The Cost of Wide Open Hearts

I started to get interested in highlighting different themes in the “current” opioid crisis, things that I haven’t talked about to date yet.  The opioid crisis isn’t new, it just became a bigger crisis it seems to me when majority white states and soccer moms started to crash their mini vans into trees on the freeway.  The crisis of addiction has always been a problem in people of color communities, and my harm reduction newsletter reminds me of these things. Perhaps the Fentanyl crisis in the midwestern states will cause some movement to happen that didn’t happen in South Central with crack in the 80s.   “The old assumption that there is a correlation between poverty and people of color and drug abuse leaves many of the white rural families of potential addicts woefully ignorant of the signs of abuse and treatment.” At least the situation is seen as a Federal emergency which is supposed to inject more help than harm, however, some skeptical parties feel that the damage that punitive drug war tactics and mass incarceration will cause will continue to affect QTPOC disproportionately.  

Harm Reduction centers seem to espouse a social justice framework that is simply based on not letting people die or be punished for where they are currently at.  While most of the workers have been drug users themselves, even if not actual drug users, working in the trenches of harm reduction often creates its own victim/rescuer identity that creates its own psychological addiction around the endless supply of cases and placing the volunteer or outreach worker in an epidemic that will never be solved for many community members.  It becomes a new identity after one gets clean or an alternative high and crash cycle for others. This doesn’t take away from the fact that great work that often very few people want to do is still done. Joelle Puccio, who works with a lot of prenantal addicts says that automatically assuming that certain behaviors of prenantal addcts are an endemic cause and effect relationship are due to the fact that we cannot ethically study this sample of the population fairly.  “What I am saying is that there is simply no evidence to support the harms that our society blames on perinatal substance use. In scientific research, perinatal substance use is associated with negative outcomes. It is important to note that associations are not a cause and effect relationship. Good research is difficult to perform and interpret, entirely due to the legal and ethical status of substances. It is impossible to design a randomized controlled trial where you take group of pregnant people and tell half of them to smoke meth because you want to find out if it hurts their baby. Because of the threat of criminal and child services consequences, the only families that we are able to study are those that have been caught.”  

There is also more than just overdose that is costing money.  There are Hepatitis C infections
“ there is a cure for hepatitis C; the bad news is that the cheapest course of treatment costs more
than $20,000 and ranges all the way up to $90,000. “ and because users are shooting with dirty water
from toilets and rivers, they are getting infections called bacterial endocarditis which are treated at the
rate of 40-50,000 new cases each year.  It causes heart valve infections and strokes in patients that
are as young as 20-30 years old. They often have to have open heart surgery to replace an infected
heart valve. The treatment can cost up to $120,000 per patient to treat.
Sometimes patients require multiple complicated surgeries, including open-heart
surgery, with no guarantee that one will be enough if the patient can’t stay clean.  
Medical programs in some states will pay for the treatment for curable Hep C only
if the patient is clean, making their drug treatment a priority and added expense.

https://www.vox.com/2018/3/6/16453530/america-opioid
-crisis-epidemic-bacterial-endocarditis-hepatitis-c

http://harmreduction.org/blog/amplifying-hope/

Riders of the Stormy

While the passing of FOSTA/SESTA and the closing of Backpage have forced many sex workers to feel like their world is getting worse than ever, Stormy Daniels is headlining the news with her lawyer and speaking more coherently about than other women who had previously positioned their vaginas in ways that could threaten the presidency: Marilyn Monroe and Monica Lewinsky come to mind.  I’m positive that a thorough cleansing of Ms. Clifford’s drug use and record of being a good parent has already been scrutinized by the media and current administrations’ legal teams trying to save their asses, therefore if she had anything else that would shake her credibility in the claims including her recent lawsuit for defamation, I believe it would have come out. The fact that she does legal sex work helps immensely as well.  Her stripclub tour “Make America Horny Again” definitely serves her to profit from this affair which porn headliners typically make about $130,000 for touring the stripclub circuit of the U.S as a feature performer annually. But so what, she deserves to make money and she is smart for doing so. She crowd fundraised $250,000 for legal fees in record time. Stephanie Clifford, said she set up the campaign so that could "speak honestly and openly" against the "intimidation tactics" used by Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, and the president himself, she wrote in the campaign description.  She claims to not be a victim--of sexual assault, but after scouring through all of the media to catch up on this scandal, it seemed to have armed herself with a strong lawyer who is ready to be her wingman on TV and in court. She showed up at the trial of Michael Cohen with the intention to stare him down, reminding me of Hester Prynne in The Scarlett Letter, proudly wearing ALL the letters that everyone has tried to label her with: Adulteress, Adult Actress, Slut, Whore, Liar, Gold Digger.  There seemed to be more criticism and hatred of Obama than of Stormy Daniels in all my research. Although she doesn’t claim to be a victim of sexual assault, she does claim to be a victim of bullying and intimidation which directly affected her career and threatened her and her child. In other MeToo news this week, Andrea Constand has triumphed in her accusations of being drugged and raped by Bill Cosby who IS a clear victor in the momentum of MeToo. It is a clear moment in time in which women's voices are being heard and the women who are bringing forth accusations are not backing down.  Stormy and her current Michael Avenatti stand to take the re-election of Trump and perhaps leading to impeachment while he is in his current term for campaign violations. It is the first time such a strong case with a sex worker face being so unapologetically strong willed and well spoken than any woman before her, and a case where someone hasn't yet attempted to murder her so she would silence. I am reminded of the DC madam Deborah Jean Palfrey stood to shake up the White House and then mysteriously hung herself. She lost her life before anyone major lost their job.  I remember when that happened, it seemed like a murder cover up which if Stormy’s safety was threatened by someone in a parking lot when she was a no one in the political game then perhaps her best defense was to be as public as possible so that any sudden suicide would just not fit the bill. There are conspiracy theories that say that Marilyn Monroe was drugged when she died to cover up her affair with JFK. Admist some of the worst things that are happening to sex workers in this country, I seem to feel after the end of my scouring of the Daniels story that she actually succeed in taking the current president out of the White House.