Taking a break from your meetings, when my wife informed me she was headed to her grandparents' Tuscan mountain village for two weeks with a girlfriend, I decided to indulge a long-standing dream of revisiting my six-year-old La Jolla Coast Shorebreak child to enjoy body-whomping in the warm Waikiki waters. After what Pat now rightly calls a fantasy crash and burn, that six-year-old yelled at me, “What the fuck happened to you? What part of keeping your lungs strong, and being in complete control of your body did you NOT understand?”
We used to be horrified by those who came near the waves not respecting the shear power of water hydraulics, and not preparing for it adequately. Now I had become one. Weak legs, no lung endurance, easily exhausted. Trusting who I used to be to make up for who I had become. Disaster.Exiting Kaiser Honolulu Hospital three days later with a week’s worth of Azithromycin, Paxlovid, and my first introduction to a teaspoon every six hours of Opioids (Codein-Guaifenesin), I’m now gaining a first-hand experience handing my body over to a drug that tells my brain to ignore all pain signals. Loading up my cell phone with hourly instructions for the medicines treating Bronchitis and Covid, I'm overjoyed at how the mucus buildup in my throat so easily and painlessly becomes what we used to call “Logees” that we’d hock at our feet in the parking lots after mornings of surf. Without the Codeine telling my brain to stop sending signals, the pain would cause my upper chest to convulse so badly those around me were asking if I had Parkinson’s. And that’s much like it feels to be a six-year-old in a 76-six-year-old body.
So bring on Opioid Education and Services to the Behavioral Health Board! I can’t say upgrading this Boomer’s beer-busting insights to a serious dose of codeine-induced fear of addiction to the joys of not having a brain will better prepare me for service, but it has crossed my mind that it might improve my empathy and understanding considerably. And most of all, I want that six-year-old to see that I’ve decided to take better care of what he protected next time our paths cross.
Gregory Fearon
