the tattoos, the outfit, the piercings, the hair. They’re all dressed nicely, suave and in sharp contrast to the ridiculous figure Caine has shaped me into; there’s a moment of silence before they burst into raucous laughter.

Soon I’m being shoved from person to person, they’re all shaking my hands, offering me swigs of their pint, clapping me on the back and eager to spend time with their new ‘mate’. I feel that even with those minuscule amounts of beer, my tired body is sinking fast. One of them squeezes my bicep, asking me if I’ve started to swell yet and if I watched the match last night. Another asks me if I knew there was a dress code, pointing at my top and loudly shouting “Classic Gaz”. Someone named Chris tells me he knows a guy who needs concrete workers, and write a number with a marker pen on my arm. Another pulls me over, asks me what the capital of Thailand is, before slapping me hard in the balls and saying “Bang cock!” They are all taking the piss out of me.

I’m standing with a guy called Shaun, who is showing me a top he picked up for me that day that is also ���Classic Gaz’, a lime green t shirt proudly emblazoned with the words ‘MUFF DIVER’. However, this presentation is cut short by lights flashing from outside in red and blue, and the music in the club stops abruptly. The boys scatter and I feel a lump of joy in my throat. Somebody must have informed the police; finally my nightmare is over!

Four police officers quickly advance towards me. I look around and Caine is no where to be seen. In fact I don’t recognise anyone around me. I don’t realise how drunk I am until two of the officers roughly restrain me and put me in handcuffs. I try to speak to them, but they completely ignore anything I say, and as I’m shoved into the back of a police car I can hear the music start in the club again.

I wake up as they drag me out of the car. Everything is so unreal. Like it is happening to someone else. A police man is asking me questions and I think I answer them. Two officers take me to a well lit room and tell me to take off my clothes. Flip flops, shorts, shirt. Every piece can be removed in one motion. They take photos. They look in my mouth. I lie on my belly on an angled, padded table. I’ve had things in my ass many times before, but this wasn’t what I hoped for. I get dressed again. They take me to a small cell, and I can finally fall asleep.

When I wake up again for a few seconds everything feels fine. Nothing hurts. A bit thirsty perhaps, but nothing more. Then I see a horrible football tattoo and a cellphone number scribbled on my arm, and all the memories of what has been done to me floods back. There is no clock in the cell, so I don’t know exactly how many hours I sit there until someone comes to get me, but I have plenty of time to consider my situation. I understand what Caine meant with growth hormones producing smelly sweat, because it is definitively me and not the clothes that stink the worst.

When someone finally come and get me it is a police officer explaining they got a call about a drug dealer matching my description. While they didn’t find any drugs, I was clearly under the influence and they kept me in custody. The blood report showed a whole buffet of different drugs, but being under the influence isn’t an offense in itself. He further informs me that a report has been sent to Europol so I should arrive airports an hour earlier from now on, as I can expect thorough searches. With that he wishes me good luck and hope I can get my life back on track. He has no idea.

Lastly he hands me a sports bag. I had been checked out of the hotel while in custody, and the bag was the only thing in my room. A last laugh from Caine. The bag contains a wrinkled bundle of damp clothes. Joggers, sweatshirt, t-shirt, a pair of seriously worn trainers and three socks. No underwear. It’s as if someone did a hard workout and then put his clothes in sealed bag for a day. No matter how I am getting home, it will be just as unpleasant for any travelers close to me, since without wallet this is what I’ll wear.

In the side pocket is a hotel envelope containing three papers. The checkout folio from the hotel, a Ryanair boarding pass for the evening flight back in the name Gaz Taylor, and a fax from my employer. Or rather former employer, as it reads “Upon receiving the drug use report we are hereby terminating your employment effective immediately in accordance with section 18 (e) of your employment contract.” I look again at the phone number scribbled on my arm.

[eddievee]

Gay and Sober

I’m intimidated by the thought of writing about this. There are multiple reasons as to why I perhaps shouldn’t express these thoughts. However, I have a problem. I have a problem and I feel as though trying to articulate it will help me cope. It is my hope that friends and family members will read this and understand my struggle. Maybe they or someone on the internet could also find solace in my story.

Basically, I have a drinking problem. Call me an alcoholic. Call me an addict. Any term under the umbrella of substance abuse likely applies. I write this at twenty four. Looking back over the past liquored up eight years of my life, the most traumatic experiences and biggest setbacks I’ve endured have had to do with alcohol. I pinned a guy in my dorm to the ground at eighteen and nearly got expelled from university. I went psychotic at twenty-one, experiencing auditory hallucinations and paranoid delusions. My psychiatrist deduced that it all transpired because I went off of my psychoactives cold turkey and started to self-medicate with wine. That turn of events forced me to withdraw from school for almost a year. In that time, I left random objects on my university president’s doorstep and nearly got arrested for trespassing. I also showed up drunk to the undergraduate library after withdrawal from classes and had to be escorted out by police. My relationship with alcohol is distinctly self-destructive and volatile. In March, I got hit by a motorist after a night out of drinking. I had recently quit a managerial position after over two years working there, lined up a prospective job with greater pay, and a couple of my coworkers bought me Jack Daniel’s as a farewell present. I wrote a goodbye letter that evidently still has a place of honor in the store. It was a bittersweet goodbye, but I was leaving a staff that I knew was going to miss me. From my end, that feeling was mutual. I also had a solid positive reference in my back pocket from my time there. I was ecstatic. To leave a job I really didn’t like was fabulous. To feel as though I was moving on in my career was even better. It was time to celebrate, of course! So, I imbibed. I guzzled hard liquor by myself and went to my usual haunt. I drank more there and tried to ride home on my bicycle. That’s when it all happened. The injury was severe. I sustained contusions on both sides of my frontal lobe and cracked a few bones in my skull. Emergency services were called and I was rushed to the hospital. There, it was determined that I was at a .27 blood alcohol content. Had I consumed a couple more drinks that night, I would have been legally dead. At the hospital, I was put into a medically induced coma and given a room in intensive care. The coma lasted roughly a month and I received inpatient physical, occupational, and speech therapy for another month before discharge. Multiple doctors, nurses, and therapists told me that based on the severity of the injury, I was expected to be discharged by November. I remember visiting the intensive care unit after being moved to the rehab unit. Multiple doctors and nurses who managed my case expressed verbal and physical disbelief that I was standing and walking. Several entered the unit for their shift, saw me, and would throw their hands in the air and turn around before greeting me. I don’t know the totality of their experiences in medicine, but I imagine several of their cases don’t end up walking and talking a month after coming out of a coma. They were unquestionably shocked to see me so relatively well.

Basically, I almost died. Mortality was clarified for me in March. The physical toll alone was nothing short of traumatic. In spite, I’m happy that my recovery has gone so unexpectedly well. I’ve gained 25 pounds of muscle back, I was discharged from outpatient therapies after two weeks, and I’m now looking at the possibility of returning to work. However, I’m not totally well right now. Despite all of the strides I’ve made over the past three months, I know I have an immense amount of work to do to get healthy again. However, I’m ill at this point for reasons unrelated to the somatic impact of my auto accident. The psychological consequences of my injury came later and asymmetrically. With the physiological component consuming most of my time, energy, and focus initially, I simply didn’t know how what happened was going to impact my mental health. With BPD on my diagnostic record, I’ve been depressed, anxious, and occasionally psychotic for much of my adult life. I’ve been in and out of psychiatry and psychotherapy since I was 18 years old. I’ve been hospitalized for psychological reasons twice. Having a degree in psychology and women’s studies, I know the annals and the phenomenology of mental suffering. Through both talk therapy sessions and undergraduate study, I am familiar with coping mechanisms and understand quite a bit about mental illness as a whole. With that said, the knowledge doesn’t necessarily lead to better mental health outcomes for my own struggles. I shouldn’t be drinking at all. In certain traumatic brain injury cases, to consume alcohol is to possibly have a seizure. I also developed blood clots in the hospital and was put on a powerful blood thinner. I’m off that prescription now, but it could have had complications with hard liquor. None of that kept me away from the bottle. I experienced a radical shift. Prior to the injury, I was working overtime hours every week and dating someone I was passionately in love with. He had a key to my apartment after one week of love drunk stupor. Suddenly, I was unemployed and single, my boyfriend breaking up with me in a hospital bed. It was jarring. That particular adjustment was perhaps as traumatic as the injury itself. I had free time and loneliness and ample opportunity for self loathing. Libations were perfect to indulge that stress and sorrow. Got a problem? Pour some plastic jug vodka on it. Let’s Popov off. I mentioned that I had a history of making serious, lasting, and self destructive decisions by drinking prior to March, but I was always able to control myself. I could stop. Now, I can’t. I can consume an entire fifth of eighty to one hundred proof liquor in one evening. If there’s some leftover when I wake up hungover, I drink it that morning. I can’t handle my liquor anymore. I’ve permanently damaged some friendships by sending weird and alarming text messages when I’m blackout drunk. Normally comprised of suicidal ideation, they’re pathetic pleas of “kill me.” Alongside the profound lack of self control, that depth of depression is what’s particularly alarming to me. I don’t want to get sober, but if I keep going like this, I’m going to die. It’ll be at my hand or with a broken bottle. Maybe both. At the least, my liver will fail or I’ll withdraw into delirium tremens or develop Korsakoff’s amnesia. Something. I’ll say again: I don’t want to get sober. However, little of that has to do with alcohol’s effects on my brain and body. Those certainly are factors, but it’s not the bulk of the story. I don’t need a drink to get through the day. It’s fun to be drunk! I like to party. I like relaxing inhibitions, but I don’t need a drink to function. The social and celebratory elements of drinking make it harder to leave behind. I’ve quit abusing other substances in the past because I was almost always using by myself. I like people more than I like drugs. Alcohol is different because that line between people and drugs is blurrier. There’s a distinctly social component to drinking that bears salience to my life. I’m gay. Bars and clubs, the spaces relegated to LGBT people by dominant culture, are centered around the sales and consumption of alcohol. That’s a fact. I’m also a drag queen, who are hired in part to facilitate that commerce. Alcohol was in the room when I first started to meet other gay guys at sixteen. Its omnipresence throughout my gay young adult experiences make it that much more difficult to go without. Booze is sometimes like an old friend; it has been my chaperone for years.

To leave alcohol behind would make me profoundly anxious, thinking that I would be leaving my friends behind too. My community matters to me. If there’s anything that the experience of surviving traumatic brain injury has solidified in my mind, it’s that I matter to my community as well. I’ve made friends in these spaces for years now. The gay bar has been a critical component to my sense of self and I’m terrified to lose that. A friend of mine might read this portion and roll his eyes. He once told me something like “People you party with are not your friends. They’re people you party with.” That may be true, but it’s connection. There’s a multitude of research literature on how social connections lead to better life expectancies and health outcomes. Unhappily married people tend to live longer than content single people for a reason. I don’t know how to mesh sobriety with my network of relationships in the nightlife scene. These people have welcomed me and held me, laughed with me and wept with me. I’ve devoted so much time and energy to drag performances to express my love and gratitude for my community. I don’t want to be without the people I’ve met in part through drinking. I wouldn’t be here without them. At the same time, many people in my nightlife existence know that I have a problem. I went out the other weekend for a going away party. After leaving the club, I went to my friend’s place and had a 2:00 AM conversation with another friend who didn’t accompany us out to the club. He’s mentally ill, but high functioning, and deeply empathetic. We relate. I asked him about our friends’ perception of my alcoholism. He expressed that even before my accident in March, people would notice how drunk I’d get on a regular basis. He said that some people get that drunk “every six months or so.” With me, it was “like every other week.” He went on to comment on my overall melancholy and bleak outlook on life. He said, “Sometimes, when I see you, it’s like you woke up and happiness wasn’t even a possibility.” Being a depressant, alcohol feeds into my psychological dependency for crisis and sorrow. RuPaul asserted that Katya, Brian McCook, had an addiction to anxiety in season seven of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I feel that. I’m realizing just how intensely accustomed I am to feeling depressed. In drag, I’ve rejoiced in sorrow on stage for years. On multiple occasions, I’ve walked into the bar in full drag makeup and the first thing I hear is “what’s wrong?” It’s not even that the glass is half empty. For me, the glass was never there. To be sad is almost comforting in its combination of introspection and self pity. It’s especially affirming when you feel as though you have a right to that lowness. As Bright Eyes once said, “Sorrow is pleasure when you want it instead.” That pleasure has grown old. I want to do more than just survive in spite of crisis. I’ll say this: I don’t know if I’m going to get sober from alcohol. In my recent brief attempts at sobriety, I’ve recognized just how much temperance culture permeates United States media. You’d be challenged to walk down the main street of any major city and not see at least one advertisement for liquor. The push and pull relationship of Puritanical abstinence from indulgence and the American civic duty of reckless consumption is powerful. That relationship is also undeniably profitable. With that said, my pro and con list of continuing to drink is getting grimmer. What I need to do becomes more obvious after each fifth of bottom shelf whiskey, with each morning I wake up hungover, and within each inebriated, suicidal cry for help. To those of you who have been on the receiving end of my substance abuse, I’m sorry. My brother recently found me in my apartment, eyes rolled in the back of my head from drinking to excess. I’ve fallen down stairs at the local gay bar, making an absolute fool of myself. I’ve said alarming, dreadful things in person and online that I regret terribly. In total, I’ve damaged relationships that I’m never going to repair. The problem is when I’m alone. If I’m at the bar and not drinking around you, don’t think it’s completely because of what I’ve expressed here. More than anything, just know that I have a drinking problem. It exists unarguably within and outside the context of my near death experience. I wrote that I was unsure of how to simultaneously be sober and be present at the spaces where I’ve made loving relationships. This is my attempt. Know that I want to be around, but I simply can’t do it like I used to. I need to get sober from alcohol. At the very least, I should. It’s going to be a tall order, but less lethargy and fewer depressive episodes sound fabulous. Thank you.

[pawspetpantry-blog]

Leashes as Lifelines

Note: We love when our volunteers want to be deeply engaged in our mission. The following is an essay written for a class by one of our volunteers, who allowed us to post it here. All sources are linked via the appropriate in-text citations. 

On every major street you see them; they are always there, sitting on stoops, standing in medians, or walking with their packs. The homeless are often considered “invisible people”, but driving through town you find them hard to ignore; stoplight after stoplight you pass them by. Some “fly the flag,” holding cardboard signs as silent pleas for help, while others are more vocal, imploring passersby to spare a quarter, a dollar – anything. Eventually a fortunate streak of green ends, and as yellow fades to crimson you are forced to stop alongside one of these less fortunate fellows. While like many you may attempt to avoid his gaze, it’s hard not to look.

The man is bundled up, with multiple layers of shirts, jackets and hoodies making him appear larger than he is. His sign is leaning against his legs, the arms of this disheveled array of clothing hanging limp at his sides; for the time being, he’s withdrawn his arms into his shirts. Assuming he’s just trying to keep warm your gaze may begin to wander, disinterested; but movement catches your eye. After a moment, a second head pops through his collar– not that of a man, but that of a dog, bundled within the hoodies as temporary shelter from the cold.

A new flash of green forces you to break your gaze and move on, but as you continue to drive, you pay closer attention. Down the road, a woman stands with a sign, a dog sitting at her feet; across town, a man bikes with a pack on his back and a dog perched precariously upon his shoulders.  It becomes clear that Springfield’s homeless have pets – but how can they possibly care for a pet, when they can hardly take care of themselves, you wonder?

Estimates of just how many people face homelessness are difficult to make, but most suggest over half a million homeless on any given night, and up to 3 million facing homelessness – chronic or temporary – throughout any given year (“Counting”; Johnson; Nat. Student Campaign Against Hunger & Homelessness).  Counts in Missouri’s Greene County alone average 750 homeless individuals, with at least 250 of those without any source of shelter (Mosley). The sheer number of these “invisible people” are staggering; for most, the life they live is unimaginable. They face extreme heat, extreme cold, violence, and crime. Their camps are often flooded, stolen from, and forced to move. Inevitably, some will be lost; exposure, unattended medical conditions, addiction, and suicide steal them away before their time, and their loss is felt deeply throughout the homeless community.

To cope with this often draining lifestyle, some of the homeless elect to keep pets. Estimates of just how many of the homeless own pets range from five to twenty-six percent, with variance between different regions (Panning et al. 222; Rhoades et al. 238). Most commonly these pets are cats or dogs, though the occasional fish, bird, reptile, or small animal may be spotted. Some of these pets are animals that were found on the streets, abandoned or neglected and in need of care. Scott, a formerly homeless man in Springfield, says that he found his best friend when he fed a stray half of his sandwich; this stray, now called Rookah, and was a vital part of Scott’s life on the road and his determination to find housing. Others are pets that remain from an individual’s domiciled life; Rebel Star lived with her owner in a house, then a van, and now camps off and on. Regardless of how or when they were acquired, these animals are a huge part of their owners’ life.

Homeless youth and adults alike reported that their pets provided them with a sense of security, companionship, unconditional affection, increased social interaction, and responsibility (Rhoades et al. 238). They are friends, family, defenders, and unconditional supporters; as researcher Aline Kidd explains, a pet “doesn’t tell on you, talk back, doesn’t care about the drool when you take pills. It loves you as you are. People are not like that” (Associated Press). These qualities make pets excellent motivators; because they provide a constant, reliable social attachment and a dependent to consider, they can change lives – even save lives.

For some, pets act as a “suicide barrier” – their owners feel they must stay alive because the animal depends on them for care and would otherwise be left alone (Irvine “Animals” 19). Trish, who had been homeless (meaning, for her, not living in a car or sleeping in the back of a store she worked at) off and on for ten years, claims her dog Pixel saved her life: “I was totally at rock bottom. I just wanted to die… But I couldn’t give up because I had something else to take care of besides myself. So he kept me alive… I didn’t care about myself, but I had to care about him” (Irvine “Animals” 16). Scott knows how Trish felt, though he keeps a strong outer appearance. In discussing Scott and Rookah, friend and outreach provider Terra Salinas wrote the following: “… He has a pet because he suffers from debilitating depression, and she helps to keep him calm and focused… because she gives him a sense of responsibility, which keeps him from searching for his drug of choice... because she needed someone to care for her, and he needed a reason to care... She is a lifeline” (Salinas).  Life on the road is lonely; this is undeniable. It is all too easy for those who have no support system to fall into despair. However, homeless pet owners score in the “normal” or nonclinical range on the Beck Hopelessness Scale – higher than non-pet owning counterparts – indicating they are not clinically depressed or hopeless despite their circumstances (Singer et al. 856). It is evident that pets like Pixel and Rookah help to ensure that despite the hardship, their owners live to see better times.

For those that may not be at high risk for suicide, pets still provide great motivation. In a study of homeless youth, a 20-year-old male stated “[Having the dog] makes me feel like I gotta stay healthier so the dog’s okay. I mean, if I just sit there and kick off somewhere the dog’s going to be stuck by herself” (Rew 129). In Leslie Irvine’s interviews with homeless and formerly homeless pet owners, a woman by the name of Donna claimed that for the sake of her dog she gave up drinking, heroine, and cocaine – cold turkey. “I realized Athena meant everything to me… my dog comes first in my life,” she stated (Irvine “Animals” 10).  Locally, many homeless pet owners report similar experiences. Their animals give them reason to continue, to be better. Scott now has housing, having worked hard to get himself and Rookah off the streets. For Sarah, Doc provided a reason to stay sober and work hard. Doc is a mix of Australian Shepherd, Pit Bull, and Corgi – and despite being “bull-headed,” as Sarah describes it, he is a loving companion who does not judge her past, but inspires her to work toward a better future.    

Pets of the homeless also provide an access point for outreach and service providers that may not otherwise be able to reach them; because the homeless pet owners are often unable to stay in shelters and may be suspicious of people they are unfamiliar with, they are more difficult to reach than those utilizing shelters and other services (Irvine “Animals” 7; Irvine et al. 29; Panning et al. 222). However, their pets’ needs often come before their own needs, and services providing assistance for their pets are often a gateway to getting the homeless help for themselves.  In Canada, veterinarians working under the concept of “One Health” help to connect veterinary care with human health and education services. Canada’s Community Veterinary Outreach first provide a veterinary appointment, then works in questions that may relate to human health; for example, to begin a smoker in a smoking cessation program, they might ask about a pet’s second-hand smoke exposure, explaining the impact of smoking on their pet (Panning et al. 222). Through this clever system, they are able to get people connected with beneficial services that they might otherwise miss out on, and bring about healthy changes that they might not make for themselves, but that they are willing to make for the health of their beloved pets.

While up to twenty-five percent of the homeless have pets, keeping pets in less than desirable situations is not always easy. The pets of the homeless still require food, water, exercise, and veterinary care. In Springfield, PAWS Pet Pantry is the sole provider of assistance for homeless pet owners, providing food, vetting, and other supplies. PAWS attends street outreach twice a week to meet their homeless clients, assess their animals, and provide for their needs. In other cities, similar outreach services are provided, and fortunately are becoming more and more frequent. Homeless pet owners may also benefit from donations and the kindness of passersby. Nearly everyone in a sample of 59 homeless pet owners from Colorado, California, and Florida reported receiving food from others; one even stated “I’ve actually taken back dog food that I’ve spent my own money on, ‘cause later in the day, somebody would buy me a better brand of dog food” (Irvine et al. 38). Countless outreach providers in the Springfield area keep dog and cat food in their cars for this very purpose. It is evident that while it may be difficult to take care of pets on the road, it is not impossible.

However, the pets of the homeless can create a barrier between owners and valuable resources. Few shelters allow pets, for reasons stemming both from health and liability issues; those that do allow animals on the property often require the animal to stay outside (Associated Press; Kidd and Kidd 718; Singer et al. 856). Only one shelter allows pets in Springfield, Missouri, and it’s a day shelter – it is not open all day, let alone for overnight stays. Dogs at this shelter must be tied outside, and kept within the limits of the city’s tethering law (tethered for no more than 30 minutes unattended) to avoid citations. Dogs must be in PAWS Pet Pantry’s program to be at this shelter, up-to-date on vaccinations, and approved by the shelter’s manager. While this is at least something, it still leaves all homeless pet owners out in the elements for extended periods of time with no hope for relief without abandoning what they consider to be family.

This is a critical issue; homeless pet owners often refuse housing, medical help, or other services that will not accommodate their pets (Kidd and Kidd 721; Singer et al. 856). Because their pets are often considered to be their family, leaving them behind even to utilize valuable resources is deemed unacceptable. It has been found that homeless youth will stay in potentially dangerous, violent situations for the sake of their pets, as will many victims of domestic violence; they cannot bear to leave their animals in a situation that risks their safety (Rhoades et al. 242). PAWS Pet Pantry has a partnership with C.A.R.E. Animal Shelter that allows them to house pets temporarily, but it is only for short-term stays and only for homeless pets at risk during inclement weather; the partnership cannot be utilized to assist domestic violence victims or others needing more long-term assistance.  The need for a better system of shelter is needed – but it is difficult to achieve, especially in a city with breed-specific legislation. Many of the homeless have pit bulls or pit bull mixes, which require additional registration with the city of Springfield’s Animal Control. Rabies vaccinations for homeless pet owners are often difficult to afford; additional registration fees (fifty dollars every year in Springfield) and supplies (muzzles, strong leashes, etc.) to avoid violations of the breed-specific legislation are nearly impossible.

While better sheltering systems are without a doubt needed, the thing homeless pet owners most desperately need is compassion. While a majority of homeless pet owners in Irvine’s report discuss the kindness of strangers, they also discuss negative confrontations from the public. The reports come from all walks of life: a young man who stays in a pet-friendly shelter and simply sits with his dog and reads during the day is told he should not have a pet if he does not have a place to stay; a middle-aged woman sleeping in her van due to a recent eviction is told she could have gotten rid of her dog; a woman in her mid-20s is told she simply doesn’t deserve a dog and surely cannot take care of him (Irvine et al. 30). These are only a few of the accounts listed.

Irvine herself admits having once tried to buy a dog off of a homeless man, hoping to give it a better life, only to be refused. The subsequent call Irvine made to Animal Control brings about perhaps the most important of points. The officers asked three things: if the dog was being harmed, if the dog was in distress, and if the owner had food and water for the animal; the answer to each was yes, and Animal Control stated he was doing nothing wrong (Irvine My Dog Always Eats 3). This is the reality for most of the pets of the homeless. They are well-loved, well cared for, and protected from the elements as much as possible by their human handlers. Locally, it seems that Clover, Dozer, and Shadow may be the perfect example.

Clover, Dozer, and Shadow all lived together with their humans in a little encampment just on the edge of Springfield. A terrier mix, a Lab mix, and a Border Collie mix, the three were pampered by their owners; Clover rode around in her owner’s coat, while Shadow and Dozer had coats of their own (Dozer’s even had cute little cows on it). They were kept in a tent heated with a propane generator, and had their own sets of blankets. When it was too cold, their owners contacted PAWS to have them taken to C.A.R.E. – not necessarily so their owners could take shelter, but so the dogs did not have to walk in the cold. When Clover was picked up, her owner (called Mama Kat) sent a sweater of her own so Clover would have something that smelled like “home.” The little terrier mix was spoiled rotten; at C.A.R.E., she did not eat until volunteers realized she was used to sitting on Mama’s lap, being hand-fed. Once this was realized, the situation was quickly corrected, and Clover was hand-fed lunch and dinner, getting the love she was so accustomed to until she could be returned to Mama.

This is the reality that innumerable bystanders simply do not see. They believe that the animals should have a house, air conditioning, heat – but these animals are happy with the lives they lead, and miss their owners when they are separated, just as their owners miss them. Because people believe that what homeless pet owners are doing is wrong, they scold them, try to buy what they consider to be their children – even steal the animals from them. In a heartbreaking video from 2015, members of French animal welfare group Cause Animale Nord stole a homeless man’s puppy as the puppy shrieked and the man screamed and cried after it, claiming he was a Roma beggar who was simply exploiting it; while the animal was later returned, it is a situation that never should have happened (Hall; Samuel). Irvine et al. stated “Pet ownership is considered nearly a birthright in contemporary Western societies. In most people’s everyday lives, the right to animal companionship and the ability to provide care are uncontested. The homeless are likely the only group criticized and stigmatized for having pets” (31). The homeless that have pets, like any domiciled person, generally have them because it is a responsibility they are capable of balancing. Stealing animals and belittling people for having a pet they can take care of when so many pets in homes are neglected is truly uncalled for.

Perhaps the concept that the homeless do not deserve to have animals stems from a fact that seems too often forgotten, or at least conveniently ignored – homeless people are, indeed, people. They are not necessarily homeless because they are lazy; people’s lives can change in an instant. Some may have mental illnesses that, untreated, keep them from getting jobs – and without jobs, their mental illnesses must remain untreated. Others have fled domestic violence. Some simply hit hard times after losing their job. Few choose to become homeless; life on the streets, in the heat and the cold, is not ideal for anyone. It must be understood that those that do choose to become or remain homeless do not do it for their own amusement; they do it because it is better than the alternative, for them; it is an alternative few have had to live or can even begin to imagine.  

The pets of the homeless provide responsibility, security, and unconditional love and loyalty to owners that desperately need it. Homeless pet owners suffer from less loneliness, depression, and isolation than their non-pet owning counterparts, benefiting from increased interaction and improved mental health. The animals they keep are either lifelong friends brought with them from their domiciled lives, or animals found on the streets that needed someone to care for them as much as the homeless needed someone to care for. These animals are not neglected, but are taken care of as best their owners can manage, and with a little help from generous donors and outreach services these pets thrive in their “home” with what may be their first real family. They may not be housed, but they play all day, are fed before anyone else, and are rarely if ever separated from the people they love; if that neglect, sign me up.

[solsarin]

how much alcohol is in non alcoholic heineken

how much alcohol is in non alcoholic heineken

Hello dear friends, thank you for choosing us. In this post on the solsarin site, we will talk about “how much alcohol is in non alcoholic heineken  “. Stay with us. Thank you for your choice.

📷how much alcohol is in non alcoholic heineken

Is Heineken 0.0 alcohol free and non alcoholic heineken?

While it has no alcohol and just 69 calories, Heineken 0.0 looks like beer, and even better, it. Does Heineken 0.0 have alcohol? Heineken 0.0 truly has 0% alcohol, a perk for anyone who is avoiding even small quantities of alcohol. Can you drink Heineken 0.0 and drive? Nonalcoholic beers are legal to drink while driving as long as the alcohol content is below the level defined by law. … Nonalcoholic beer cans have a similar appearance to regular beer cans. The likelihood that you could be reported and stopped by an officer becomes a reality even though your actions may be legal. Fun factFun fact: Some of them still have alcohol in them.On a warm night recently, my boyfriend and I were seated on a restaurant’s patio, and he ordered a beer. “Jerk,” I muttered.He looked at me, surprised. I sometimes jokingly lament his ability (or, rather, my lack of ability) to drink hard alcohol, but never beer. Beer was just never that important to me. I’d drink it, of course — that’s how alcoholism works — but it made me feel full faster than it made me drunk, thus it wasn’t very efficient for my purposes.Which is why I was just as surprised as he was by what came out of my mouth.Usually, he just laughs when I give him crap about the booze he can drink that I can’t; he understands where it comes from, and that I’m not really mad. This night, however, because it was about beer, he looked at me concerned.“You OK?”For as long as I’ve been sober, I’ve been told that nonalcoholic beer is a bad idea.“Near beer” — a phrase that makes me nails-on-a-chalkboard cringe for reasons I don’t totally understand — is triggering to people in recovery, I was told.The argument is that drinking something with the look and taste of actual beer will make the person want the real stuff.That may well be true. If you’re in recovery and beer was your jam, you’d probably want to think very carefully about popping open a nonalcoholic beer.A love for real beer isn’t what’s kept me away for so long, though. It’s the fact that most nonalcoholic beers actually aren’t alcohol-free.In the United States, anything that’s less than 0.5 percent alcohol by volume (ABV) can be labeled “non-alcoholic.” And to be fair, you’d have a hard time getting even a slight buzz off a beer that’s 0.4 percent ABV. (Most regular beer has an alcohol content of around 5 percent ABV.)But as someone who was so severely addicted to alcohol that some mornings I drank cough syrup or mouthwash just to get my hands to stop shaking, I don’t mess around with even small amounts of alcohol.I’ve been sober for 11 years. It wasn’t until last year that I was willing to try kombucha, which also has trace amounts of alcohol. (Even then, I only tried it in an effort to get some good bacteria in my wonky stomach.)I don’t think it’s inherently bad for recovering alcoholics to drink nonalcoholic beer.It’s just never been something I’m comfortable with for myself… drumroll please… until now!That’s because, finally, I can partake: Brands like Heineken and Budweiser have started producing alcohol-free beer. Not “a little alcoholic” beer, but genuinely 100 percent alcohol-free beer.As much I know we live in a society obsessed with alcohol and there’s nothing wrong with not drinking, it kinda sucks to feel like the odd person out, holding your glass of tap water in a group of drinkers.I know I need to be sober, and I’m proud of my sobriety. But no one likes feeling like the odd one out in a group.Plus, when tap water and Diet Coke are the only nonalcoholic beverages at an event (which, trust me, is very often the case), it’s just nice to have one more option.Random Posts📷how much alcohol is in non alcoholic heineken how much alcohol is in budweiser chelada how much alcohol is in smirnoff ice green apple what percent alcohol is budweiser beer what percentage of brain cells do we use how much alcohol does budweiser zero have As much I know we live in a society obsessed with alcohol and there’s nothing wrong with not drinking, it kinda sucks to feel like the odd person out, holding your glass of tap water in a

group of drinkers.I know I need to be sober, and I’m proud of my sobriety. But no one likes feeling like the odd one out in a group.Plus, when tap water and Diet Coke are the only nonalcoholic beverages at an event (which, trust me, is very often the case), it’s just nice to have one more option.So if, like me, you’re zero-beer curious, I’ve put together a list of your options.There are companies making beers that are 0.05 percent ABV; that’s such a low amount of alcohol, I’m including them on the list. You’d literally have to drink 100 of them to get the alcohol content that’s in one regular beer. However, I’m marking them with an asterisk, so if you want to stay 100 percent alcohol-free, you can.I haven’t actually had a chance to try any of these yet, but I’m totally going to!📷how much alcohol is in non alcoholic heinekenHere are a few alcohol-free beers non alcoholic heineken:*Beck’s Blue (0.05 percent) *Bitburger Drive (0.05 percent) Budweiser Prohibition Brew (0 percent) Heineken 0.0 (0 percent) Interestingly, there are a TON in the United Kingdom, but when I was doing research, I kept getting conflicting information about whether they’re available in the United States.If you’re reading this in the United Kingdom, or want to try shipping some alcohol-free beers across the pond, here are a few to try:Ambar 0.0 Gluten-Free Beer (0 percent) Bavaria Premium Non-Alcoholic Malt (0.0 percent) Bavaria Wit Non-Alcoholic Wheat Beer (0.0 percent) Cobra Zero Non-Alcoholic Beer (0.0 percent) Jupiler 0.0% (0 percent) Some very fancy alcohol-free “cocktails” have recently come on the market, most notably Curious Elixirs. While I love anything that gives us more alcohol-free options, $35 for a bottle that makes two cocktails isn’t really in my price range.In contrast, you can get six bottles of Heineken 0.0 for $32. Pricier than your average beer, but still something I might try every now and then on a warm summer night.📷how much alcohol is in non alcoholic heinekenFor me, for a special occasion non alcoholic heineken? It’s nice to have the option.For any people in recovery who don’t want the taste of beer because it might be a trigger, I’m a big fan of seltzer with a splash of your favorite juice mixed in.Bonus: It tastes delicious and looks pretty in a cocktail glass.No matter what’s in your glass, know that you’re the one in charge of your recovery — and whether alcohol-free beers are a part of yours is entirely up to you.For a person who’s actively addicted to alcohol, though, booze isn’t something you can take or leave. It’s often something you need to stay alive.This is true on both an emotional and physiological level.I truly believed that if I stopped drinking, the pain of sobriety, of not having the numbing salve I needed to move through the world, would kill me.And when I got to the point that I was physically addicted — where the homeostasis in my body was thwarted by the absence of alcohol, where my hands shook in the morning until I could find something to drink — stopping really could have killed me.It’s one of the few drugs that doesn’t just make you feel like you’re dying when you abruptly stop. It can follow through and actually do it.If you’re worried about a loved one having an addiction to alcohol non alcoholic heineken, it’s helpful to understand the emotional and physical reality of what that means.Like many alcoholics, when I was criticized or even questioned about my alcohol use, I would immediately fly into an indignant rage, denying that my relationship with alcohol was even the slightest bit problematic.It was a terrifying, nightmarish Catch-22. So, when people questioned me about my drinking, I lashed out.So, what to do when you think a loved one is struggling with their substance use non alcoholic heineken?First, ask yourself why you think that. In my humble opinion, the number one cause for concern is when someone continues using a substance despite repeated negative consequences as a result of that use. Alcohol in Malaysia of alcohol to non-Muslims. There are no nationwide alcohol bans being

enforced in the country, with the exception of Kelantan and Terengganu which is only Auf Wiedersehen, Pet go, Neville. Cream of the British workforce, eh? Gan get three beers. Heinekens. [Gives Neville some money and sends him to the bar] Oz: Bloody hell, resource: wikipedia

[nancygduarteus]

A Narcotics Officer Ends His War on Drugs

HAGERSTOWN, Md.—Kevin Simmers relished locking up drug users, no matter how little crack they had on them. “If they just had a pipe—fine,” he said. “At the end of the night, I wanted to have an arrest. I wanted a body.”

Decades later, despite his efforts, the opioid epidemic was in full swing in Hagerstown, “a small town with big-city problems” an hour outside Baltimore. In 2013, Simmers received an unusual phone call from his 18-year-old daughter, Brooke, who was typically defensive of her independence: “I need your help, Dad.” Simmers braced himself and met her for breakfast at a Waffle House near the so-called heroin highway, an intersection of interstates that connects major drug markets up and down the East Coast. Brooke told Simmers that she was addicted to opioid pain pills and didn’t know how to stop. Familiar with their street price, Simmers asked how Brooke, with no obvious income, could afford the expensive pills. “She told me she was selling her body,” he recalled.

Simmers sprung into action, and over the next year he helped Brooke into a half-dozen rehabs, but none seemed to work. Eventually, out of options and fearing a fatal overdose, Simmers used his police connections to jail his own daughter. But the disaster that followed made him reconsider not just his decision to lock up Brooke, but also his role as a willing combatant in the decades-long War on Drugs.

“I now think the whole drug war is total bullshit,” he said.

“Drugs are menacing our society,” intoned President Ronald Reagan in a 1986 televised address. “They’re killing our children.” Fresh out of the Air Force, Kevin Simmers was driving a milk truck. Reagan was “an inspiring speaker,” Simmer said, so he decided to apply to become a Hagerstown police officer.

Tall, opinionated, irreverent, and fiercely competitive, Simmers was “larger than life,” said Nick Varner, a Hagerstown police detective who trained under him. His policing philosophy was simple, Varner said: “Lock up the problem.” Sergeant Simmers liked contests: Whoever brings in the most arrests tonight gets free dinner.

Simmers (second from right) joined the Hagerstown police in the late 1980s. (Courtesy of the Simmers family)

In Clear Spring, Maryland, a Hagerstown suburb and a real-life Norman Rockwell painting, Varner shot hoops with Simmers and Brooke. A gifted athlete, “she wiped the floor with both of us,” Varner recalled. Brooke had no problem swimming the formidable Potomac River clear to its West Virginia bank. “Kevin was very strong willed,” Varner said, and “she was a lot like him.” Varner remembered how Brooke once walked into the church where he was a pastor and said, “Do you really think that Jesus could walk on water?”

“If there was a tenth gear, she was in it,” said Brooke’s mother, Angie von Gersdorff. “She needed that extra adrenaline rush.” Von Gersdorff and Simmers split up when Brooke was a baby. Within a few years, they both remarried. Von Gersdorff said Brooke’s antics overlaid a darker struggle already underway. “She began to fester in puberty,” she said.

Clear Spring, Maryland (Jeremy Raff)

Brooke was given to angry outbursts that worsened as high school began. Finally, in a heated argument, she punched her stepmother, Dana Simmers, in the face—hard, leaving bruises. The Simmers and von Gersdorff got together to decide what to do. “She’s going to have to learn a lesson. We’re going to report it,” von Gersdorff remembers the group deciding. “Tough love.” They called the police and Brooke landed in juvenile detention. But von Gersdorff now regrets feeding her daughter to the justice system at such a young age. “I really thought that it was going to help, but it did not. It did the complete and utter opposite,” von Gersdorff told me. “It’s a huge guilt that makes me so angry. I can’t hit something hard enough to get any relief.” In the years after juvenile detention, Brooke starting hanging out with a rougher crowd and eventually got hooked on pills.

[Read: No family is safe from this epidemic.]

Brooke was addicted to opioid pain pills by age 18. (Courtesy of the Simmers family)

After she told Simmers about her addiction, the unsuccessful rehab attempts grinded the family’s patience and finances. Simmers said waiting lists often stymied their attempts to get help—by the time a spot opened up, Brooke was out on the street again. Then, when she was accepted, she did not receive medication-assisted treatment, which much of the medical literature describes as the gold standard of care. Such treatment combines therapy with low-dose opioids like buprenorphine to help control cravings, but it is still often stigmatized as a way of replacing one addiction with another. Brooke’s rehabs embraced a strict prohibition on medication of any kind—one even kicked her out when staff discovered ibuprofen in her luggage. Abstinence-based drug treatment is astonishingly ineffective but deeply entrenched in the United States. Leading public-health organizations including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the World Health Organization all recommend medication-assisted treatment, but only about 12 percent of people with a substance-use disorder receive specialty treatment.

After another relapse, Brooke was living in a Motel 6 next to the highway. Afraid for her life, the family turned to the institution they knew best: law enforcement. Simmers called friends in the Hagerstown police who had previously turned a blind eye to Brooke’s drug use—“professional courtesy,” Simmers called it— and asked them to throw the book at her. She was arrested and sentenced to four months in jail.

Brooke arrived at the Washington County Detention Center with some fanfare. “It was like fresh meat,” said Amanda West, her cell mate. “You could just hear whispers down the hallway, ‘It’s Brooke Simmers, it’s Brooke Simmers, it’s Brooke Simmers!’” Having arrested some of the inmates himself, Sergeant Simmers was well known inside the detention center.

Even when Brooke was dope sick, she kept the pod entertained. Like her dad with his officers, she goaded inmates into contests: Who could brush their teeth the fastest? Who could design the best jailhouse outfit? Brooke tie-dyed an oversized -shirt with Hawaiian Punch and crushed-up colored pencils and declared herself the winner.

A drug-treatment class at the Washington County Detention Center (Jeremy Raff)

When West was suffering severe heroin withdrawal, Brooke “put socks on my hands so I wouldn’t scratch my face,” she recalled. West remembered Brooke returning to the cellblock in tears after visits from her father, crushed by guilt. “She wanted her dad to be proud of her,” West told me, “but she felt like he could not separate her from his law-enforcement life. It was insulting to him that he had a child that was committing the same sins of the people that he had incarcerated.”

West had been sober for about a year when we met. She told me that she had also tried to convince her parents—a banker and a Christian schoolteacher—that her addiction was not meant to hurt them. As if to prove her point, she rolled up the sleeves of her cardigan to reveal thick, glassy scars blanketing her forearms. She explained that in a fit of desperation she’d used “krokodil,” a synthetic heroin substitute from Russia made with a toxic swirl of chemicals and gasoline. Her skin had bubbled, swollen, and turned black. Now it looked like skin grafts after a severe burn. “I almost lost both my arms,” she said. “Who wants to do this?”

Severe scarring from “krocodil,” a synthetic heroin substitute made with gasoline (Jeremy Raff)

Brooke was released on April 4, 2015. Redoubling her commitment to sobriety, she attended abstinence-based Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Overdose deaths exceeded 72,000 in 2017, but fewer than half of drug-treatment programs provide low-dose opioids to treat cravings, though they can cut the risk of an overdose death in half. After being clean for four months in jail, Brooke was in an exceptionally precarious position on the outside. The risk of an overdose death is 129 times higher in the two weeks after being released from jail, a 2007 study found.

Simmers feared Brooke would relapse, so at night he parked his police cruiser close behind her car to prevent her from sneaking out of the house.

Just nine days after Brooke’s release, Simmers awoke to tire tracks through the front yard—Brooke had apparently maneuvered around his car. Hours later, Dana Simmers received a call from Brooke’s friend Alison Shumaker, who told her she had spoken to Brooke in the predawn hours. Shumaker, who was trying to quit heroin herself, said that Brooke had relapsed and, full of self-loathing, had told her, “I’m a piece of shit.” In a recent interview, Shumaker recalled that Brooke feared her father’s response, and told Shumaker, “I can’t go home. He’s going to be so disappointed.” Eventually, the line went silent.

“She might have died talking on the phone with me,” Shumaker said. The possibility that faster action may have saved Brooke’s life haunts Shumaker, but her inaction is not unique. Research suggests that after decades of Simmers-style drug policing, the most important reason drug users don’t seek timely medical help is the fear of prosecution.

“You can love someone to death,” Simmers said. (Jeremy Raff)

The next day, a search party finally found Brooke’s red Volkswagen Beetle in a church parking lot. Detective Varner arrived on the scene to find Brooke lying in her own vomit in the back seat, a sweatshirt rolled up like a pillow under her head and a basketball near her feet. Parked beneath a hoop where she had once practiced layups, Brooke died of a heroin overdose on April 14, 2015.

More than three years later, the pain has hardly abated. Carefully out of sight behind the Christmas decorations in the basement, Dana Simmers, Brooke’s stepmother, preserves clothing that still carries Brooke’s scent. In a glass case in her living room, von Gersdorff keeps a lock of her daughter’s hair she snipped off at the funeral home.

In his home office, lined with old badges and a black-and-white police-recruit photo, Simmers is still mulling over what went wrong. After decades of locking up low-level drug dealers and users, including his own daughter, Simmers said he realized that “we’ve tried to incarcerate our way out of a lot of problems in this country and it has not worked.”

“Maybe if she wouldn't have went away for that four months, she wouldn’t have overdosed and died,” he said. Though he can’t point to a single cause, he said he feels “guilty everyday.” Simmers told me that Brooke’s death, and the powerlessness he felt while repeatedly failing to find effective drug treatment for her, fundamentally changed his mind.

Brooke’s obituary (Courtesy of the Simmers family)

“Twenty years ago, most people thought arrest and incarceration were the answer to this drug war,” he said. “I think most people were wrong—I think I was wrong.” Now Simmers says he’d rather see the roughly $47,000 a year it takes to jail drug offenders spent on jobs programs instead. He’d like to see 24-hour, on-demand treatment available to anyone who wants it—no waiting lists. The former narcotics officer is even open to the idea of decriminalizing heroin.

Simmers also now detects a racial injustice in the harsh punishment he once meted out. His own crack-era targets mostly went unnoticed, but the details of Brooke’s life and death were covered heavily in the local media and elicited a wave of sympathy from police officers and elected officials. “This problem was happening in the African American community for years and we did nothing about it,” Simmers said. But Brooke was “a pretty white girl who lives in the suburbs, lives in middle-class America. I think that could be why people were more attracted to the story.”

Simmers said that when Brooke was sober, she told him that she hoped to open a sober-living house for women. They struck a deal: One year sober, and he’d help her make it a reality. She overdosed before she made it to a year, but Simmers decided to go ahead with the plan anyway. Soon after her death, he and Dana began fund-raising, and a friend donated a leafy patch of land outside Hagerstown. Volunteer construction crews are at work on a 16-bed living facility and treatment center.

Simmers and Brooke (Courtesy of the Simmers family)

On a brisk morning last May, about 100 supporters—grieving parents, people recovering from addiction, police officers—gathered for the ground-breaking ceremony. “I don’t think anybody wants to build a house in memory of their daughter,” Simmers told the crowd, “but this was her dream and we’re going to do our best to fulfill her dream.” Brooke’s House is slated to open early next year.

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/11/narcotics-cop-loses-his-daughter-heroin-overdose/575425/?utm_source=feed

[ionecoffman]

A Narcotics Officer Ends His War on Drugs

HAGERSTOWN, Md.—Kevin Simmers relished locking up drug users, no matter how little crack they had on them. “If they just had a pipe—fine,” he said. “At the end of the night, I wanted to have an arrest. I wanted a body.”

Decades later, despite his efforts, the opioid epidemic was in full swing in Hagerstown, “a small town with big-city problems” an hour outside Baltimore. In 2013, Simmers received an unusual phone call from his 18-year-old daughter, Brooke, who was typically defensive of her independence: “I need your help, Dad.” Simmers braced himself and met her for breakfast at a Waffle House near the so-called heroin highway, an intersection of interstates that connects major drug markets up and down the East Coast. Brooke told Simmers that she was addicted to opioid pain pills and didn’t know how to stop. Familiar with their street price, Simmers asked how Brooke, with no obvious income, could afford the expensive pills. “She told me she was selling her body,” he recalled.

Simmers sprung into action, and over the next year he helped Brooke into a half-dozen rehabs, but none seemed to work. Eventually, out of options and fearing a fatal overdose, Simmers used his police connections to jail his own daughter. But the disaster that followed made him reconsider not just his decision to lock up Brooke, but also his role as a willing combatant in the decades-long War on Drugs.

“I now think the whole drug war is total bullshit,” he said.

“Drugs are menacing our society,” intoned President Ronald Reagan in a 1986 televised address. “They’re killing our children.” Fresh out of the Air Force, Kevin Simmers was driving a milk truck. Reagan was “an inspiring speaker,” Simmer said, so he decided to apply to become a Hagerstown police officer.

Tall, opinionated, irreverent, and fiercely competitive, Simmers was “larger than life,” said Nick Varner, a Hagerstown police detective who trained under him. His policing philosophy was simple, Varner said: “Lock up the problem.” Sergeant Simmers liked contests: Whoever brings in the most arrests tonight gets free dinner.

Simmers (second from right) joined the Hagerstown police in the late 1980s. (Courtesy of the Simmers family)

In Clear Spring, Maryland, a Hagerstown suburb and a real-life Norman Rockwell painting, Varner shot hoops with Simmers and Brooke. A gifted athlete, “she wiped the floor with both of us,” Varner recalled. Brooke had no problem swimming the formidable Potomac River clear to its West Virginia bank. “Kevin was very strong willed,” Varner said, and “she was a lot like him.” Varner remembered how Brooke once walked into the church where he was a pastor and said, “Do you really think that Jesus could walk on water?”

“If there was a tenth gear, she was in it,” said Brooke’s mother, Angie von Gersdorff. “She needed that extra adrenaline rush.” Von Gersdorff and Simmers split up when Brooke was a baby. Within a few years, they both remarried. Von Gersdorff said Brooke’s antics overlaid a darker struggle already underway. “She began to fester in puberty,” she said.

Clear Spring, Maryland (Jeremy Raff)

Brooke was given to angry outbursts that worsened as high school began. Finally, in a heated argument, she punched her stepmother, Dana Simmers, in the face—hard, leaving bruises. The Simmers and von Gersdorff got together to decide what to do. “She’s going to have to learn a lesson. We’re going to report it,” von Gersdorff remembers the group deciding. “Tough love.” They called the police and Brooke landed in juvenile detention. But von Gersdorff now regrets feeding her daughter to the justice system at such a young age. “I really thought that it was going to help, but it did not. It did the complete and utter opposite,” von Gersdorff told me. “It’s a huge guilt that makes me so angry. I can’t hit something hard enough to get any relief.” In the years after juvenile detention, Brooke starting hanging out with a rougher crowd and eventually got hooked on pills.

[Read: No family is safe from this epidemic.]

Brooke was addicted to opioid pain pills by age 18. (Courtesy of the Simmers family)

After she told Simmers about her addiction, the unsuccessful rehab attempts grinded the family’s patience and finances. Simmers said waiting lists often stymied their attempts to get help—by the time a spot opened up, Brooke was out on the street again. Then, when she was accepted, she did not receive medication-assisted treatment, which much of the medical literature describes as the gold standard of care. Such treatment combines therapy with low-dose opioids like buprenorphine to help control cravings, but it is still often stigmatized as a way of replacing one addiction for another. Brooke’s rehabs embraced a strict prohibition on medication of any kind—one even kicked her out when staff discovered ibuprofen in her luggage. Abstinence-based drug treatment is astonishingly ineffective but deeply entrenched in the United States. Leading public-health organizations including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the World Health Organization all recommend medication-assisted treatment, but only about 12 percent of people with a substance-use disorder receive specialty treatment.

After another relapse, Brooke was living in a Motel 6 next to the highway. Afraid for her life, the family turned to the institution they knew best: law enforcement. Simmers called friends in the Hagerstown police who had previously turned a blind eye to Brooke’s drug use—“professional courtesy,” Simmers called it— and asked them to throw the book at her. She was arrested and sentenced to four months in jail.

Brooke arrived at the Washington County Detention Center with some fanfare. “It was like fresh meat,” said Amanda West, her cell mate. “You could just hear whispers down the hallway, ‘It’s Brooke Simmers, it’s Brooke Simmers, it’s Brooke Simmers!’” Having arrested some of the inmates himself, Sergeant Simmers was well known inside the detention center.

Even when Brooke was dope sick, she kept the pod entertained. Like her dad with his officers, she goaded inmates into contests: Who could brush their teeth the fastest? Who could design the best jailhouse outfit? Brooke tie-dyed an oversized -shirt with Hawaiian Punch and crushed-up colored pencils and declared herself the winner.

A drug-treatment class at the Washington County Detention Center (Jeremy Raff)

When West was suffering severe heroin withdrawal, Brooke “put socks on my hands so I wouldn’t scratch my face,” she recalled. West remembered Brooke returning to the cellblock in tears after visits from her father, crushed by guilt. “She wanted her dad to be proud of her,” West told me, “but she felt like he could not separate her from his law-enforcement life. It was insulting to him that he had a child that was committing the same sins of the people that he had incarcerated.”

West had been sober for about a year when we met. She told me that she had also tried to convince her parents—a banker and a Christian schoolteacher—that her addiction was not meant to hurt them. As if to prove her point, she rolled up the sleeves of her cardigan to reveal thick, glassy scars blanketing her forearms. She explained that in a fit of desperation she’d used “krokodil,” a synthetic heroin substitute from Russia made with a toxic swirl of chemicals and gasoline. Her skin had bubbled, swollen, and turned black. Now it looked like skin grafts after a severe burn. “I almost lost both my arms,” she said. “Who wants to do this?”

Severe scarring from “krocodil,” a synthetic heroin substitute made with gasoline (Jeremy Raff)

Brooke was released on April 4, 2015. Redoubling her commitment to sobriety, she attended abstinence-based Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Overdose deaths exceeded 72,000 in 2017, but fewer than half of drug-treatment programs provide low-dose opioids to treat cravings, though they can cut the risk of an overdose death in half. After being clean for four months in jail, Brooke was in an exceptionally precarious position on the outside. The risk of an overdose death is 129 times higher in the two weeks after being released from jail, a 2007 study found.

Simmers feared Brooke would relapse, so at night he parked his police cruiser close behind her car to prevent her from sneaking out of the house.

Just nine days after Brooke’s release, Simmers awoke to tire tracks through the front yard—Brooke had apparently maneuvered around his car. Hours later, Dana Simmers received a call from Brooke’s friend Alison Shumaker, who told her she had spoken to Brooke in the predawn hours. Shumaker, who was trying to quit heroin herself, said that Brooke had relapsed and, full of self-loathing, had told her, “I’m a piece of shit.” In a recent interview, Shumaker recalled that Brooke feared her father’s response, and told Shumaker, “I can’t go home. He’s going to be so disappointed.” Eventually, the line went silent.

“She might have died talking on the phone with me,” Shumaker said. The possibility that faster action may have saved Brooke’s life haunts Shumaker, but her inaction is not unique. Research suggests that after decades of Simmers-style drug policing, the most important reason drug users don’t seek timely medical help is the fear of prosecution.

“You can love someone to death,” Simmers said. (Jeremy Raff)

The next day, a search party finally found Brooke’s red Volkswagen Beetle in a church parking lot. Detective Varner arrived on the scene to find Brooke lying in her own vomit in the back seat, a sweatshirt rolled up like a pillow under her head and a basketball near her feet. Parked beneath a hoop where she had once practiced layups, Brooke died of a heroin overdose on April 14, 2015.

More than three years later, the pain has hardly abated. Carefully out of sight behind the Christmas decorations in the basement, Dana Simmers, Brooke’s stepmother, preserves clothing that still carries Brooke’s scent. In a glass case in her living room, von Gersdorff keeps a lock of her daughter’s hair she snipped off at the funeral home.

In his home office, lined with old badges and a black-and-white police-recruit photo, Simmers is still mulling over what went wrong. After decades of locking up low-level drug dealers and users, including his own daughter, Simmers said he realized that “we’ve tried to incarcerate our way out of a lot of problems in this country and it has not worked.”

“Maybe if she wouldn't have went away for that four months, she wouldn’t have overdosed and died,” he said. Though he can’t point to a single cause, he said he feels “guilty everyday.” Simmers told me that Brooke’s death, and the powerlessness he felt while repeatedly failing to find effective drug treatment for her, fundamentally changed his mind.

Brooke’s obituary (Courtesy of the Simmers family)

“Twenty years ago, most people thought arrest and incarceration were the answer to this drug war,” he said. “I think most people were wrong—I think I was wrong.” Now Simmers says he’d rather see the roughly $47,000 a year it takes to jail drug offenders spent on jobs programs instead. He’d like to see 24-hour, on-demand treatment available to anyone who wants it—no waiting lists. The former narcotics officer is even open to the idea of decriminalizing heroin.

Simmers also now detects a racial injustice in the harsh punishment he once meted out. His own crack-era targets mostly went unnoticed, but the details of Brooke’s life and death were covered heavily in the local media and elicited a wave of sympathy from police officers and elected officials. “This problem was happening in the African American community for years and we did nothing about it,” Simmers said. But Brooke was “a pretty white girl who lives in the suburbs, lives in middle-class America. I think that could be why people were more attracted to the story.”

Simmers said that when Brooke was sober, she told him that she hoped to open a sober-living house for women. They struck a deal: One year sober, and he’d help her make it a reality. She overdosed before she made it to a year, but Simmers decided to go ahead with the plan anyway. Soon after her death, he and Dana began fund-raising, and a friend donated a leafy patch of land outside Hagerstown. Volunteer construction crews are at work on a 16-bed living facility and treatment center.

Simmers and Brooke (Courtesy of the Simmers family)

On a brisk morning last May, about 100 supporters—grieving parents, people recovering from addiction, police officers—gathered for the ground-breaking ceremony. “I don’t think anybody wants to build a house in memory of their daughter,” Simmers told the crowd, “but this was her dream and we’re going to do our best to fulfill her dream.” Brooke’s House is slated to open early next year.

Article source here:The Atlantic