Author Archives: wendywelch

Before you Bum a Smoke…

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Come all ye people who bum cigarettes, a warning take from Lee:

My friends Lee and Vicki went to a music show in Roanoke. Lee is six years sober from heroin use. Since cigarettes are considered something of a trigger for the old life, he’s not supposed to have them, but Lee took advantage of Vicki nipping off to the toilet. He requested a cigarette from a smoker outside. When Vicki returned and caught him, he didn’t finish.

This may have saved his life.

As she harangued him (all of us who have loved someone with SUD know this is a loving act) Lee said suddenly, “I have to go to the restroom.” A moment later, Vicki heard a ruckus and followed to find Lee unconscious on the ground, surrounded by a bunch of strangers. Four of them had Narcan out, the rest were calling 911 on their cell phones. 

One of the kind strangers administered the anti-overdose drug Narcan as Vicki took Lee’s face in her hands and cajoled, slapped, and screamed him into waking up. He went in and out three times, and registered an incredibly weak pulse when the paramedics arrived. But with the Narcan, he was holding onto consciousness, drenched in sweat, and slowly realizing what had happened.

When the paramedics found that Lee had asked for a cigarette, they exchanged knowing glances, did a couple of checks, and confirmed: the cancer stick had been laced with fentanyl.

“Never, never, take anything from someone you don’t know these days,” the paramedics said, without judgment. “This happens a lot. And we do mean a lot.”

Vicki didn’t really register their warning in the moment. As she says, “I felt so bad for Lee, because being an ex drug addict, his fear and combativeness towards medical responders was triggered and he was panicking. His mind immediately went to law enforcement and I was constantly having to reassure him that this was not that life anymore and he had done nothing wrong.” 

The paramedics were sympathetic to Lee’s PTSD and helped Vicki bundle him into their car to head back to the hotel once they were sure he was going to be okay.

I asked Vicki if she thought the guy who gifted the cigarette had known the fentanyl was in there. It can’t be proven, as he disappeared when the trouble began, but Vicki thought he had looked high, when Lee described which smoker gave him the ill-fated gift. The paramedics were also of the opinion that people tend to sneak their drugs into concerts via cigarettes. One more reason not to ask for one, ever.

“I’m just in shock,” Vicki concludes. “You hear the stories about how easy it is but never picture yourself in a situation where that could happen. It’s unreal. But the availability of Narcan and people who knew how to use it was very very inspiring. And I’m pretty sure it saved Lee’s life.”

Feel free to share this story, and please, please do two things: carry Narcan, and don’t ask strangers for cigarettes, no matter how badly you want one.

Help, Police

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Jack makes it in time again – hooray!

There we were on Friday evening, relaxing and recovering from the week’s travails watching some telly.

We had survived buying the new car, getting our Scottish bank account unlocked, and a nasty bout of convincing the Scottish Teachers Pension Association that I was, in fact, still alive and entitled to draw my pay. Nothing else could possibly go wrong – –

That’s when two uniformed police officers walked up on our lawn and peered through our window!

To show that they came in peace one of them held up a couple of car license plates and gave a friendly smile.

They were our car’s old license plates…..

Wendy invited them, the older one still holding the plates out like a shield. They stood in their black uniforms covered in badges and equipment, including guns, looking uncomfortable in our front room.

I looked at the plates and realized they were old, battered and dirty and the paint was flaking off them. I remembered that about two years ago I had gone through the maze of the DMV to get new ones; these were even now sitting in our new car waiting to be fitted. Were we in some kind of trouble? We’d only had the new car a few days!

No, in fact, the officers were as befuddled as we were. The plates they held had been found seven miles away in the yard of a nice old lady who called the police to see what was up. The police ran them, found us, and here they stood, looking ill at ease, leaning against our living room walls.

We have no idea how they got there or who had put them there and neither did the policemen. One of the officers was tall and obviously in charge while the other was clearly somewhat bemused and embarrassed by the whole affair. If there had been a balloon above his head, it would have said something to the effect of, “This is not what I signed up for. This is silly. Let me out of here unless I’m going to get to arrest somebody.”

The older officer suggested that probably we had thrown the plates away, someone had been garbage surfing, found them and sold them to someone with an unregistered car. Then they dumped them a few years later.

So, the long and short of it is that you should always be careful how you dispose of old vehicle plates – you never know where they could land up, or who could come knocking on your door to return them.