Today Bluelight goes black in memory of all the members of this community that have lost their lives. Some of their names are in the shrine and some have simply stopped posting, anonymous names, anonymous lives. Except that they were never anonymous lives.
In every part of the world, in every strata of society, in every culture, families suffer the terrible consequences of the risks associated with the use of drugs. Each and every parent of a son or daughter that lost his or her life to a drug overdose or fatal interaction, or even simply an unknown physical vulnerability combined with a relatively harmless substance will ask themselves every single day what they could have done to prevent the death of their child. I came to Bluelight tortured by that question and the answers that are emerging simply point to the fact that this is perhaps a misguided question.
Answer #1: Knowledge can save lives. The mission of this site is harm reduction. Harm reduction assumes that the person coming here has the intention of taking a drug and we are going to do our best as moderators to ensure that the forums give that person a realistic view of the risks of that decision as well as the ways to minimize them.
Answer #2: Prohibition doesn’t work. We cannot save our children’s lives from a car accident by prohibiting cars and we cannot save their lives from drug abuse by prohibiting drugs. We can demand real education. We can demand dialogue in the media, in schools and in the medical profession concerning the placement of very young children on legal mind-altering and addictive drugs while criminally penalizing other drugs.
Answer #3: We can see our children as whole individuals, struggling to come to terms with both their own complexity and the social and cultural reality of their time and place. We can recognize that our role as “environmental controller” ended with our child’s infancy; that guidance and limit setting are different from control. We can accept that our teenage and young adult offspring determine their lives through their choices, through making mistakes and through trial and error, just as we did and still do.
Answer #4: We can fight the failed policies of the War on Drugs and the misinformed and misguided thinking that continues to feed this entrenched way of looking at drugs. The War on drugs is simply a disaster that is ruining lives all over the globe. It is a failed domestic policy and a failed foreign policy. We can get involved in our own communities, especially as parents speaking to other parents, to try to break the spell of ignorance that continues to prop up this set of laws that causes untold suffering the world over.
We can do all that and still the unthinkable might happen.
For me, the unthinkable happened on May 30th, 2011. My youngest, my most vulnerable, my fiercely opinionated and hilarious and deeply spiritual son made a choice, a fatal mistake or a fatal decision, went against everything that I had begged him to consider, and lost his precious young life. What could have saved him? My husband and I could not save him; nor could his beloved older brother, his best friend nor all the friends that tried. Neither Bluelight nor Erowid as sources of practical information could save him. Bluelight the community of people that embraced him could not save him. As I write this I am aware of how I am making it sound hopeless; but that is not my intent and I do not feel hopeless.; in very large measure that is because of Bluelight and the whole Harm Reduction movement. I have seen the power of this community as it reaches out to help someone through cravings in real time. I have seen this community encourage young people to tell their parents what is going on and to ask for help. I have seen parents that feel like the worst failures because of their own addiction get the support they need to believe in their own goodness enough to seek treatment. People use drugs for many reasons—to relax, as medicine, for growth, for adventure; people abuse drugs for many reasons, too—as medicine for psychological pain, for a hiding place, for temporary relief from the fear of the chaos of being alive and human. Bluelight has people coming in from all angles and it is the power of this community that each person enters knowing that they can ask questions without fear.
On this day, I would like to honor those members of this community that no longer are among us by remembering the fullness of who they were. Drug taking gets stigmatized with enough hypocrisy to sink a ship but death by drugs is even further stigmatized. One of the most comforting discoveries I made about my son’s life after his death was that he had this community that knew him, accepted him and valued him for the entirety of who he was: a funny, intelligent, compassionate person struggling with growing up, complicated by extreme mental states as well as addiction. He, like many others that struggle hard with living, often internalized the larger culture’s view of him: addict, criminal, weak, useless, failure. The most pain I ever felt as a parent was hearing my son apply these words to himself. We can honor the lives of those that did not make it by doing everything possible to develop our own compassion, for ourselves and every other living thing.
I would also like to honor the families and significant others of those that have died. For us, the missing is an unrelenting pain. The passage of time does not heal all wounds, as the cliché would have you believe. My own mother said it best at my son’s memorial when she said that it is like an amputation. Perhaps the raw torture subsides but every day and every night from here on is an adaptation to pain.
If you are a young person entering this site for the first time today, read through the shrine. Every one of the names there was a person full of dreams for whom death was still an abstract—something far away that happened to other people. Every one of the names there left a devastating wake of grief. Take care of your selves and your dreams. No one else can do it for you. Honor your life.
In every part of the world, in every strata of society, in every culture, families suffer the terrible consequences of the risks associated with the use of drugs. Each and every parent of a son or daughter that lost his or her life to a drug overdose or fatal interaction, or even simply an unknown physical vulnerability combined with a relatively harmless substance will ask themselves every single day what they could have done to prevent the death of their child. I came to Bluelight tortured by that question and the answers that are emerging simply point to the fact that this is perhaps a misguided question.
Answer #1: Knowledge can save lives. The mission of this site is harm reduction. Harm reduction assumes that the person coming here has the intention of taking a drug and we are going to do our best as moderators to ensure that the forums give that person a realistic view of the risks of that decision as well as the ways to minimize them.
Answer #2: Prohibition doesn’t work. We cannot save our children’s lives from a car accident by prohibiting cars and we cannot save their lives from drug abuse by prohibiting drugs. We can demand real education. We can demand dialogue in the media, in schools and in the medical profession concerning the placement of very young children on legal mind-altering and addictive drugs while criminally penalizing other drugs.
Answer #3: We can see our children as whole individuals, struggling to come to terms with both their own complexity and the social and cultural reality of their time and place. We can recognize that our role as “environmental controller” ended with our child’s infancy; that guidance and limit setting are different from control. We can accept that our teenage and young adult offspring determine their lives through their choices, through making mistakes and through trial and error, just as we did and still do.
Answer #4: We can fight the failed policies of the War on Drugs and the misinformed and misguided thinking that continues to feed this entrenched way of looking at drugs. The War on drugs is simply a disaster that is ruining lives all over the globe. It is a failed domestic policy and a failed foreign policy. We can get involved in our own communities, especially as parents speaking to other parents, to try to break the spell of ignorance that continues to prop up this set of laws that causes untold suffering the world over.
We can do all that and still the unthinkable might happen.
For me, the unthinkable happened on May 30th, 2011. My youngest, my most vulnerable, my fiercely opinionated and hilarious and deeply spiritual son made a choice, a fatal mistake or a fatal decision, went against everything that I had begged him to consider, and lost his precious young life. What could have saved him? My husband and I could not save him; nor could his beloved older brother, his best friend nor all the friends that tried. Neither Bluelight nor Erowid as sources of practical information could save him. Bluelight the community of people that embraced him could not save him. As I write this I am aware of how I am making it sound hopeless; but that is not my intent and I do not feel hopeless.; in very large measure that is because of Bluelight and the whole Harm Reduction movement. I have seen the power of this community as it reaches out to help someone through cravings in real time. I have seen this community encourage young people to tell their parents what is going on and to ask for help. I have seen parents that feel like the worst failures because of their own addiction get the support they need to believe in their own goodness enough to seek treatment. People use drugs for many reasons—to relax, as medicine, for growth, for adventure; people abuse drugs for many reasons, too—as medicine for psychological pain, for a hiding place, for temporary relief from the fear of the chaos of being alive and human. Bluelight has people coming in from all angles and it is the power of this community that each person enters knowing that they can ask questions without fear.
On this day, I would like to honor those members of this community that no longer are among us by remembering the fullness of who they were. Drug taking gets stigmatized with enough hypocrisy to sink a ship but death by drugs is even further stigmatized. One of the most comforting discoveries I made about my son’s life after his death was that he had this community that knew him, accepted him and valued him for the entirety of who he was: a funny, intelligent, compassionate person struggling with growing up, complicated by extreme mental states as well as addiction. He, like many others that struggle hard with living, often internalized the larger culture’s view of him: addict, criminal, weak, useless, failure. The most pain I ever felt as a parent was hearing my son apply these words to himself. We can honor the lives of those that did not make it by doing everything possible to develop our own compassion, for ourselves and every other living thing.
I would also like to honor the families and significant others of those that have died. For us, the missing is an unrelenting pain. The passage of time does not heal all wounds, as the cliché would have you believe. My own mother said it best at my son’s memorial when she said that it is like an amputation. Perhaps the raw torture subsides but every day and every night from here on is an adaptation to pain.
If you are a young person entering this site for the first time today, read through the shrine. Every one of the names there was a person full of dreams for whom death was still an abstract—something far away that happened to other people. Every one of the names there left a devastating wake of grief. Take care of your selves and your dreams. No one else can do it for you. Honor your life.
