While this is a personal debate you're going to have to have in full with yourself, I can only say one thing:
Personal accountability. If you buy drugs willingly and ingest substances illegally, you are essentially signing on the dotted line to accept the full gamut of possible consequences, including death. I've never once bought into the notion that the dealer is ultimately responsible because that goes against my core beliefs as a human being. We all make our choices, whatever they may be, and ultimately must accept the consequences, not pawn them off on others. If they didn't buy from the OP, they would have bought from someone else. It's just the way it is.
If I burn myself on McDonald's coffee, I don't sue McDonalds for my own stupidity.
With that said, it takes a certain kind of person to be able to sell drugs guilt free, and I don't think the OP is it (again, a good thing). I think this situation presents a wake up call for you to maybe make some life changes.
You're certainly culpable should morphine be detected, but that's an aspect of our legal system I vehemently oppose. Locking you up for dealing is one thing, but you didn't force anything down anyone's throat. They sought YOU out. They CHOSE to ingest the pills without the consent of a doctor.
Just as every time I bitch and moan about going through withdrawals, I know at the end of the day I have nobody to thank but myself. Even with my injuries and prescriptions, I still CHOSE to abuse them.
This. Sorry for the long post, but death and survivor's guilt can't be addressed with one-liners. I believe in legalisation - but with the caveat that when we choose to use drugs, medicinally or recreationally or both, we're signing up to the full risk of side effects that come with them. In responsible mode, I've refused prescriptions that had potential side-effects I wasn't going to risk: but would have taken and abused them if they'd had abuse potential. In normal mode, I rarely turn down my drugs of choice - the operative word being CHOICE. You're talking about an adult, who was fully grown and already using when you became her source, and it sounds like, as you wrote, she would have used anyway, and possibly encountered greater dangers from dealing with scuzzfucks or getting herself/her daughter arrested scoring. Shulgin had it right: when it comes to our own bodies, we are the customs agent, the police, the executive authority, we decide what comes in - and we live or die with the consequences of our choices. You weren't selling smack on the playground, you didn't push the pills down her throat: the ultimate responsibility for such a death is with the departed.
In '03, a close friend died from a binge on rock and H that overwhelmed an undetected cardiac deficiency: I wasn't with him that night, didn't know he'd started into opiates, and he was a brilliant intellectual, successful attorney and proud young man who made his own choices. Still, I knew that I'd bragged about using rock and H, done MDXX, speed and acid with him in the old days, and we were the mad men of the crowd: where others did lines, we did grams. Where others took halves, we double-dropped and chomped shrooms or 'cid on top. Later on, when the crowd 'grew up', got jobs and switched from rave drugs to booze and coke (or booze, benzos, junk and weed, in my case), he became a pretty hardcore weekend warrior on coke, and I didn't turn down the lines he cut me. It never occurred to me that my stupid, youthful boasts of hard drug use might have an effect on him - not that we were competitive about our drug intake, but he heard a friend he respected tell war stories of speedballing, and, in retrospect, must have thought, on some level, that if I could do it and walk away, then so would he. I never said 'smoke street H on the comedown from powder and rock', I only smoked rock with him once, and had the impression it wasa very occasional indulgence for him...but still, I was tortured by guilt after his death. I'd been, inadvertantly, a shitty-friend-by-example...but if I'd been with him that night, I would have slowed him down on the rock and vetoed the H. I can never forget his saying, the one time we smoked together, 'let's do a rock in one hit', and my responding 'Xxxx, man, that's going out begging for heart failure,' Nonetheless, I felt responsible, and if I could turn back time, would have kept my mouth shut about my own experiences with the so easily lethal mix of H & C. It just never occurred to me that my metabolism might be wired to withstand things others couldn't. There's a level on which I'll never forgive myself: like the wartime posters said, 'Careless lips cost lives.'
But
he bought the powder, he bought the rock, he bought the H, and so far as anyone knows (the coroner's inquest suggested a call girl might have been present), did so alone. He was certainly aware of the risks, and was compelled to take them for reasons (he was due in court, as a lawyer, the next day, and hadn't seemed depressed or particularly reckless in the preceding months) I can only guess at. My conscience isn't clean - but he dirtied up his bloodstream by choice that night, and it might well have made no difference if he'd never met me. If you choose to use opiates, you know the dangers you're inviting: and while you did supply the morphine, she would have found it elsewhere if you hadn't been around.
I don't think legalities are an issue if there's been no autopsy, though I would make a point of disposing of any drugs in your possession that haven't been legally prescribed. As other posters have said, you clearly don't have the necessary detachment and coldness to sell opiates: and that speaks well of you as a human being. BUT...you weren't pushing: a, from-the-sounds-of-it, very sick woman took some morphine and died. Morphine may or may not have been the cause of death. But no-one who uses opiates in this culture has any illusions about their addictive properties, or the fact that they can kill. You had no control over her use, and seem to have been motivated by compassion as well as profit.
I'm not saying you should feel indifferent - you need to be honest with yourself about the guilt, acknowledge her responsibility for her death (though it may have been a sudden heart attack or the like that had nothing to do with opiates), and that you did, for mixed motives, provide her with potentially lethal medication. That doesn't make you a murderer, and I repeat, the morphine may well not have been the primary cause of death, if it contributed at all. You have to live with yourself, and it sounds like you can't do that and keep selling. But be careful: if anything will make the daughter and father turn on you, it might be refusal to sell. You may need to help them find proper pain-management supplies legitimately, if possible, explain how you feel, and that you just can't stand the thought of it happening again, to one of them. If nothing else, they should be able to find a prescription source of methadone, and from what I hear, a lot of chronic pain patients find it more useful in the long run than morphine or even heroin. You need to think carefully about how to extricate yourself from that situation - you don't want to supply them, but cutting them off will leave them in a world of hurt, and they might react very badly to being faced with sudden withdrawal.
In short, I can imagine, all too well, how you might feel: but you didn't kill anyone. That doesn't mean you should keep dealing, and you'll live with the guilt in perpetuity, but if people want opiates, they'll find them, and we're all responsible for our own drug intake. The months ahead won't be easy, and the shadow of this kind of thing doesn't lift, it only fades - but while you're not entirely innocent here, neither are you finally guilty. Think long and hard about how to get out of the position you're in with your remaining clients, taking as few risks as possible all around, and as others have said, learn the lesson: you're not, and don't want to be, a dealer. You need to stop selling, and help the family grieve, which probably includes helping them get proper medical assistance - not always easy.
It also sounds like this is, in part (and this isn't a moral get-out-of-jail-free card), the kind of situation that arises as a consequence of prohibition and the resulting reluctance of doctors to prescribe, unless they're pill mill quacks, painkillers as needed (I became an addict - that was my choice, but if provided with a legit supply of DHC, wouldn't have gone looking for black market painkillers, finding mostly morphine, fent, oxy and benzos - it wasn't the doc's fault I made a bunch of stupid choices, but when medical professionals won't alleviate your pain, you do what you have to in order to get by). They shouldn't have had to turn to you for meds they needed: and if they were using in part to get high, again, that was their choice.
You're in a terrible place, and have my sympathy and empathy: I'm still haunted by my friend's death. I repeat: you're not the killer, and you don't have the dealer's capacity for dissociation that's really a prerequisite for selling anything harder than weed, which shows that you're a human being, not some psycho on the corner selling bundles to any and all takers. You'll never feel good about this, and I think you need to withdraw from supplying friends as safely as you can for all concerned - but you shouldn't torture yourself any more than you can avoid. Learn the lesson, keep your morphine to yourself, and never forget: every pill or patch or line we take, the cigarette I'm about to smoke, the benzos I'm trying to taper off of, they are our/my choices, and blaming the person who gives us what we ask for if it goes wrong is childish and misconceived. You were trying to make some bucks and help some friends out, not flood the ghettoes with fentanyl.
There are tough nights ahead of you, but never lose sight of that fact: you gave her what she asked for, and everyone knows that morphine can kill. PM me if you want to talk or vent or just howl at a distance - and be both as honest, and as kind, to yourself and to her family as you can be.
A distant hug, for what it's worth: and if you can help it, don't start killing the pain of this by taking more morphine, though I know it might be difficult to resist with supplies on hand.
In sadness, and at least
some understanding.
WW.
