A Really Good Day(28)

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*1 ?This is an actual excuse I once gave my mother after, I believe, the first time I smoked pot.

*2 ?The best-known example of a drug-related harm-reduction policy is a needle exchange program, in which drug users are provided with clean needles so they do not share dirty ones and thus expose themselves and others to potentially fatal diseases. According to the World Health Organization, needle exchange programs “substantially and cost effectively reduce the spread of HIV among intravenous drug users and do so without evidence of exacerbating injecting drug use at either the individual or societal level.” Dr. Alex Wodak and Allie Cooney, “Effectiveness of Sterile Needle and Syringe Programming in Reducing HIV/AIDS Among Injecting Drug Users.”

*3 ?If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of my children’s play dates and prom dates shriveling up and blowing away.

*4 ?Sara Bellum, “Real Teens Ask: How Many Teens Use Drugs?”

*5 ?Teenagers are really good liars. Especially to their parents.

*6 ?Wilson Compton and Nora Volkow, “Major Increases in Opioid Analgesic Abuse in the United States: Concerns and Strategies.”

*7 ?Charles F. von Gunten, “The Pendulum Swings for Opioid Prescribing.”

*8 ?Pauline Anderson, “Scant Evidence for Long-Term Opioid Therapy in Chronic Pain.”

*9 ?Rose A. Rudd et al., “Increases in Drug and Opioid Overdose Deaths—United States, 2000–2014.”

*10 ?“DrugFacts: Heroin,” accessed June 27, 2016, at https://www.drugabuse.gov/?publi cations/drugfacts/heroin.

*11 ?According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, between 2001 and 2014 there was a sixfold increase in the number of deaths from heroin overdose; deaths from overdose of prescription drugs tripled (“Overdose Death Rates” at drugabuse.gov).

*12 ?This was the fate of a twenty-four-year-old from Wilmington, Delaware, named Greg Humes, whose tragic death has inspired many parents to turn to harm reduction instead of insisting on an abstinence-only approach to drug education.

*13 ?In 1998, Dr. Hart became the first African American tenured professor of science in the history of Columbia University. In 1998. I’m typing that twice because otherwise you’d probably think it was a misprint.

*14 ?“Methamphetamine Facts,” accessed April 20, 2016, at http://www.drugpolicy.org/?drugfacts/?methamphetamine-facts.

*15 ?Brook L. Henry, Arpi Minassian, and William Perry, “Effect of Methamphetamine Dependence on Everyday Functional Ability.”

*16 ?Carl L. Hart et al., “Is Cognitive Functioning Impaired in Methamphetamine Users? A Critical Review.”

*17 ?Carl L. Hart, Joanne Csete, and Don Habibi, “Methamphetamine: Fact vs. Fiction and Lessons from the Crack Hysteria.”

*18 ?Hart, Csete, and Habibi, “Methamphetamine: Fact vs. Fiction.”

*19 ?Ibid.

*20 ?T. Linnemann and T. Wall, “?‘This Is Your Face on Meth’: The Punitive Spectacle of ‘White Trash’ in the Rural War on Drugs.”

*21 ?“Given the weak evidentiary basis for epidemic and diagnosis, I offer a preliminary interpretation that the meth epidemic is constructed as symptom and cause of White status decline, with dental decay the vehicle for anxieties about descent into ‘White trash’ status” (Naomi Murakawa, “Toothless”).

*22 ?Megan S. O’Brien and James C. Anthony, “Extra-Medical Stimulant Dependence Among Recent Initiates.”

*23 ?Dr. Hart believes even that figure is exaggerated. In a report prepared for the Open Society Institute, he writes, “Less than 15 percent of those who have ever used the drug will become addicted.” (Hart, Csete, and Habibi, “Methamphetamine: Fact vs. Fiction.”)

*24 ?K. L. Medina et al., “Neuropsychological Functioning in Adolescent Marijuana Users: Subtle Deficits Detectable After a Month of Abstinence.” For a thorough review of research on marijuana and youth, see Seth Ammerman, Sheryl Ryan, and William P. Adelman, “The Impact of Marijuana Policies on Youth: Clinical, Research, and Legal Update.”

*25 ?L. M. Squeglia, J. Jacobus, and S. F. Tapers, Ph.D., “The Influence of Substance Use on Adolescent Brain Development.”

*26 ?At http://www.drugpolicy.org/?sites/?default/?files/?DPA_SafetyFirst_2014_0.pdf.





Day 11


Transition Day

Physical Sensations: None.

Mood: Nice.

Sleep: Woke up way too early.

Work: Trouble focusing at first, but eventually got down to it.

Pain: Is it the microdose, or is my shoulder just finally starting to unfreeze?





I woke this morning at dawn after having fallen asleep too late. I tried to force myself to go back to sleep. I snuggled up to my husband, laid my head on his chest, and felt his heart beat against my cheek. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once wrote, “Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” Bullshit. When I gaze at my husband, when I feel his body along the length of mine, I feel a deep, contented joy, a warmth that begins in my belly, spreads out to my limbs and through the top of my skull. If that’s not love, what is?

I kissed him softly so that I didn’t wake him, and slipped out of the darkness of our bedroom, through the quiet hall, downstairs to the kitchen. Though the cacophony of a house full of children is one of the delights of parenthood, I am coming to love the early hours of the morning, when I wake to a silent house. So used to being a grump in the mornings, so used to clutching mightily to every last shred of sleep, I find it a pleasure to sit silently at my kitchen table, drinking a cup of tea, with the dog resting her chin on my lap as I scratch her ears while I read the paper or check my e-mail.