HYANNIS – [HN PHOTOS, NOTES & MULLINGS ON THE MATTER] – It’s all hands on deck whenever someone’s overdosing. First the dispatchers (at least two in most cases) burst onto the airwaves, relaying important information to responding patrol cars while giving over-the-phone CPR instructions to the frantic person who discovered the dying patient.

Seconds matter.

Police patrol cars are typically the first to arrive. In this morning’s overdose, it was several Barnstable Patrolmen who first made contact with the patient inside the Hyannis residence. He was revived and alive when placed inside the ambulance. (Barnstable patrol officers also responded to another overdose earlier in the evening. In that case, a young adult female was revived and transported to CCH. She was reportedly uncooperative, which necessitated the need for police to respond and make their presence known at the emergency room, in case needed to maintain some semblance of order and safety…)

The ambulance arrived next, followed by a fire engine to provide extra “manpower.”

HN has been to countless overdose scenes (too many to count) and they’re always rife with urgency and a degree of alarm. They’re never pleasant affairs. These are life and death episodes that play out daily here across the Cape… and beyond.

(So, why worry about it?)

We live in a “drug culture” where a huge number of addicts forego any-and-all qualms about ingesting unregulated chemicals concocted or cooked up by complete strangers, often in distant unfriendly lands. Most users have no idea what they’re actually slamming into their bloodstream. They go on blind faith. It’s all part of their disease. There is no quality control. No oversight. No recourse should these chemicals prove fatal.

It’s stupid. A pure form of insanity which plays out daily, coming at a huge cost to everyone… because it harms everyone, one way or another. In an extreme example: one could be minding their own business and suddenly be run over or crashed into by an out of control user, completely out of their gourd, either drunk on booze or high on illicit drugs… or both. I cannot count the amount of times the world has abruptly ended for someone locally because of drugs (or booze). And every time I attend an overdose scene – and they can be quite spectacular and dramatic – it seems like we’re all caught up in something as “world changing” as our current COVID pandemic. Except we forget about the overdose dramas because they come like relentless thieves in the night… or day… or whenever… or wherever. They’re “yesterday’s news.”

Have we become used to this daily drama? Have we come to believe we are somehow immune to this? That it won’t affect us if we don’t look? simply just look on the bright side of life and it won’t affect us?

I have news for you, literally. Drug (and booze… which is also a drug) abuse effects everyone. It’s my job, unfortunately, to remind everyone of that…

Meanwhile, for the dangerous drug user and all those (past, present, and future) unfortunately wiped out in their wake, we’re not simply watching “Apocalypse Now,” it’s more like an “Apocalypse Sooner or Later” type of thing.

(But what do I really know? It’s just my point of view… take it or leave it. But please be extra safe out there either way, and have a great, extra splendiferous Sunday! 🙂 )

P.S. – Today’s Hytown Vignette is a brought to you by Eric Idle… [CLICK IT/CRANK IT!]

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