Is this really how the world is supposed to be?

[ares93]

I'm pretty sure most of you have read my posts about how godawful the town I live in is. You've probably heard about the crime, the police corruption, hell I'm pretty sure i even told ya'll some of the crazy shit I did back in the days cause nobody was looking. Racing juiced up bikes downtown, picking a fight with the coppers, shit like that. Stupid stuff you do as a teenager and hope your parents will never find out.

Well I'm about to tell ya'll something that tops it all. I sometimes help out at the local hospital. Officially I'm an untrained volunteer, but my, kind of, sister in law (long story) is a nurse, and my best mate is a paramedic, so i know my stuff. They made sure I learned.

Anyway, I mentioned crime, didn't I? Most of it is drug or firearms related. Well... Today I watched a 13 year old overdose, and there wasn't a bloody thing I could do about it. Now this isnt the first time I've worked with addicts. I met them pretty much every day. There's this support group, if you will, that i show up to on occasion. An old friend of mine runs it. Its nothing big, you just sit there and listen, help them talk things through. But this kid was 13 bloody years old! Now how the does this happen? I swore to myself if I ever find out who was responsible, I'd skin him alive and hang him by his balls. Or even better, tie him up and hand him over to the kid's mother.

You know what the worst thing is? I know for a fact that this happens more or less every day. These bastards who throw their shit around pray on kids. Get them addicted to whatever godawful substance they're currently importing, and then use them as so called "runners." Kids transporting the crap on bikes through town. Now if it wasnt so goddamn awful, i'd actually congratulate them. Its quite clever actually, a thirteen year old doesnt exactly fit the profile of a drug dealer, does he? What copper would pull a 13yo over for suspected possession? Sometimes a wonder why the couldn't use their superior intellect for something else. Like, I dunno, jumping off a bridge or something.

I'm sorry for this rant, but i just had to get it out.

 

[Pingfah]

Did the kid recover?

 

[ares93]

No, they tried bringing him back. But once he flatlined, he was gone.

 

[Yeoman Randi]

I'm so sorry. Sorry for the kid, for his parents, for you and anyone else who had to witness this 13 year old die. It's positively heartbreaking. I can't even imagine.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I feel your pain. Having worked in a couple of inner-city hospitals over the course of about 22 years, I've seen quite a few unpleasant things myself. The compulsion to save people is strong, and the feeling of helplessness is devastating.

The answer to your question is no, this is not how the world is supposed to be. We have to fix it.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

I currently live in one of the most crime-ridden cities in the US - Atlanta, GA. Sadly, we have horrific stories on the news almost every night, and we don't even hear about most of the instances, because horrific instances are so common-place. They only make the news if the crimes are particularly grizzly. But drug violence, gang violence, home invasions, etc happen in this city every day.

And no...the world is not supposed to be this way. But we live in a society where people have become less important than money. And with a value system like that, it is unsurprising to me that more and more people are dying senseless deaths.

 

[ares93]

I went back today to clean up. Turns out the kid had some blood on his shirt. So I bagged it and called my mate downtown. Its in forensics now. We'll see if it was his or whoever was responsible. Hopefully they can get something out of it. Then at least he didn't die in vain.

Tell you guys the truth. I got off easily. My supervisor, who incidentally happens to be my sister in law, totally freaked out. I had to drag her home myself. She was totally out of it. Then again, with being pregnant and all. Not to mention a high risk pregnancy, its understandable.

Myself? Once I got her home, I just went down to the shop with a bottle of scotch. I grabbed a roll of sandpaper and I just sat there and worked. I ended up grinding down the entire left side of the car by hand. Down to the metal. My hands were bleeding by the time I realized what I was doing. Suppose we all have our own ways of coping.

 

[Gaith]

Wow, hombre - those are some bona fide PTSD symptoms there.

As an atheist, I can't say that the world is "supposed" to be one way or another, but I guess that's semantics. We certainly should be doing better for violence-wracked communities such as these.

But the hard truth is, we probably won't, and the reason why not is the US Senate.

In order to make any federal law, the Senate must pass it as well as the House. Ergo, when DC culture and the media think about what's politically possible at any given time, legislation-wise, at least half their thinking is given over to the moods of the Senate. And the Senate is not at all representative of the country - more than half of Americans vote for less than a fifth of its composition. And it just so happens that, because of the way the states were drawn, there are far more inland and landlocked (read: right-wing) voters and Senators than coastal progressive types. And those right-wing, landlocked Senators love them some vicious, prohibitive drug policy.

For this kid was a victim of his supplier, sure, but of our sadistic and insane treatment of drugs, also. So long as our Senators think it's perfectly legitimate to throw people in jail for consuming something as benign as marijuana, we're going to have situations like the one you deal with. To rectify this problem, it won't be enough to convince a majority of Americans to change our ways - we'll have to convince the stubbornest, least feeling, most right-wing amongst us, because they set the Senate's course.

This will take a long, long, long time. I applaud PKTrekGirl's sentiment that we should fix things, and indeed we should, but we'd pretty much have to scrap the entire Constitution to make the Senate egalitarian, and many people's minds are beyond changing. The mission is, quite simply, darn near impossible.


And in the meantime, little kids such as the one you encountered will continue to suffer and die for it.

I wish I could offer more hope.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

I went back today to clean up. Turns out the kid had some blood on his shirt. So I bagged it and called my mate downtown. Its in forensics now. We'll see if it was his or whoever was responsible. Hopefully they can get something out of it. Then at least he didn't die in vain.

Tell you guys the truth. I got off easily. My supervisor, who incidentally happens to be my sister in law, totally freaked out. I had to drag her home myself. She was totally out of it. Then again, with being pregnant and all. Not to mention a high risk pregnancy, its understandable.

Myself? Once I got her home, I just went down to the shop with a bottle of scotch. I grabbed a roll of sandpaper and I just sat there and worked. I ended up grinding down the entire left side of the car by hand. Down to the metal. My hands were bleeding by the time I realized what I was doing. Suppose we all have our own ways of coping.

It's very much to your credit that you work as you do, helping as you can and finding ways to better your community. I'm saddened by what you've had to go through with this incident, and any others like it, but I'm also feeling great respect and appreciation for your efforts. I'm sure many of us are. You should be proud of your commitment, ares93.