Spiral Culture

Recently, while I was at the local drug store acquiring some prescriptions, I saw a woman walk up to the pharmacy counter, and begin speaking with the pharmasist. I'm not normally one for prying into things that are, to be sure, not any of my own business, but the manner in which this particular individual conducted herself was, to be blunt, rather attention-getting. She appeared to be somewhere in her 50s or older; it was tough to tell, partly because it was obvious from various pock-marks, skin discoloration, and general demeanor that she was what folks around here call a "tweaker" -- a methamphetamine user. She was at this particular pharmacy seeking to find refills for a series of potent painkillers -- Soma, Oxycontin, Norco, to name a few of the ones she rattled off -- which she's been prescribed.

Now, don't get me wrong. If someone is in pain, and they've got coverage, they should be able to get pain medications. However, I could tell from the course of the conversation several key facts. First, this was not the first pharmacy she'd been to seeking to acquire these refills; that's a red light in my book, simply because I figure if anyone has turned her down, it's for a reason (perhaps one beyond the fact that the refills weren't yet due -- another revelation she was happy to admit). Secondly, she's been using a collection of more and more potent painkilling pills for quite some time, and is accustomed to "pharm-shopping" to get what it is she's after. Third, she was getting all of these things through some sort of state or federal medical coverage -- that is, the taxpayers of California, or of the U.S. in general, are paying for this woman's continued consumption of these powerful -- and expensive -- drugs.

Living in a place dubbed the "meth capital of the West" by some, I'm more than familiar with the effects that methamphetamine can have on a person. These include joint and bone troubles, shooting pain through the veins, and other, more serious, medical conditions, many of which are extremely painful; a pain that can only be silenced through intensive drugging and, shockingly, discontinuing the use of meth altogether so that the problems don't persist once the drugs have run their course. Otherwise, all that ends up happening is an increased tolerance to the prescriptions that are handed you, and an increased level of pain as the twisted wreckage of your body tears itself apart -- literally -- from the inside, trying to expel from itself the lethal poison that keeps it standing upright despite itself.

If she'd been on private, or work-offered, insurance coverage, I wouldn't really see an issue here; she's paying, one way or another, for the whole of what's happening. But she wasn't. She was getting these benefits, these drugs, at the expense of the population, whose money also goes to fund the war on drugs, the anti-meth task force that the local law enforcement has set up. You'd think that if she has to go through the rigors of getting these benefits -- it's not easy! -- that somewhere along the line, one of the dozens of government agents she'd have to speak with over the months, years, or decades would think, "Hey, maybe this lady is using illegal drugs!"

I'm not saying that suspicion alone is enough to toss someone out on their ass when they're trying to get the help that they need; that's ridiculous, and prone to endemic systematic flaws throughout. However, would it be so difficult to, say, administer a simple urine- or folicle-based drug test to people applying for some sort of government aid? By supplying people like this anonymous woman with coverage, we're wasting taxpayer money, while at the same time encouraging them to pile on the prescriptions, often just as (if not more) addicting than the illegal substances they're already using, thereby compounding the problem in over itself and bringing the whole affair to a screaming speed-race to see who can get higher faster cheaper longer and ride the intoxicating wave of tax dollars put to work to keep all the wheels spinning, and these lives collapse underneath the weight of their own desire to keep on going further, getting more, expanding upon increased drug tolerance with voracious desire, pharmacy-hopping to get their next fix to even the keel that was tipped off-balance by their existing addiction-condition.

Why isn't this being done? Why aren't there regulations that keep this from happening? Simple -- because as long as people like this woman fuel the pseudoeconomy of both the medical companies and the government agencies pouring the dollars of hard-working Americans into the collective coffers of greed. Keep the wheels spinning, no matter what the cost; keep the people so full of painkillers that they can't feel themselves dying, can't feel the strain on their own bodies, their own societies, their own cultures. Keep the wheels spinning, no matter what the cost; keep the money flowing so far and fast that it can't be tracked, and proselytize your supposed efforts to squelch illegal drug use, even as you ensure that those who come clean from things such as meth are forced to feed a new, more powerful, addiction inspired by the professionals to whom they turn when there's nowhere else to look for some kind of comfort. Keep the wheels spinning, no matter what the cost.

How long can any institution fuel itself on the fumes of a faltering base? How long can an entity consume before there's nothing left?

Keep the wheels spinning, no matter what the cost ...

Spiral Culture

Indulgence by Proxy

I should probably preface this by saying that I don't intend to downplay the plight of poor nations. I should probably say something about the value of altruistic behavior. I should probably even say that I sympathize with the starving peoples of Africa, with the war-torn nations of the Middle East, with the oppressed majorities of Asia.

But I won't do any of those things.

What is this force that drives nations like our own to overextend themselves in the global community? Our own national debt rises as the economy crumbles beneath us; homes are being taken out from under the people who lived in them and resold as rental properties to cater to the slightly-less-desperate Americans who've managed to scrape together the funds to be able to afford the ballooning costs of living, and still we're focused on the global good, the humanitarian principles of serving our fellow man? Droughts and food shortages plague our own neighborhoods as the dejected starve in the streets, looking for someone to lend that same hand that's been chopped off and mailed to Darfur where things are obviously so much worse as to eclipse our own slow descent into the third world.

Faltering markets are pushed aside by rising consumption of useless consumer goods, and we're still trying to convince ourselves that buying a $600 video game system is better for the environment than our hybrid cars with their lowered carbon emissions and aesthetic appeal taken straight from the runway models who look as rail-thin as the cocaine they shove up their nostrils to support the drug lords funded by our own dollars in decades past, now forgotten until their disenfranchised slave-labor forces are found drowning like rats in the oceans between us and them as they seek rabidly to find the wealth that's promised by the images in the media of the final consumers of their own products, and still the best we can do to fight against anything is ship billions more dollars overseas to try to feed the world's growing population while we bicker about whether a black guy, or a woman could fill the captain's cabin.

It makes me sick to call myself an American sometimes, but I still call myself by this term with pride not because I think it's something to be proud of, but because the label bears a sense of difference and distinction promoted by our own advertising campaigns which fall flat on the ears of the global community, who is only now beginning to think that JUST MAYBE the average person over here is just as tired of the way our society tears shambles across the landscape of human history, ravenous to devour any legacy we might have once held close in order to shed a new light on the life and times of every single person, exemplified in the celebrity cries to turn off the cameras, give peace a chance, and free Tibet at the cost of our own self-indulgent suffering.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, the only reason things won't change is because we've all decided long ago that fatalism is the way of truth, that manifest destiny has us beholden to nothing more than screaming silent whispers through online posts, empty promises for a Brave New World, and lip-service funeral processions for the way things Should Have Been; they'll never get there, of course, because we all believe that none of us can change all of us, that no ONE man can make a difference despite evidence to the contrary, and even those few who've figured out that the change CAN be made are self-restrictive to the point of being wholly ineffective, shadows of the great men of the past who, in their time, were radicals and outcasts that have been painted in new light by the lens of the passage of time.

When history writes of this era, who will our heroes have been?

Indulgence by Proxy