Op-Ed: Don’t let Adderall scarcity trigger a repeat of the opioid epidemic
This op-ed is also published in the February, 2019, issue of Drug War Times.
The overdose crisis that has swept across America since the turn of the century has become the largest public health emergency facing our country. But many people in our community continue to struggle with addiction.
It’s a crisis that has been decades in the making, but has also been accompanied by a public-health emergency that has taken a devastating toll on American citizens. The opioid epidemic has destroyed the lives of far too many people.
In this op-ed, I would like to propose a solution to help solve the crisis; in the process, I hope people will recognize that the crisis has grown out of a supply shortage.
My name is Robert McCall, but you may know me better by my alias, “Heroin Junkie McCall.”
For nearly three decades, I struggled with drug addiction. Yet at times my addiction was as big an influence in my life as I was in a life.
In addition to overcoming my addiction, I am an artist. I am also a father of six children.
In May 2000, I was a father. However, my addiction was more of a parent-shaped trauma. My addiction forced me to separate from my father and my mother; it also caused an enormous amount of anger toward the man and the woman who had instilled in me the values that I relied on during my formative years.
My father abandoned me and my mother when I was five years old.
I never knew either of my parents. My father is deceased. My mother passed away when I was 13.
I spent the first four years of my life in a state-run home for people with special needs.
But my time there was more of a traumatic, emotional experience for me than the first few years of my life. I would go to school and take tests and do assignments. Yet I would never get my GED, which took years of my life.
I would ask my school psychologist “Where’s my GED?” and he would say, “Who’s paying for your GED? You should pay to
