Some of you may have noticed I haven't been posting for almost two weeks.

My brother died last Friday. Naturally I have been spending most of the time with my family and I expect that to continue for a couple more weeks at the very least. We are currently staying at my parent's summer camper which we can stay at until the end of the season when the campground closes, in mid-October. After that I'm not sure what our plans are, because neither my mother nor myself want to return to our house.

Normally I would not share details but I think it is important. My little brother died from a drug overdose at the age of 27. He has struggled with and suffered from an addiction to heroin for several years now. Earlier this year he spent 40 days in jail and 30 days in rehab, after which he immediately resumed using. My mother sent him to live with my aunt, a recovering addict and recovering alcoholic, in rural Michigan for almost five weeks, hoping it would help. He came back from the trip for a court date, having spent five weeks clean, and seemed eager to return to Michigan as soon as possible. The day after his court date and two days after he had returned from Michigan, he died. I was in the next room, sleeping, and when I woke up I thought he was sleeping as well. I sat outside with the dogs for almost an hour, when my mother came home from work she discovered he was dead.

There are a lot of people responsible for my brother's death. He himself holds a great deal of responsibility, but so too do the pharmaceutical corporations and "medical professionals" who set the opioid crisis in motion in the 90's by deliberately understating the addictiveness and the dangers of opiates. So too does whatever dealer sold my brother far more heroin than was necessary or "safe" for someone who had not used in over a month. So too do I for not doing more to help my little brother.

The reason I am sharing all of this is to remind you all that millions of people are going through what I am going through at this moment. Mourning brothers, sisters, parents, children, and you might know some of them. It's easy to dismiss all drug users as useless lowlifes, but most of them are not. Most of them are people who started out being prescribed medications in hospitals to manage pain and then became addicted because that is what happens with opiates. They turn to heroin when the doctors turn the supply of pills off. Other people use because they don't understand the danger and they are too uneducated to realize that heroin is not the same thing as pot, that it's not something you can do "occasionally". Some people just make a poor decision because they suffer from mental illness, or depression. None of these people deserve what happens to them. No one deserves to die like my brother did because they made a poor decision with no intent to hurt someone else. My brother was not a scumbag, he was sick.

I'm not asking for anyone to start picketing Purdue Pharmaceuticals or write their congressman, I am simply asking you to remember what I am telling you the next time you listen to someone you know, or even yourself, talking about how drug users should be sterilized or killed or locked up by the millions because they ruin our society. Spending millions of dollars imprisoning nonviolent drug offenders instead of spending that money on treating them for a medical or mental illness harms our society far, far more.

Just remember my brother, whom I loved so much, was an amazing, intelligent, wonderful kid who could have been so much more if even a little bit of the system was better at helping people like him instead of punishing them.




Now that that has been said, I also want to let everyone know that I will likely be on only sporadically until mid-October because the campground wifi is not that great. If you have any issues that need to be addressed regarding administrative actions (in other words, stuff JB44 cannot take care of), please E-Mail me at paulmedinger@gmail.com, because I may not see a PM for several days or weeks. Anything else, please direct your inquiries to JB, who will be taking the bulk of the moderating duties for a few weeks. Thank you.