Longer Essay

Did you shoot the cat? It’s a partly humorous aside, looking for the raised eyebrow, the what’s up with that? comment. We’d explain, we have a cat with diabetes. Two shots a day. The dog, a Cocker Spaniel who died last year after almost four years of shots, was first. 

 

Working with needles is a strange skill set. At first, my fear was the bubbles. As you draw the liquid from the wax topped vial into the needle, sometimes bubbles come in as well. Cue horror movie where bubbles are injected, and we watch the person die. Cue helplessly watching your pet in spasm’s. 

 

The fear was my first hurdle. Finding the right pocket of loose skin was my second. Now, it’s a quick process. An automatic habit sometimes done in, almost, a light trance.  

 

A light trance is the fog we’re in when missing our highway exit, brushing our teeth, taking our medications. Did I do that? We wonder. I suspect phone scrolling fits as well. 

 

I notice anxious clients will plant their phone within reach as if the sight of the phone is comforting… A thought stream anchor on a strange journey. 

 

Habits can make us feel safer. Automatic habits make unpleasant or tedious behaviors easier. Are people irritable about wearing a mask because the act of putting on the mask is about being present? Triggers thoughts about catching covid, passing Covid to the family, causes a kind of hyper focus on the now?

 

I’ve been working with clients whose anxiety spikes when wearing a mask. We talk through behavioral steps. Wear the mask around the house. Gradually increase the amount of time wearing the mask…The goal is to make wearing masks feel “normal’. So, we can go back to walking into the grocery store, focusing on the door, the list. Hurrying because your brain is already in the store. Living too much time in automatic negates reality; is about avoidance and denial, even numbing of feelings. 

 

 

Anyone can get used to using needles. In the weird world I inhabit, needles are for good. In the world outside, needles are mixed. 

 

This strange skill set is one I share with my son. I found needles in his sock drawer after he moved to California. He always told me he was too scared of needles to use them. His addiction changed that. 

 

The urge, I suspect, to get the chemical into your body. If this was the only way so be it... overcame his fear. He was using with friends, with other people comfortable with that habit inhabiting the addicts’ world with him. People comfortable with the skill set, using automatically on a daily basis. 

 

Needles, I understand, are a fast form of transmission. If your body is screaming with pain; muscle pain, stomach cramping, brain signals because the brain literally creates synapses to handle the drug, you want the relief fast. So, he overcame his fear and used them.

 

He became one of over 60,000 men and women who died last year when he injected fentanyl by accident. He had a slip after a period of sobriety. He admitted to using, told his house manager he loved him. He went upstairs to get dressed for a meeting. He collapsed and time passed. By the time he was found, administered Narcan, it was too late. Losing a son, a child, is learning to live with pain for the rest of a life. 

 

There’s much more about that but my point is this. There is another epidemic in this country killing people. It’s a disease, long term, ravishing families and generations. It crosses all color barriers, all socioeconomic lines, all age groups.  This year, the numbers went up again. 

 

This particular form, with needles, has hit the world again and again in waves. More often than a virus like Covid. I believe it will continue to do so. Because we have learned to cope with large scale trauma, with repeating historical events by denial, by avoidance, by numbing. Skill sets now applied automatically. 

 

My son was smart, a great communicator, a good listener and a funny man. He wasn’t able to give his gifts to the world. The evil that is Fentanyl, the evil that is addiction took that away. He fought a good fight especially in the last couple years. One slip was deadly. 

 

That’s not allowed for in any other transition. We get to fail sometimes, to succeed. A slip is more deadly because tolerance is lowered from sobriety. An evil is more deadly because of the availability of drugs like Fentanyl. 

 

We shot the cat, I say today. But I don’t forget nor will I ever, the double edge of needles. Honestly, sometimes I try for trance, to think about something else. A useful skill set when consciously used. 

 

Triggers are a part of trauma. How many of us are triggered into a mild trauma by wearing the mask? A day of hyper worried thoughts about covid, about that person in the store who coughed, the forgotten hand sanitizer before eating.

 

This continuous repetition of historical events makes me wonder, how many times does it take to break through the collective trance of avoidance, of denial? How much time in our lives is it okay to live automatically? 

 

I’m seeing a lot of anxious people now saying, why am I so anxious? My repeating phrase is well, we are living through a pandemic. A time of worldwide protests and demonstrations. What I hear back is something like… I should be used to it by now. We should…be in a trance again. 

 

Living a larger percentage of our day automatically. Walking into the grocery store thinking about the list, if they have my favorite bread, scrolling my phone as I’m walking and not seeing the couple holding hands or tubs of fresh flowers.

 

Coping takes many forms. All the current events have happened in our world in slightly different variations. I’m hoping our goal this time is to choose to be more conscious of the slope of history mingling with the now, of working through the creaking process of change to live less in the gray soup of a light trance. 

 

 

Margot Storti-Marron is a psychotherapist in private practice. Her son Andrew Marron died July 8, 2019.

 

1051 words.