# 36

The ability to reload.

What wisdom we can learn from the Greatest Generation.

My father once related discipline that his 4th grade teacher dispensed to a friend of his.  Because of misconduct, she instructed the lad to stay after school and write 500 words on the blackboard as punishment.  The boy wrote, "The cowboy drew his gun and went bang, bang, bang, bang...." 493 times he wrote the word "bang."

In addition to being a "run-on" sentence, it was not plausible because the cowboy never re-loaded his gun and most six-shooters only hold six shells.  The boy met the requirements for his punishment, but he was always known by his classmates as the story-teller who never reloaded his gun, but kept on shooting.

Several years later, another fatherly figure from the Greatest Generation, my next door neighbor - Austin - related a story from his boyhood in Luray, Virginia in which he personally learned how to "re-load" in order to gorge himself on far more ripe cherries than his body was designed to consume at one sitting.  Austin stated that during ripe-cherry season, he would climb a cherry tree and eat cherries until his stomach was bloated.  Then he would force his finger down his throat and stimulate the regurgitation response and his stomach would expel all that he had eaten.  Austin then resumed his cherry gorging.  Lads in Luray learned how to re-load their consumption reward system, releasing pleasure drugs inside his brain and they also found this way in order to continue their excesses.

In medicine, surely internists would find issues with an artificial stimulation of excess gastric/digestive juices, stretching of the esophagus and the violent involuntary propulsion of the stomach contents placing stress on multiple muscles and organs in the abdomen.  Nevertheless, Austin had his favorite tree limb in which he practiced his annual ritual after discovering a simple way to re-load so he could repeat his brain's desire for that particular pleasure.

This process should not be lost on us as we pursue an honest examination of the potential for a cycle  of near death following the self-administration of Heroin and opioids with the possibility to re-load following one, or multiple, doses of the antidote, Narcan/Naraxolone.  

The boy who wrote on the blackboard, "bang, bang, bang" was at no risk of death and Austin could have aspirated his own vomit and died...but the risk was very low after he re-loaded.

The self-administering Opiate/Opioid abuser of today - and his supporters - have found that they can tempt death, re-load and live to abuse a subsequent day.  Our society is encouraging and funding this cycle.  If the cycle is a spiral, its trajectory cannot be upward.