tara cleveland

02/17/2004 Archived Entry: "Just say NO!"

Goodness knows I'm not the type to be preachy about drugs. I've had my own experiences with illicit materials, and decided that at this point in my life, they aren't for me. In my opinion, the war on drugs is stupid. I think dope should be legalized and most other drugs decriminalized and treated as a health problem instead of a crime problem. Having said that, I had an experience on Saturday night that scared the shit out of me. This is why they try to brainwash kids into "Just say NO!".

Dave and I were driving to my parents place at about 9:00 pm on Valentine's night and we'd got halfway down the street around the corner. It's a small one way with cars parked on one side. Blocking the street was a mini-van half on the sidewalk and half in the street. Dave stopped the car, "WTF? Why are they blocking the street?", he fumed.

A squirrely little man in his fifties approached the car and Dave rolled down his window, "Can you come help us? We've got to get a very sick man into the van and to the hospital". Sure. We hopped out of the car. Both of us were expecting some old guy having a heart attack or something. As we walked up to the front porch we saw a young guy - about 20 years old - with no shirt on lying (in the -11 degree C weather) on the concrete floor of the porch. He was completely unconscious. His face was grey, lips blue. He looked dead. He was barely breathing - wheezing in short light breaths every few seconds.

The three of us tried to lift his slippery, dead-weight body. We carried him down the steps and out onto the street. The older guy tried to open the van's sliding door and couldn't. He dropped the young man on the street in the ice. I tried to hold his head off the ground. He'd stopped breathing. Dave checked his pulse. He still had a pulse but it was very slow. The guy started gargling. He sounded like he was going to puke, but I think he was just trying to breathe. He was still totally unconscious. His gargling must have cleared his airway because he started breathing again. The older man finally got the van door open. We tried to lift him up into the van - but he was wet and very slippery and very very heavy (not a big guy - just a complete dead weight). The young guy's girlfriend (or maybe she was his sister) came rushing out of the house. She was flipping out. From inside the van she grabbed his shoulders and with enormous strength - an amazing display of will power - she pulled him up into the van. We slammed the door and she jumped into the drivers seat. The van was stuck in the snow and ice, but after some frantic spinning wheels, shouting of directions and pushing, she took off for the hospital. We continued on to my parents house. Stunned.

Dave and I have talked about how we wished we were trained to deal with situations like that. I took first aid years ago when I was a kid, but I wasn't ready for that. The whole situation was very chaotic. The friends of the guy had a plan and I'm not sure it would have been helpful to argue with them. But I should have remembered to get the emergency blanket out of the car (yes, we do carry a car emergency kit). With some training I would have been better prepared and calmer in the moment when I actually had to do something. So we might be taking some St. John Ambulance First Aid Courses in the future.

I suppose the guy could have been sick with something else. But Dave said saw track marks on the guy's arm. The symptoms of a heroin overdose match what I saw that night. Plus, they didn't call an ambulance, which is usually what people do when someone's not breathing, unless they don't want the cops to show up and find their drugs. So I'm calling it a heroin overdose.

And it totally freaked me out. So kids, that's why they say "Just say NO!" - even if it's a totally misguided education campaign, and the war on drugs is a terrible strategy for dealing with drug addiction.

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