February 12th is Black Bluelight Day

It has now been many years since Bluelight first went “black,” in remembrance of one of our members. Ryan Haight, who many knew as “Quicksilver,” was an exceptional young man and a friend to many here at Bluelight. He was not the first loss this community suffered, and sadly, he has not been the last. It’s for this reason that we take this day each year as a solemn opportunity to remember all whom we’ve lost and reflect on our mission of harm reduction.

Over these past years we’ve watched the world transform in the wake of the opioid epidemic. Few families can now say they have not been impacted in one way or another. As a result, society and medicine have increasingly rejected outdated stereotypes and misperceptions around drugs, drug use, addiction and overdose. As a community we feel our mission is as critical and timely as ever.

Whether you’re a longtime member or new to our community, Bluelight invites you to be part of this important ongoing dialog. We do not condone or condemn drug use, but seek to provide access to information and open discourse designed to encourage wiser choices. In this way we deliver our message of harm reduction where it is most likely to be received.

On behalf of the entire Bluelight community, I hope you join us in taking this time to consider what drug-related harm reduction means to you. We are always looking for new ways to improve the health, safety and well being of those who visit our forums and the greater world around us.

Sincerely,

SG

 

Bump of SG's words from earlier as they sum up the meaning of Blacklight quite well.

Every year we lose people we love. People who could have experienced more, shared more, lived more. Our mission of harm reduction is so we lose less of those we love, and help them to stay with us. It could be you, a family member, a friend - everyone matters. If you, or someone you know, needs help - reach out and say something. You may not feel like you can do a lot, but just being there is a start and can make the difference for someone.

 

Beautifully said, @TheLoveBandit.

 

Recently my best friend overdosed due to some fentanyl i gave him. It was his first time using. We were drunk and he begged me to try it for the first time. I woke up with him dead right next to me.
The guilt and grief are too much to handle. All i can do is more dope.

very very sad stuff, I hope you can forgive yourself

 

It has now been 19 years since Bluelight first went “black,” in remembrance of one of our members. Ryan Haight, who many knew as “Quicksilver,” was an exceptional young man and a friend to many here at Bluelight. He was not the first loss this community suffered, and sadly, he has not been the last. It’s for this reason that we take this day each year as a solemn opportunity to remember all whom we’ve lost and reflect on our mission of harm reduction.

Over these past 19 years we’ve watched the world transform in the wake of the opioid epidemic. Few families can now say they have not been impacted in one way or another. As a result, society and medicine have increasingly rejected outdated stereotypes and misperceptions around drugs, drug use, addiction and overdose. As a community we feel our mission is as critical and timely as ever.

Whether you’re a longtime member or new to our community, Bluelight invites you to be part of this important ongoing dialog. We do not condone or condemn drug use, but seek to provide access to information and open discourse designed to encourage wiser choices. In this way we deliver our message of harm reduction where it is most likely to be received.

On behalf of the entire Bluelight community, I hope you join us in taking this time to consider what drug-related harm reduction means to you. We are always looking for new ways to improve the health, safety and well being of those who visit our forums and the greater world around us.

Sincerely,

SG

Amen!.Ray of light in the darknes.

 

When I lost my first few friends to heroin, I knew that I would be a proponent of harm reduction. When I joined BL, it became even more of a mission in my life.

Together, we can do it. We need to inform our communities and shift the stigmata paradigm.

 

the first time i personally knew someone who died from drug use was when my uncle died. i think i was around age 8 or so.

at family gatherings he’d print off the latest pictures from the Hubble telescope or give me cool books about space. i was super into that stuff as a kid. that’s really all I knew of him. he was the cool uncle.

as I got older, my mom would reveal more details about his life. i learned that he struggled with addiction and that he would often disappear for weeks due to his bipolar symptoms. my mom, probably as a coping mechanism, often painted him in not the best light. she was the one cleaning up his messes all the time. i suppose one can’t blame her for the way she felt. i sort of adopted this mindset myself. “why didn’t he just stop using drugs? his life would have surely turned around if he did, no?”

then when I was high school, my family learned something that finally made his actions ‘make sense’. it turns out that the priest at mom and uncle’s childhood church was on the list of known child sexual abusers. my uncle was an altar boy, urged by his irish catholic mother to help at out the church. my mom said that looking back, it was around the time he started as an altar boy that his behavior changed and the bipolar and substance abuse developed.

but he never told anyone. probably too ashamed or too scared to come forward. who would believe him anyways? it was the 1970s and the catholic church didn’t have that reputation yet. so he went his whole life, never sharing with anyone. not even his best friends knew.

i eventually realized that the answer to my question was that he simply couldn’t stop using drugs. who could in that situation? although he did stop for periods of time. my mom still has his 6 month chip. but with that albatross around his neck, i’m not sure his life wasn’t gonna turn around regardless of how many 12 step meetings he attended.

he eventually succumbed to suicide. so not directly from drugs, but they were involved. if i remember correctly, alcohol and cocaine were found in his tox report.

i don’t know if harm reduction would have helped him be with us today. but i do know that he bounced from rehab to rehab and psychiatrist to psychiatrist. forced on meds that he didn’t like and through programs that didn’t help.

had one of these people along the way shown him respect and given him autonomy, rather than subconscious disdain he might still be here. to me, that’s the very core of harm reduction

 

I'm almost at a loss of words daily due to what feels like an increasing level of sadness as a function of my loneliness. Harm reduction has been pretty important to my work and my own life but now I just don't have energy to keep fighting ( I am not a threat to myself or others). For years I have been hiding so many facets of who I am to protect people I care about, myself and to be as objective in my line of work (therapy). However life appears to be moving at a pace that just doesn't make sense to me anymore or I just am realizing in mid life that I cannot keep up with the times that inspires me to continue to do what I know I have always been pretty decent at. Something brought me back to BL and some recent hacks brought back memories of people I lost and even my ex wife whom I found out died during the pandemic. I met her months after I lost my sister to addiction in 2008. To say the past 14 years have been a test of fortitude is an understatement. As with most things in life, it is messy and moves on. I'm uncertain how happy or sad or good or bad people are currently regardless of borders, space and time. I hope my best friend who hung himself in 2018 is better and I'm fucking so sorry I didn't pick up the last phone call. I wish I could have related to him what I have realized more recently in that both my parents were pretty shitty just like his. I wish I could have saved my sister when I was younger and I tried as a child but distanced as a teen.

I feel as if almost a crucial piece to my own puzzle was only recently discovered by me and me alone and it could have really improved my relationships with people in my life when I think it counted much more. Perhaps one day I can contribute on forums to those looking for inspiration or hope or just a fucking thread to get through a moment in time. Life is, at the end, just an accumulation of moments in time and it's so worth living. At 42, I cannot say that I don't deserve to be where I am exactly in this moment in time and that's been a gut check. I thought I knew my purpose but it became too blurry academically for me. I will always try my best to honor those I have lost because for the first time in my life I do think I believe they may be in my corner from above. At this very moment in time the best I can offer is to live for today the best I can. To those who have posted and lost loved ones I am truly sorry and I know that pit in the stomach that just never fully fades away. Instead of burning out, I am just waiting because I think I have mostly faded away but with more intensity and hunger for hope.

 

I don't think scare stories are really effective if they don't have a personal link. I do think we owe it to those who never got the chance to grow out of their youthful recklessness to pause for thought before we combine substances or take new ones. Stay safe.





krnt.run
myindigocard app

 

Another year’s gone by, making it 22 since Ryan’s passing. Our message of harm reduction — reducing harm through education — is more important than ever.

Thank you to everyone on this site for your continued dedication to each other and the greater community.

SG

 

22 years since this wonderful kid left to the arms of Morpheus. Hope he is in a new body Raving again