If currently you’re not living beneath the strangling, soul-devouring shadow of heroin’s brutal reign that has snaked its way through Bluegrass country, consider yourself super-dooper fuckin’ lucky, and allow me to put a word in your ear real quick. Heroin, like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is a nightmare come true, writ large here in the state of unbridled opiate consumption. And those responsible for this ever-ratcheting shit show, starring everyone’s favorite quartet of cut-ups — humiliation, dehumanization, annihilation and a million hypodermics glazed in ear wax, left in the wind — need to throw themselves upon a concrete floor covered in broken fun-house mirrors, and apologize profusely before atoning for the vast Godzillaesque wreckage they have wrought (and more than any other culprit in that rouges’ gallery of the guilty, I’m lookin’ at you Phat-Pharmacy, whose fabled Opana took us for the fastest ride into absolute addiction these young beautiful eyes have ever seen, and, now with Fentanyl copulating with hayron, Phat-Pharmacy is about to Lego-click its circle of Hell into completion).

Now, as I write this on the front steps of my South-Central abode, where I reside, hand-to-mouth, I’m reflecting on three young men I came up with through our formative years, and who just last week overdosed a mere day apart, and were pronounced as dead as Scotty J., before being revived by an EMS so bogged down, they barely have time to discard their gloves before they gotta make another run to another person of potential, faded by this old god of succulent pleasure and pestilence. And I’ll tell ya’ true, if this turn of unfortunate events had not been a three-punch fallout involving three jabronies I personally know the way Ali knew Norton, their demise would have barely made a bleep on my emotional radar, because hearing about folks you sorta’ know cashing out for good in the twisted shadow-land of dope is the new common: It’s work-week word-of-mouth I receive through text, while on my couch watching Alex P. Keaton do his thing in syndication, and I think to myself: “Well shit, that sucks. What was that kid’s mom’s name, again?”

Death by diamorphine has become banal, and that cruel fact has put a fright in me. In every gas station and grocery parking lot, there in the darkness always lurks an increasing number of sorrowful-lookin’ sad-sacks close to losin’ that last slab of equilibrium, before tippin’ backwards into the pavement, more and more, every night, hitting those last few pay phones still mounted, begging the beyond-annoyed clerks to let’em in the bathroom, complimenting wack Ford Tempos in hopes its owner will yes-him a dollar. It’s all part and parcel to the sick-kid hustle, and these sick-kids hustle hard! Trust me like you trust wet-wipes, it’s a laborious life of robbing grandma to pay Paul that they’re livin’ — ‘cause they know if they can’t scrape together enough scratch to cop that scare-oin, they’re gonna be reduced to a Labradoodle puppy dyin’ of parvo, because when I talk to these kids strung out like Jandek’s guitar, I can’t figure out what they’re chasing it for faster — the euphoric high, or to not be death-dream sick. And, at the moment, I’m leaning more towards the latter, because when I hear from these folks who have escaped from the dragon, reached for the vine and pulled their bad selves up out of the tar pits, and back to livin’ large and in charge, not being sick is what you hear about more than anything.

This is that shit so potent that Jesus can’t save you from it, fam! To go through detox, and then remain sober, takes perseverance, and a strong network of people that a lot of these folks fixed on that soup just don’t have. And I’m gonna say this as plain as punk: If you’re living some posh life far, far away from the pit of the public, and you’re against needle-exchange programs, well, then you are pro-hepatitis, and you’re completely cool with some kids catching HIV from a needle that’s been passed around more times than a Cryin’ Jordan meme. Now why don’t ya go marinate on that for awhile, and hit me up later.

What’s that old chestnut Hillary Rodham Clinton used to throw around? “It takes a village,” or some such shit? Well yo, this village needs to take care of some big business in a big way, because we got way too many of us out there shooting this bozo into their slough, and we’re pushing it to the ceiling with almost 50 overdoses a day! That’s almost 50 mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunties and even those terrible old Uncle Terry’s out there being chewed to death in the mouth of disease … Stay paid, stay laid and stay off that high-grade. Nothin’ but love for you all.