CHARBONNEAU – No celebration of the fentanyl drug culture this Halloween

NO ONE WILL BE dressing up as a fentanyl user this Halloween.

There will be the usual pretend-scary skeletons, ghosts and gravestones but the truly macabre: the hollowed-out youth, brain-damaged and homeless will be off limits.

In the past, drug use has been embedded in culture, music, medicine.

But the “fentanyl fold” is not a new dance. It’s a chronic condition where users seem to be bent in half because the drug’s effects on the central nervous system that causes intense muscle relaxation and loss of motor control.

The hippy era celebrated the use of cannabis. Pot smoking became a badge of defiance of the establishment, as much as were bellbottomed pants, long hair, flowers and beads.

In the early 1950s, Weyburn, Saskatchewan was the world’s leading centre of LSD research where two psychiatrists sought to revolutionize the treatment of mental illness with LSD.

Timothy Leary led the counterculture in the use of LSD. He developed a philosophy of mind expansion and personal truth through use of the drug.

In 1967, Leary spoke at the “Human Be-In,” a gathering of 30,000 hippies in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and phrased the famous words, “Turn on, tune in, drop out.”

Cocaine use grew in popularity in the early 20th Century. In 1934, Cole Porter celebrated coke in his hit song “I Get a Kick Out of You,” whose lyrics include the following lines: “Some get a kick from cocaine. I’m sure that if I took even one sniff that would bore me terrifically, too. Yet, I get a kick out of you.”

Cocaine use died off for a while only to return with a vengeance in the 1970s. Cocaine swept America as a party drug as millions of dollars were made by Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar.

There will be no celebration of the fentanyl drug culture.

Not because there’s a lack of medical uses of fentanyl. It’s used in hospitals as a sedative for intubated patients and to treat chronic pain.

Not because there aren’t many users. There are about 400,000 drug addicts in B.C., many of them fentanyl users.

There will be no movies made in which party goers are having a wild time, high on fentanyl. Not like many movies such as Blow (2001), Goodfellas (1990), and  Pulp Fiction (1994) which featured characters snorting cocaine through rolled up hundred dollar bills.

There will be no songs commemorating fentanyl like Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine” recorded in 1977 when he was consuming copious amounts of cocaine, and alcohol, and had only recently kicked a heroin habit.

There will be no fentanyl clubs for harried mothers such as the ones reported by Amberly McAteer (Globe and Mail, October 7, 2024). She visited a get-together of friends who usually share easy weekday recipes or favourite wines.

“At one such recent backyard soiree,” says McAtee, “I shared that my brain feels as if it’s floating in fog, with any real concentration seemingly just beyond reach. My fellow moms replied almost in unison: Try microdosing psilocybins, otherwise known as magic mushrooms.”

There will be no celebration of fentanyl because it’s a terminal drug. The zombies it creates are too real to countenance.

David Charbonneau is a retired TRU electronics instructor who hosts a blog at http://www.eyeviewkamloops.wordpress.com.