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What Could Have Been

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What if the heroin epidemic never happened?

How many lives would be saved? How many families would still be whole? 

As a speculative fiction author, I often find myself asking “what if” questions.

Most of the time these are related to possible futures, emerging technologies, and problems I speculate our society will have to confront in the world of tomorrow.

But what about the world of yesterday? 

Watching Dopesick and Theranos (the documentaries) made me think about what happens when ambition, money, and lies collide. 

It made me think about what happens when broken promises break lives. But most importantly, which lives end up broken? Who ultimately ends up paying the price? And who gets to make that decision?

The heroin epidemic is something that I feel at an extremely personal level.

There are practically more people than I can count on a hand in my family who have struggled with Oxycontin abuse. Painkillers helped contribute to my dad’s spiraling gambling addiction. 

It led to my mom losing everything she worked her entire life for as a result and me and my brother growing up confused, stuck in a position where we loved our father, but could feel something was very wrong.

But it also led to me moving from Long Island to Charleston, where my mom could more easily afford to support us as a single mother. It led to me going to Charleston County School of the Arts for middle school, being surrounded in a creative environment that encouraged me to pursue my artistic passion.

It was there that I wrote my first book at 13. 

And it was the determination to NOT be the man my father was, that drove me to work hard at school, work a part-time job, and pour everything I could into my publishing business. 

In that way, I’m grateful for it all. And for the longest time, I never contemplated, what life would be like if none of that had ever happened in the first place.

What if the FDA didn’t buy into the Sacklers’ manipulative data about the addictiveness of Oxycontin? What if the drug had its sales curtailed in the late 1990s or early 2000s by regulators, mitigating some of the millions of addictions it created from happening in the first place? What if Purdue Pharma stood for something more than just profit?

Some say that the “addicts” would find a new drug to cling onto.

Some say that another company or another person would have figured out some sort of grand addictive scheme eventually (hell, maybe Facebook and TikTok are just are digital reincarnations of that).

But I don’t know about that. We will never know.

And that’s the saddest part.

As I write this, I sit here and think about what kind of life my father would be living today, if his addictions never took hold. I think about what kind of life my mom would have lived the last decade. What kind of life my brother would be living today?

Luckily, my father has improved in his mental and physical health since his lowest points of a massive heart attack. But it took him over 20 years of living that way in order to change.

20 years. 20 years of anger. 20 years of lost time, of lost memories, of pain.

It brings me back to my own adventures roadtripping through America. The dilapidated homes lining the country highways of Appalachia. The families clutching their children close, as a figure with emaciated features walked on the other side of the street hobbling towards their next high.

It makes me think of my time visiting Kensington, Philadelphia. A place the New York Times called the “Walmart of Heroin”. A rusty railroad track ran above the main street, its teal coloring and bright lights making it feel like a cyberpunk dystopia. 

Needle caps clogged the storm drains, littered the play ground, and blanketed the streets by the thousands. Every eye carefully followed me as I walked around with my friend, those suspecting that we were undercover cops policing the streets.

In my time there we witnessed one overdose, dozens of people shoot-up on the sides of the street, and thousands upon thousands of people living on the sidewalks chasing pavements as the sky bled reds and oranges.

I spoke to the Priest of a nearby Catholic Church that runs a soup kitchen serving many of the people of Kensington. He described the story of the neighborhood, and how it went from the center of nightlife and movie district in the early 20th century to a place overrun by crime from the crack epidemic. The place recovered once again, only to find itself at the crossroads of one of the hottest drug tourism spots in North America.

What could have been if Kensington had never become known for the pure cuts of heroin its dealers dished out? What could have been of the hundreds of thousands of people in their families and communities?

What could have been…

Collective grief is a beautifully wicked thing. It’s not lost on me, that the events of the last few years spark similar questions in most of us. It’s a kind of grief that can bring us together and a pain that cuts through space and time.

But living in a world of grief forever, well that’s not anyone’s goal. It’s suffocating. 

It’s important to think about what could have been. To always imagine for better or worse, the pivotal moments in our lives and world that shape our foundational experiences.

I hope it helps you to be grateful. Maybe even inspired. Because there’s something to learn from what could have been.

As sad as it is, as confusing and sometimes as hopeless we can all feel in these moments, there’s one important follow-up question:

What could be?

That’s a question we all get to answer. For ourselves, for our families, for our communities, and for our futures.

Who do you want to become? What do you want to stand for? And what good will you make from the pain?

That’s it from me for today. I’ll be sure to send you more reflections over the next few months. And if you’re curious, here are some updates from my author creator life…

What I’ve Been Up To:

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