The 2021 and 2022 trips to the States were difficult, but this one was tough in a whole different way. Personal and acute rather than hypothetical and existential. For the reasons I described in my previous post, alongside the joyful moments of togetherness, the overarching theme of those two months on the road was loss, in different forms and to different degrees.

And part of that, as naive as this may sound, was beginning to really see firsthand the loss of lives and futures and hope to the opioid crisis.

Of course I know that this has been happening for years, across the country. But this trip was the first time I really felt and saw it everywhere I went: four states in the east, west, south and central U.S.

In bigger cities like San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, and Philly it was more like a heightened version of what I’d noticed previously. But I was surprised to see it elsewhere, too.

I stayed for a little while outside a small town nestled in the redwoods of northern California. Every day I would walk across a picturesque pedestrian bridge into the town, and on both sides of the bridge, no matter what time of day, there were the same small clusters of people, clearly sleeping rough and in varying states of intoxication. Often just conversing amongst themselves, sometimes saying innocuous things to me, on a few occasions in open conflict with each other. The juxtaposition with the families happily tubing along the river below quite literally took my breath away.

I am no expert on harm reduction, so I hesitate to say more about public health implications or possible solutions. I can speak only to how it felt: unsettling, unpredictable, heartbreaking. An overwhelming sense of people hovering, waiting, half there. Fear, and immediate shame for feeling afraid of fellow humans who are clearly struggling.

I know it’s not as simple as this, but the thought I keep chewing on is this false promise of a life without pain. It reminds me of a scene in the Hulu series Dopesick, when the actor playing Richard Sackler, erstwhile head of Purdue Pharma, speaks in messianic terms about liberating the world from pain (ostensibly through Oxycontin). Whether or not he said those actual words, the essence for me rings true. In America, due perhaps to some combination of our broken health care system and capitalist workaholism plus consumerist comfort mindset, it does feel like we as a culture have bought into the idea that we should be free from pain - maybe even discomfort - at all costs.

And then I think of my husband Chad, who, when recovering from several different bike and car accidents and ensuing surgeries in Mexico and Argentina, was only ever prescribed acetaminophen - basically, Tylenol. Pain was just managed differently in these countries. An expected component of rehabilitation. A signal from your body. A necessary step in healing. No opioids to be seen.

Life doesn’t exist without pain. Nor should it, really. In fact, as one of my all-time favorite movies reminds us, “life is pain…anyone who says differently is selling something.”

Well, we’ve been sold a lie.

This isn’t limited to fentanyl and oxycodone. I’ve experienced overdose death in my own family from other drugs. The epidemic of numbing, and related isolation and shame - of not just physical but emotional and, dare I say, spiritual pain - has been ongoing for generations. What we know about ourselves makes us afraid, so we buy more stuff, numb with TV, scroll social media. We cushion ourselves within the padded walls of people and pundits who share our political views.

About as American a tradition as any.

And who can blame us? The world feels like it’s ending every. single. day. Numbing makes sense. But it’s not life. Or rather, it’s not living.

I guess that does more accurately describe the sense I had from the people I saw: many felt like ghosts. I just wonder if it will continue like this until every town feels like a ghost town, until the U.S. feels like a ghost country.