In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss(31)

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I research at the public library. Not on the phone, not on my laptop. The internet tells me, again and again, not to search anything from my own computer and that if I need to know something, call, don’t text, and don’t use my own laptop. I understand that if there were ever to be a real investigation, dunking my laptop into a barrel of acid won’t stop the police from finding my search history, if they know how to look for it. I research fentanyl, and every website confirms that it’s fifty to one hundred times stronger than morphine. For legit purposes, people receive it in a patch or an IV and get the steady release of extremely low doses. What’s not promising: The street version’s cooked in some guy’s lab, made into a powder or eye drops or nasal spray or pills or blotter paper, and although I am not current with the street drug circle, I’m pretty sure that it’s still true that the more valuable the stuff, the more likely it is not to be what your dealer says it is. The consequences of lying are negligible; if the stuff is lethally bad, the customer is dead. Problem solved. If it’s just not pure or even effective, the customer can complain but can’t sue and is unlikely to kill the dealer. (I assume that if I was the kind of customer who was likely to kill the dealer, said dealer would have taken precautions.) So, even if I, swanning to the buy in my clogs and Madewell jeans, could get fenty, it might not be fentanyl at all, and even if it was fenty, Brian might experience distressing confusion, agitation, and seizures before his death. I can’t get clear about how long the stuff takes to act, because most of the fenty overdoses recorded are not suicides by large, middle-aged men. Because there were a lot of said overdoses in the last couple of years, fenty is hard to get and therefore hard to buy. No fenty.



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I do a close read on Exit International’s website. I try not to get distracted by the Sarco, a person-size capsule for the suicide of the future, designed by Philip Nitschke and a Dutch designer: Where Art Meets Its End…The concept of a capsule that could produce a rapid decrease in oxygen level, while maintaining a low CO2 level (the conditions for a peaceful, even euphoric death), led to Sarco’s development. Is it art or…? The elegant design was intended to suggest a sense of occasion: of travel to a “new destination,” and to dispel the “yuk” factor.

I can’t.



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I dig into our materials from Dignitas, now that we are at least members and possible candidates. I dismiss a bunch of other options: The turkey-brining bag with helium tube, which is described as painless and looks monstrous. Phenobarbital gotten from not-too-fussy veterinarians in Mexico (or closer to home, if you can find a vet who will believe you have a horse you wish to put down, all by your lonesome). But sodium pentobarbital, a common, once very popular barbiturate and central-nervous-system depressant, is the thing. An overdose will certainly kill you and it will kill you painlessly; in less than a minute, you fall into a light sleep, in ten minutes, a deep sleep. In twenty, the heart stops. The lethal dose of sodium pentobarbital is roughly one gram per ten pounds. For Brian, it would take at least twenty grams to be sure. This is a fuckton of a controlled substance. Abbott Labs stopped making it in 1999. Because it is what’s used for lethal injections for executions in America, drug companies are not elbowing one another out of the way to produce a tightly controlled substance with lots of bad press. When the pills are made, they are made in fifty-or one-hundred-milligram tablets. We’d need five hundred. I call our few doctor friends for help. With real kindness, they make it clear that getting pentobarbital is (1) not their jam and (2) really really hard to do. One said, This (a self-administered suicide dose) is something that usually fails. Another, older friend said, Is Brian really sure about this? If it was me, I’d just be selfish and live as much life as I could and rely on my wife to take care of me to the end. I thought that was probably true.

I make a last call and this doctor friend, who already knows Brian’s diagnosis, who has already sat with me while I sobbed over multiple coffees, says to me, “So, I guess you’re saying you need a barbiturate for sleeping because Ambien isn’t enough for your insomnia.” And I’m late for my cue but I do manage to stumble through my line. I agree that my insomnia is an intractable bitch and only sodium pentobarbital (words I didn’t even know three weeks ago) would help. “Well, then,” the doctor says, “I’ll prescribe sodium pentobarbital. Be very careful with it.” I am enormously grateful, but it will come to nothing. I hand the scrip to the pharmacist at CVS, who does not call the police or the FBI or even the manager. She looks at it and makes a phone call and I loiter near the feminine-hygiene products until she jerks her head and I go to the pickup area.

“I put in the order,” she says, and I can hear now that she has a German accent. “I wouldn’t count on it. Is very hard to get.”

“But it’s legal,” I say, in my Helpy Helperpants way, telling the woman things she knows.

“Yes, but the distribution of it in America is…not good. Call me in ten days.”

I wait the ten days and reach the pharmacist.

No go.

“You might try Walgreens,” she says. “They use a different distribution system. I will never be able to get this for you.”