*5 ?Teenagers are really good liars. Especially to their parents.
*6 ?Wilson Compton and Nora Volkow, “Major Increases in Opioid Analgesic Abuse in the United States: Concerns and Strategies.”
*7 ?Charles F. von Gunten, “The Pendulum Swings for Opioid Prescribing.”
*8 ?Pauline Anderson, “Scant Evidence for Long-Term Opioid Therapy in Chronic Pain.”
*9 ?Rose A. Rudd et al., “Increases in Drug and Opioid Overdose Deaths—United States, 2000–2014.”
*10 ?“DrugFacts: Heroin,” accessed June 27, 2016, at https://www.drugabuse.gov/?publi cations/drugfacts/heroin.
*11 ?According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, between 2001 and 2014 there was a sixfold increase in the number of deaths from heroin overdose; deaths from overdose of prescription drugs tripled (“Overdose Death Rates” at drugabuse.gov).
*12 ?This was the fate of a twenty-four-year-old from Wilmington, Delaware, named Greg Humes, whose tragic death has inspired many parents to turn to harm reduction instead of insisting on an abstinence-only approach to drug education.
*13 ?In 1998, Dr. Hart became the first African American tenured professor of science in the history of Columbia University. In 1998. I’m typing that twice because otherwise you’d probably think it was a misprint.
*14 ?“Methamphetamine Facts,” accessed April 20, 2016, at http://www.drugpolicy.org/?drugfacts/?methamphetamine-facts.
*15 ?Brook L. Henry, Arpi Minassian, and William Perry, “Effect of Methamphetamine Dependence on Everyday Functional Ability.”
*16 ?Carl L. Hart et al., “Is Cognitive Functioning Impaired in Methamphetamine Users? A Critical Review.”
*17 ?Carl L. Hart, Joanne Csete, and Don Habibi, “Methamphetamine: Fact vs. Fiction and Lessons from the Crack Hysteria.”
*18 ?Hart, Csete, and Habibi, “Methamphetamine: Fact vs. Fiction.”
*19 ?Ibid.
*20 ?T. Linnemann and T. Wall, “?‘This Is Your Face on Meth’: The Punitive Spectacle of ‘White Trash’ in the Rural War on Drugs.”
*21 ?“Given the weak evidentiary basis for epidemic and diagnosis, I offer a preliminary interpretation that the meth epidemic is constructed as symptom and cause of White status decline, with dental decay the vehicle for anxieties about descent into ‘White trash’ status” (Naomi Murakawa, “Toothless”).
*22 ?Megan S. O’Brien and James C. Anthony, “Extra-Medical Stimulant Dependence Among Recent Initiates.”
*23 ?Dr. Hart believes even that figure is exaggerated. In a report prepared for the Open Society Institute, he writes, “Less than 15 percent of those who have ever used the drug will become addicted.” (Hart, Csete, and Habibi, “Methamphetamine: Fact vs. Fiction.”)
*24 ?K. L. Medina et al., “Neuropsychological Functioning in Adolescent Marijuana Users: Subtle Deficits Detectable After a Month of Abstinence.” For a thorough review of research on marijuana and youth, see Seth Ammerman, Sheryl Ryan, and William P. Adelman, “The Impact of Marijuana Policies on Youth: Clinical, Research, and Legal Update.”
*25 ?L. M. Squeglia, J. Jacobus, and S. F. Tapers, Ph.D., “The Influence of Substance Use on Adolescent Brain Development.”
*26 ?At http://www.drugpolicy.org/?sites/?default/?files/?DPA_SafetyFirst_2014_0.pdf.
Day 11
Transition Day
Physical Sensations: None.
Mood: Nice.
Sleep: Woke up way too early.
Work: Trouble focusing at first, but eventually got down to it.
Pain: Is it the microdose, or is my shoulder just finally starting to unfreeze?
I woke this morning at dawn after having fallen asleep too late. I tried to force myself to go back to sleep. I snuggled up to my husband, laid my head on his chest, and felt his heart beat against my cheek. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once wrote, “Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” Bullshit. When I gaze at my husband, when I feel his body along the length of mine, I feel a deep, contented joy, a warmth that begins in my belly, spreads out to my limbs and through the top of my skull. If that’s not love, what is?
I kissed him softly so that I didn’t wake him, and slipped out of the darkness of our bedroom, through the quiet hall, downstairs to the kitchen. Though the cacophony of a house full of children is one of the delights of parenthood, I am coming to love the early hours of the morning, when I wake to a silent house. So used to being a grump in the mornings, so used to clutching mightily to every last shred of sleep, I find it a pleasure to sit silently at my kitchen table, drinking a cup of tea, with the dog resting her chin on my lap as I scratch her ears while I read the paper or check my e-mail.
Still, despite the delight I’m taking in this early morning solitude, I am worried about how little I’m sleeping. Though the protocol warns that some people require a sleep aid, I am loath to get back into a habit I worked so hard to kick.
Some of my earliest memories are of lying beneath my scratchy polyester quilt, my head balanced on a pillow at once lumpy and hard, staring at the blades of yellow street light slicing between the slats of the mini-blinds that inadequately covered my window. I fought hard to keep from looking at the glow of my flip clock, but the numbers would drop with an audible flop, reducing one by one the possibility of getting enough accumulated minutes of sleep before the radio buzzed static and KISS-FM.
That lasted my entire life, until I discovered Ambien. That’s when everything changed. I would climb into bed and pop a pill, and the lights would go out with a snap. Sometimes the metaphorical lights went out even before the actual ones. My husband, coming in from work at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m., would find me, lights blazing, glasses on, book in hand, snoring away.
I loved that drug so much, even if some of the side effects were, well, disconcerting. Jet lag rendered me impervious to the effects of a single Ambien pill, so when I was traveling I would often allow myself a second one, and sometimes, my judgment impaired, even a third. It turns out there’s a reason the correct dosage is five to ten milligrams. The following text stream, reproduced verbatim, illustrates what happens when you take thirty milligrams:
You love m me right?
YES
Our kids are goog. We did ik
Okay, Ambien typing
If I die too ire il be ins rigyra
Put screen away
Sex in nit sir. Very sky adequate
Stop. Turn off phone and you will be asleep in 5
You talk me. Before you I was imonible. Now in on accordion monorail
HONEY TURN OFF YOUR PHONE NOW
Income home tomorrow
Please, darling. I am begging you. If you love me, turn off your devices, pick up your book, and read. Screens activate
Hiccups