Fixing The Fentanyl Crisis - podcast episode cover

Fixing The Fentanyl Crisis

Feb 25, 202440 min
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For thirty five years, Cindy Stumpo has been a female home builder with a passion for design, a mastery of detail, and a commitment to her crack. With daughter Samantha Stumpo by her side, I don't need my whole family on a date with me. That's a good note. It's goddy, im weird. See. Stumpo Development is the only second generation female construction company in the country. You're crazy, You're a wacko, You're insane. I mean,

it just doesn't end together. Cindy and Samantha welcome guests to explore the world of construction, real estate, development, design and more. Unpredictable. Every time I think I know what you want, you switch it out. But that's what makes your houses all day. Discuss anything that happens between the roof and the foundation. Nothing is off limits. You truly do care about everybody. She can yell, ATCHI can scream, but when you get her

alone, she's the best person on the planet. Cindy Stumpo is tough as nails and welcome to Cidey Stumpo Toughest Nails on WBZ News Radero ten thirty. I'm Samantha, who are you here with Megan's back in the studio. Virtual reality. Here is this virtual? Yes? Is this virtual reality? No? This is virtual virtual reality, it's what it's virtual, but not virtual reality. Oh, this is virtual, not virtual reality. All right, Well tonight we're talking about FANNEL and there's a lot to talk about here,

and this is called the Fatanyl crisis. And Megan is the person I go to for all of this, right, highly educated in their field of drug addiction, highly educated in the field of Uh. Just want everything to do with the brain, all right? Can I set it up that way? Anything to do with the brain. Megan is a genius. Give it to your facts here, Okay, the brain, go ahead, what are you, Megan? Development, here's a technical Stop the spiritual crap. Just give

the real PhD facts, PhD facts, PhD facts. Literally, I'm getting a literal PhD in transpersonal psychology, literal in astrology. I'm getting a PhD in astrology in spirituality right now. That's what I'm wrapping up. Legit. But all right, but you already have PhDs in other forms, Yeah, clinical psychology, clinical counseling, like what you would get if you want to

go see a therapist. Yeah, Well, people want to hear that, because then they know you're not some fruit loop crazy lady flying around on your witch broom here. Okay, yeah, but they're all fruit loops, but unfortunately people recognize them as real doctors. I want people to recognize my listeners. That making is too. Okay, she's a real therapist, real this reel that now she's just went off into a different world. Is difference between

therapists and psychologists. This, Yeah, it means the psychologist can go to school the therapists and there's a psychiatrist. Okay, it's all different degrees, but you know whatever means that well to some that up in the I do. I have a master's degree in Clinical Counseling, Forensic and Correctional Specialty, then went on train four years as a clinical psychologist, and now wrapping up my training as a trans personal psychologist. So yeah, I've covered I've covered

the bases here a trans but it's yeah, that's what I'm saying. This word like, no ever got to break it down. I just have to call it spiritual because it's a word no one's sort of trans personal psychologists. Trans Personal psychologists stands for spiritual basically a spiritual psychologist. Yeah, you must be dealing with a lot of young people. Is the young coming to you or the older and middle age? Like? What's the age? What's your

demographics here? Okay, it's so weird. I pay attention to this because I think it actually reflects, like what is going on with me as to when I start to draw in people of different ages. I'm actually working with a group right now eighteen to twenty and then mid thirties. Yeah, and then I have a good chunk though, that come to me that are about fifty five when they start to hit their Chiron return and they're having this sort

of like breakdown of their life and they're trying to change. It's very common that I get people in that age group fifty five. Hold on before we go to the subject. Before we go to the subject tonight on hand, Chiro Return? What am I in? Lost in space? Here? Am I like in with the guy with the point? The year is Star Trek? What the heck is Chiro Return? I feel like I swear to God, I'm in the spaceship where Cairo Return? Have you ever heard that,

mister producer Cairo Return? That sounds like something on Star Trek, no star Trek. There was a show called Star Trek. What's wrong with you? Star Trek trek track? Whatever it is? What is Cairo? Cairo things? I think I'm going through the stars. Okay, I'm in Cairo. Yes, chron Kyron, this is where my research is. This is where because I'm studying astrology right now too, so I'm doing my research on this. Yeah, we talked about astrology on the show before the Chiron return.

It's your no disrespect since you left Boston. Since you left Boston, things have changed in your brain a bit. I don't know what given you down in South Carolina there. I don't know. Is it blessure hot dolland I don't know what is? But okay, am I in Kion stage at fifty eight. Yes you are, ma'am, Yes you are. And what does that actually mean? Before we go to this phetanoyl? What is it means? The biggest wound that your psyche could have ever encountered comes back around to

greet you again and in return. Yes, but Chiron is like deep, it's deep. This is where I do my research. Yeah, it's it's major. A lot of people thought from a lot of season astrologers don't even talk about this, and I have a lot of questions about that because I think that's gonna start to change. But yes, this chiron return is very serious and and let me just say real quick, it plays a big role when it comes to menopause, in the experience of menopause. Yes it does.

Oh thank you. Just when I thought it wasn't crazy enough. I gotta be on chiron or whatever return or whatever this is. So my deepest problem is gonna come out now, Well they come out right, that's right, which means what give me the ad result? Where am I going? I don't want to go too deep, just check myself in no, no, But remember in the in the break and one of the point we were

talking about this idea of what a surrender means. The people that don't surrender to certain situations in their lives or certain parts of themselves will have stronger and hot, harder, really hot flashes in menopausal symptoms when this hits, because it's the resistance that we have to acknowledging what the deeper wounds are that then trigger really strong menopausal reactions, which is the age that chiron hits in its return around fifty five to sixty for women in particular. So it's you are

faced with these like real deep wounds that you don't even know exist. This is why I'm here. I hope people see what they don't see. And the chiron return is really significant in human development, really is. I know, I sound like I'm off the rich say, okay, we have to talk about feentanyl crisis. So you and I would be talking tonight on the phone about my chiron or whatever I have that I'm going through my life right now. Okay, all right, let's talk about the feentanyl crisis. Let's

get back on track. I'm actually feeling like a weird house that I'm going on off and I'm losing my voice. Okay, all right, we've given your background here. Let's talk about this crisis that's going on. Okay, because it's scaring the heck out of me as the mother, and it's scaring the heck out of every mother and father out there right now. Okay, your kid does a bump of coke, they think it's no big deal. They're out drinking, and they do a bomb to kind of, you know,

get away from the booze. Straightened out. Your kid's dead. One bomb can take your kid out of cocaine. Okay, we know obviously it's in heroin everywhere, it's in marijuana, it's in all these medications that they're sung on the black market. Add meds, you know, name them Sammy, what add meds Adderall? It's late Adderall's laf so that it just keeps going and going and going. And these kids are buying it. Your kid

doesn't have a prescription of adderall. They're buying it on the streets. They're buying an adderall pill and people don't even know that it's laced with fatanyl. It's fake, it's men made, it's not coming out of a pharmaceutical company. You got to look at them. It's like buying a fake Louis Vuitton bag. Or we all want to know. It's really scary, like the

Louisviitton Bag's not gonna kill you, by the way. But you got to understand as parents, you need to understand that every drug you can think of, they can buy xenx on the street with fatanyl in it, and the uppers are low as you can think of that you have in your medicine. Cabins right now are laced with fetanyl and taking your kids out and friends and family go from there began. This is first of all, my heart goes out to every parent that has a person in this age range that this is

affecting ages eighteen to forty five is where it's getting whapped the most. It is devastating to me to think that we have allowed an unleash of a weapon like this to kill our young people. And it just keeps growing and growing and growing and growing and growing, to the point where we're now no longer talking about drug addicts that might make a conscious decision to try a drug like this. We're talking about sentinel points that the appointment I'm sitting some point you

listening to Temptas Nails on WBZ News Radio ten thirty. Be right back, sponsored by Floor Decor, National Lumber and Village Bank, and Welcome back to Tampa Nails on WBC News Radio ten thirty. I'm Cindy, I'm Samantha. Go ahead, make and take a pic it right back up, please, So eighteen different, yeah, eighteen to forty five. Not just drug addicts, by the way, which we can say wherever we want, about people that make a decision to use a drug that they know is going to kill

them. I one of those people. We have people in this country that have a lot of feelings about people that do what I did. We're talking about that, but we're also talking about young people that absolutely have no clue what they're doing, and they're getting poisoned by the fentanyl thinking it's an adderall, thinking it's even a painkiller, and then they're dying because it's actually a fentanyl pill and it's a pill that they bought off of snapchat. That's a

big one. It's really, really, really scary right now, and we have no there's no potential that I see right now from the governmental or local level that we have any handle on this adult So it scares me where this is going to go. But it's a major, major issue. You're seeing it on the news, and if you haven't, you're living under a rock because this is probably the biggest it's the leading cause of death in people ages

eighteen to forty five right now, it's surpassing COVID deaths. I mean, this is the biggest crisis that we have and where the President isn't even talking about it. What the hell is going on here? And what can we do about it, and how can we help people become more educated about this issue and what they can do about and inside their homes with their young children is where I think a lot of the attention needs to be focused. Okay,

well the young children. Let's talk about our twenty seven year olds that we can't they're not fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, we can't ground them, we can't keep them in the house right through over the age of eighteen. I know, it's been my biggest worry. Right the kids go out, they're just partying, and they just think they're not even drug addicts. They're just having a good time out there partying, you know, and they think, all right, yeah, like I said, when we open the show,

yeah you do a bomb, bum bah bomb whatever. Right. I'm not even playing light on that because I'm not a drug or alcohol user, as you know. But I got to put myself into my kids, you know, when they were young, or with Chad. Sammy's outgrown that stage of her life by tenfolds, but Chad's still out there. He's got fomo, you know, I mean, fear of missing out, and he's at the clubs. He's drinking, and one bad decision man, and you lose your child one bad decision, And you want to tell me why is the

government getting involved? Why is the president getting involved? Why is the FEDS, the DA Why? Like, why aren't Why isn't anybody paying attention? Is that this not the narrative? This is not what they want to talk about. Let's talk about COVID debts, but not talked about that we're losing more people to fetanyl debts. Is fetanyl debts outriding cancer deaths everything for that

age group eighteen to forty five. Yeah, it's number one. And it's not just s fentanyl, it's all synthetic opioids, but sentinels playing a huge role in it. But yeah, I mean we literally want we've shortened our lifespan because of this. Our lifespan as Americans has now been shortened as a result of this epidemic, this pandemic, and we're really not addressing it as a country. It's shocking to me. It's unbelievable. Okay, why is that, Megan? What's the talk in your world? Why there's no talk

about this? Why are they're not doing anything about this? Well? The high right, I mean I could, yeah, I mean, I of course people are going to hear part of what I'm saying against say, oh, you know, conspiracy theorists whatever, what we do not hate. But but what we actually is about money, Megan, Megan, is this about money? Money, It's about money, and it's about power. That's actually the reason why the United States UH military was in Afghanistan was a lot.

I mean, you can see the photos of our military personnel and our active duty soldiers manning and protecting the poppy fields that were in Afghanistan that probably still are that we own, that the American government manages and owns. I mean, if you if you have any questions about about what's in it for the

federal government, I mean, that's a good starting point. So there's billions and billions of dollars that are being made here, and it's a global entity because the fentanyl is actually manufactured and made in places like China and India, and that's how it gets here. Larger part. But meanwhile, if you're in China and you do a drug, you lose your fingers, and you do it again, you're gonna lose your life. So what's up here?

So let's keep sending to the dumb Americans over here? Is that the philosophy. Well, it's kind of interesting. I did hear somebody come up with sort of look a little bit of a theory that really resonated with me. I mean, if we kind of take this and not just as an isolated piece, but one major piece of a bigger governmental corrupt system in the way that our military has actually been depleted over these last many years. I mean,

think about that age range eighteen to forty five. Yeah, that's a little high on the end of it, but when you get recruited into the military, you're in that age group. So if that age group gets wiped out, that directly affects our capacity to structure as strong military as the United

States of America. So if you have questions around kind of like what's going on here and what the deeper pieces might be, that's kind of a striking correlation there, if you want to think about kind of where we're going as a country and what has happened to our military in these last years, and how depleted and how much weaker it's gotten. So it's a plaus little theory. I mean, I think there's a lot of pieces here, and I

think power and corruption are at the source of all of it. So yeah, I think we have easy fixes to find solutions to a problem, like the war on drugs. But this is no longer a war on drugs and arguably never was. This is a war on Americans between the ages of eighteen and forty five and their families. That's what this is. We have to ask ourselves why, what's the motivation for this? Has there been any presence in the last I don't know whatever, since this epidemic really got out of

control, has any presence stepped up to the plate. I haven't really followed it. So stepped up to the plate and talked about fetanyl. Fetanyl has put it in the front line. I did hear. I read anautical because I remember are posting with Trump, and then I got badgeed on my own Facebook because the name Trump was in there. Right, was not taught. I wasn't sure posting about Trump. I was posting about the article on fetanohl.

But of course that's what people read, right read sure. I think he might have been the only president in recent history that I actually addressed this issue, said the word put money towards it. I mean, think about it. We have a president in office right now who has a son that has struggled with this exact addiction, and in the two years that he's been in office, he's mentioned it in a speech once that was just like what a couple of weeks ago. I mean, that's striking on a local level.

I think Massachusetts has probably been the state that has had governors that have been the most vocal and taken as action towards this. But now we have the data coming out that says Charlie Baker's decision to restrict opioid prescriptions to the three days when he went back and said, you know, we have to get a handle on this and stop writing these big prescriptions for people that are getting pain meds for surgery and everything. That they actually have the data now.

My friend was talking about it the other day about how that actually had a negative impact and drove people to heroin and drove people to oxycont in then fensanyl, which was always a theory, but now we actually have some data to say that like that solution was not a solution at all. So they're at least trying. Massachusetts government and mc deval patrick actually called it a crisis back when the pills that are present right now, that these kids are dying

from these U forty whatever whatever, that it's an analog at fentanyl. He called it a crisis when that was starting to get manufactured like what ten something years ago, and it was going to start getting distributed in Boston and he put the stop to that that like nobody ever talks about. So yeah, Massachusetts has been more vocal and more active, but still not finding sustainable solutions,

frankly, And what are the solutions in your opinion? If you could major, if you could waive a magic one, if I could wave a magic wand I would not recreate the wheel. I would do what the Dutch countries are doing. Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Portugal. Yes, they have decriminized a lot of drugs, in fact maybe fully legalized some. But the model that they have is not just to give people drugs and just let it be a free for all. They create a system in which law enforcement and

drug treatment work together. They don't allow people to just use out on the streets. They don't allow open air drug markets to be happening like how it happens on mass to have no the police actually arrest you, and you have the choice. You can go to jail or you can go to treatment.

But you're going somewhere, and there's gonna be a consequence to the decision that you're making to use drugs out here, out in the open, destroy your life and potentially destroy the lives of the people around you if you're out here robin and stealing and everything else and contributing to their negative quality of life by living out here and squalor out on the streets. No, we're not gonna

tolerate that. We're gonna give you treatment. We're gonna give give you medications if you need them, but you're gonna have to earn the opportunity to get access to that by being willing to take the advice that you're given by the person that arrests you or by the doctor. You don't just get you don't

just get out. Get to be out here acting a fool and just using drugs out in the open, like how Massachusetts wants to do it and how San Francisco wants to do it. It doesn't work, And so you have to have consequences for behaviors in order to really guide people, especially the unmotivated drug users. If we're just talking about the straight drug addiction, something that

change. Okay, hold that thought. I'm City Stampo, Samantha and you're listening to Tough His Nails on WBZ News Radio tenth there and be right back, sponsored by Pillow Windows of Boston. Next day, Molding and Kennedy Carpet in the morning and welcome back to tap As Nails on WBZ News Radio ten thirty. And I'm Cindy and I'm Samantha and we're here with Megan Kenny.

Go ahead, Meghan, pick it back up. I think you know you hear a lot in the harm reduction part of drug treatment around like legalized drugs, and that'll just like solve the problem. That doesn't solve the problem. You have to put a container on it. So I recommend people, if they're interested in learning more, if they are people that work in the government, that are listening to this at the local level, read about this and then go back to your team and say, hey, you know, I

just read this book. One book is called San Francico, by the way, that breaks this whole model down because it's somebody out in San Francisco that actually has reflected on the flaws of how San Francisco is actually operating their drug treatment space. But read the books that breaks these models down, because they're not what you think. They're not what you hear when you hear people in Massachusetts in particular, say like, oh, we just need to do it

like the Europeans do it and just legalize in all drugs. Uh No, that's actually not how it's done over there. So we need to use a more successful model that's already being used in successful ways in other countries. Why reinvent the wheel. Let's just try what they're trying, see if it works. But you got to have consequences to behavior. You've got to expect more from people and raise the standard here because otherwise making everywhere is just going to

be a mass as. Okay, question, We don't have enough beds in most states. So you arrest somebody, right, and you go, okay, pick a clean out, go clean out, or go to jail. Guess what number one? We don't have enough police to go around you still looking at the decline of police officers, right, that's one problem. Thank you to the country that we live in. Then no one wants to have plus anymore. Okay, I will argue that all day long, law and

order we need, but we have no beds. We don't have enough beds to go around for addicts. So we were going, how can we implement that in this country? Maybe in Europe they do have enough beds, enough sche type units and dual diagnosis, and we don't have that here. And if you don't have money, you're really screwed here. So now where we going? Yeah, So I think that's one of the fundamental changes that needs

to have happen on a systemic level. We af for some reason, in Massachusetts, the gold standard has been to approach drug addiction on an outpatient level. Let's give people's box on and methadone. Let's have them just show up for their prescription or their dose. Let's try to get them to meetings or to see a counselor. But other than that, that's the only contact we

have with them. The research shows that if you take the outpatient model and just give it to the people that have already gone through the higher levels of treatment, and instead focus resources on getting people into an actual treatment center, it's like double the success rate than just treating it on the outpatient level. So we need to like get rid of this whole idea that like suboxone in method owner, like the gold Standards to treat addiction, that is hogwash.

People actually need to get into a contained setting where they can detox and be safe while they detalk and then start the process. Because the healing journey, especially from drug addiction, is an absolute process, and you have to kind of work a model here in some way, shape or form, and you have to kind of move through the phases of that program, whatever that program is. But I think trying to treat people on the outpatient level and jumping

all of the money and the resources into that is not effective. We need more beds, we need more treatment centers, and we need people in treatment for longer periods of time. Okay, my question is this, We're going to find people to treat for treatments when we don't have enough good psychologists psychiatrists to go around? Tell me that one, we can't, we don't have that. Where's the money going to come from? For hold on, where's

the money coming from for beds? Who we donate? But where's the government opening up facilities? We don't have mental hospitals anymore. Remember, we don't have facilities anymore. So if you have a lot of money, sure you can send your kids to the best. And what does long term treatment mean? What does that mean? What does that look like to you? Thirty days, sixty days, ninety days, six months, what is it?

No, the research says anybody that receives treatment under three months has a significantly higher rate of relapse and not getting better. It's got to be a minimum of three months. But I like long, I mean, and hey, this is coming from somebody that never went to rehab. I mean, so I'm not even saying like I'm saying you can do it my way too. It's a lot harder. But I think if we just look at still like a bigger perspective and just like, what's going to help the most people long

term care? I mean, you need to get displaced out of your area, your geographical area. You need to change to start the process. And I really think people need to go minimum of thirty days away to another place outside of the area that they're familiar with. And honestly, if they've been in this rat race over and over with ongoing relapses, I'm talking like, you need to give up a year of your life the way it is right now and go to treatment for a year straight up, Like I'm a proponent

of the year model, and then a phase down process after that. Okay, Maggott, do you know the numbers to send somebody away for a year. It's an average of how much your months today in a half decent facility. Astronomical, it's astronomical. The top tier, like some of the best treatment centers are about thirty to forty grand a month. So yeah, you're talking a lot of money if we don't have the support of the government or

funding to make this happen for people. Yeah, okay, So where's mom and Dad's going to get that thirty thousand dollars a month every month for a year to send their young adult off, whether eighteen, nineteen, twenty fifteen, sixteen, twenty five, thirty. You're not going to quit on them, right, You don't quit in your children. So what do people do? We're talking we're talking flying unicorns and you know, pink pigs running around like this a dream? This where parents are going to get the money?

What? Take it out on credit card, take more debt, take a second home to save child's life. Okay, that's great. For parents that can do that. But if you have no resources to do that, then we do you get the money? What did you where to put the person and they got to want to go by the way and they got to want to be clean by the way. Yeah, absolute, one hundred percent, that's number one. I think you can. You can obviously find your way

through public health treatment for facilities. But I think to your question highlights the bigger issue, which is it's not fair to put the problem on the parents to try to figure out this is a systemic issue that needs to be addressed

from the top down. And I can get deeper into this conversation. I will tell you though, at the core of it, people like me go to training to do this kind of work to then get paid peanuts and oh, you know, hundreds of thousand dollars in student loans by the time we're

done. So it's a totally upside down model. There's no incentives for workforce development to build an infrastructure that allows and attracts more professionals to come to the field because it's a high burnout rate, low pay, high stress patients that aren't getting better. You mix that all up and people aren't going to want to do that work, and if they do, they're only doing it large in part because there's some incentive like money, so then they'll work at the

high end facilities. But this needs to be a complete change right down from the people that we're training to do the work. I mean, that is a huge piece of this issue. And until we're willing to take a look at the training that's going on in these schools and the costs and what these schools charge for these degrees, we're probably really not going to make much of a vent unless the government can relocate resources and really start making this a priority

and put some money towards this to open up facilities. Okay, and think about this. Every hour, every day, there's some mom and dad in a crisis right now with your child, or their husband, there's significant other whatever, right their boyfriend, whatever, somebody that they love that they're going to get them help right now, within an hour, not three days,

not six days, right away. It's either get them help right away, or they're going to lose their lives right there's no especially if you get that person in a vulnerable moment that you can get them in and see that they're falling to their knees, right, but there's no place to go. So what does the average person do. What does the average mother do out there that doesn't make a strong living, right, She just has a job. He has a job. The father they want to get their son and daughter

into a program today, not tomorrow. What you call those one eight hundred numbers. I've done that many times for many of my guys that have worked for me over the last thirty five years in construction. And you know, drugs have been a rampant, you know, in the unions in construction for many, many decades. With that being said, I've done that. I've sat on those one eight hundred lines and it comes right down to, well, you know, we could send them to Texas or Arizona or whatever,

and yeah, how much is that? Okay, it's gonna be twenty thousand plus air fair plus a Right. What does the mother or father do that's right now in danger in your opinion of losing a child. They're gonna go out tonight and they're gonna get whacked and you're never gonna see your kid again. They're gonna go out and get high. They're gonna go out and drink and make a bad decision, and what's going to be is going to be. Is that how we live what's going to be is going to be?

And the like gives me the chillis to even think about that because it's so difficult to navigate this process. Part of the work that I do sometimes even still is stuff to support parents through the navigation process of treatment placement. First thing to do, though, make sure your house is stocked with narcan. Please God, please, anybody that's listening to this, please fill your house with as much knarcan as you can possibly get. Hold that thought, Hold

that thought, Hold that thought, hold that thought. I'm coming right back. I'm sitting stuf. When you listen, Top his Nails and be busy and as ready your ten thirty, It'll be right back. Sponsored by new Brook Realty Group, Boston Wood Smaller Insurance, Old Auto Body and Tosca Drive Auto Body Can and Welcome back to Temp Hiss Nails on WBZ News veryre ten

thirty and I'm Cindy and we're here with Meghan Kennedy. We're talking about the opioid crisis, the fatanyl crisis, and everything else to do with drug addiction. Megan pick It up what we say now, first number one thing parents can do is stock their house with as much narcan as they can possibly get.

You can get it at your pharmacy, you can call up your local free harm reduction mobile groups and the town that you're in if you do have them, especially in the city, you'll probably have them and get as many doses as you can get because the fence and all that people are overdosing from

right now requires many doses of narcan to reverse it. So to be helpless in that situation where you have a child that just used in your house or came home high and then falls to the ground and is now starting to turn blue, and now you have to pick up the phone and called nine to one one and wait for that ambulance to come and hope and pray to God that there's enough time for that child to survive while you're waiting for that ambulance

to get there. Who if they know it's a drug related overdose. I'm telling you right now, they're going to take their sweet time getting there. I will promise you that. So please know that you have some power to do something even while you're waiting for that ambulance, which is to start administering the narcant, go and get trained on how to use it. Also at a harm reduction coalition or facility or program near you. That's number one.

Number two, though, the easiest solution to get the ball rolling is to bring them to the emergency room. It is a broken system. You're still going to have to do a ton of work to find your way through it. That's assuming the person actually wants to continue and go to treatment. But the number one place to land is the emergency room, and from there you

can start to navigate the treatment system. But that's sort of like ground zero, and that's been my experience in my work working in the emergency room, helping people get into substance use treatment or mental health treatment from the emergency room. A lot of politics involved with that too. A lot of times you only get kind of heard if you're coming from an emergency room as a patient.

You try to sort of make a cold call, and they're going to tell you large in part, they have no beds unless you have the money to pay, So it's a dirty, dark system. But my advice is to always go to the emergency room, call nine, run one, have your narcan, and then if it's not an acute emergency, go to the websites like the like NAMMY National Alliance on Mental Illness or the federal SAMSA Program Substance Abuse Mental Health Initiative. They will be able to direct you to resources

in your local community for mental health and drug addiction. But if you're in an emergency and you're in a crisis, best thing you can do is have that knock in and then get them to the emergency room. Now, what about friends, Like when they go, oh, you're let's say you know your kid has seven A friends, I find that one or two friends will keep them in their pocketbook, will keep a dose a shot of us in their pocketbooks. Are they recommending to friends that don't drink heavy, that don't

drink, don't drink, that don't do drugs. I'm sorry to be the savior of other people, like be the designated driver, you know, like we have the designated driver when we were young. Now it's you know, save your life, have your friend's life. Excuse me my throat? Yep? Are we trying to push that onto other kids? Are they bringing these into the bar rooms and the nightclubs? They have the stuff, you know,

what's interesting. I just heard recently about a college and I forget what state it was in, but they just bought their funding and put the program in place where they now have like first aid kits. And I had advocated for this actually at my college, but so to finally see it happening is awesome. First aid kids in the building that have knock hand in them.

So you don't even have to be like the designated driver of the friend group, because even if you're even if you are an active drug user and those are your friends, all active homeless drug users. The advice is for all everybody to be carrying the knocan, whether you're a user or not, because

if someone who you're with needs it, you can still administer it. So it should be carried by everybody if you're going out, especially if you're going out and partying and you're not like a group of heroin or fentanyl users and your recreational drug users coke a little here and there or a pill here and there, or alcohol. Yeah, of course, of course carry it with you, have it on your person, have it in the car, and

have multiple doses. I mean I use when I was in Massachusets, I carried mine with me twenty four to seven, and I'm a doctoral student in a psychology program in which I'm carrying it with me in the walls of that school because you just never known. And I've told the story before, but a friend of mine did die who was in school to be a psychologist. He didn't die in the building, but he had just finished the master's part of his program and he relapsed on fentanyl and died. And he was five

years as well, five years clean from heroin. So this can happen anywhere. It can happen with anybody, and the best thing we can do is try to be as prepared as possible and try. I tried to attack this issue from many different angles, and one angle is to put the power back into the people's hands, give them the knock in and educate them on how to use it. Megan, here's my question. I never saw a business death. This is crazy. Drug dealers want to kill their clients off,

Like, what's what's up? Like, why wouldn't you make sure what your selling is clean? You're going to lose your clientele. Who what kind of businessman wants to lose that clientele? Make me understand that so this is a this is a great question. You know where I got my answer to that question on an episode of Dope. There's a DOCKU series, I believe on Netflix in which they interviewed the drug dealers that was punted down. I don't think it was I don't know if it was Dope Sick. I remember maybe

it could have been a different station. It was called Dope. So you go through it and you listen to these interviews with these people who are actually selling the drugs. Hardcore fentanel dealer in the streets of Baltimore. I think I was in Chicago and his faces blurred out, and you know what he said when they asked him, why, what's the incentive for you to kill

your clientele? And he said, these people want to die. So I'm helping bring I'm helping to bring them as close to that high as humanly possible, and I'm giving them what they want, which is that they actually want to die. Now I don't know that he meant it literally, but what he did mean is that these people want to get as high as possible, and I'm going to give them what it takes to get there. Sentinel is a really delicate substance. You basically have to be an anesthesiologist to know or

a chemist to know the different doses on what's deadly and what's not. So I think the point is that they're not intentionally killing their clientele, but they are bringing them as close to death as humanly possible, which equates to addiction the deepest level, which equates to as much money as humanly possible. Because now that person's coming back tenfold. And so I think that was the essence, and I think that's the answer. How close to death can I bring

them? That's the high they want, and that's the high I'm going to give them. And I made a mistake when I mixed the batch up because I'm not a chemist, and I put too much and then that person died. And then it's like, well, oh well, because now the word gets out that my stuff's really strong, and now my clientele just increased tenfold because the word got out that somebody died off of my product. It's a sick system and this is how it operates. Okay, question I have another

question? Is I'm told that you can buy something to check your coke or check your or whatever to make sure there's no fetanyl in it? Is that true? That is true? And what do you buy this called? It's a company called dance Safe, and you can purchase a kit. And with every kit to test like cocaine or MDMA, they actually send you a free fentanyl testing strip to make sure that you're actually that you actually have the drug panel that's going to test to the fentanyl. And you have to go online

and get this and pay for this stuff called dan safe. Yes, yep, And it's a kit now, and then I don't ask your own drugs. You do, But I don't know how you test a drug that's a pill, frankly, because if even if you broke off a little piece of the pill, dissolved it in water and did the test, there's no way to guarantee that that little piece is reflective of what's in that entire pill, because it may not have been mixed evenly if it was made in somebody's freaking

bathtub or pill pressed in someone's basement. Exactly, Oh my point exactly. I don't I don't know the answer to that, you know, I'd have to do a little bit more research into that, but somebody could research that. Look it I grew up in a generation. People went out, they did a little coqu here they did you know, no one went crazy.

But the end, if we knew that we're gonna do that line of coke with my friends were gonna do a line of coke and they were going to die at eighteen seventeen nineteen, I don't think anybody would have been doing it because you didn't die of cocaine in nineteen, you know, eighty years, you know, nineteen eighty eighty one, a seventy nine, seventy eight leg. But now you're taking the risk every time. You gotta tell your kid,

look, you're playing Russi Roulette here. Yeah, but she's basically saying that people know that they're going to they could one hundred percent and it makes and want it more. No, that's for addicts, not the kid that goes out and there's with twenty guys or twenty people and they all decide they're going to do something stupid that night. Get some coke, which is really the most unexperienced drug. You know, those type of drug use, they

have no idea where to get their stuff. They just get it and then they do a bump of coke and boom. That's it. They're down for the count. You know, at least had core drug addicts nowhere to go to get there they drugs. You know what I mean. You're talking about a bunch of goofy kids that are out one night in a nightclub partying. Right, That's what we did. It was called we went out and just partied. Right. Now, this is we have two different types of kids.

Kids that go out and just go party, fun time, party time, right, and they come home. You don't ever see a child again from one bad mistake. And then you got another group of kids and young adults and adults that literally do this every day and this is their life. Either way, it doesn't matter. We're losing people, right, We're losing kids, We're losing young adults and people in their you know, little forties. If you're still doing drugs at fifty, I don't know what to tell

you, like, just hang it up. I don't know, there's no answer for that anymore. Let's go to break question. I don't I don't mean to not sound empathetic, but you're gonna go to break here. I'm Sidy's company lists Tapas Nails on WBZ News Radio ten and welcome back to Tapa's Nails on w b Z News Radar tenth thirty And I'm Cindy and I'm here with Megan Kenny. Megie. Not to sound on apathetic, but if you're still doing drugs in your fifties and sixties, you've made that choice right.

Like, I'm worried about the kids today. That's where I'm worried about it. I'm worried about kids. I need kids to get straight. I need parents to stop worrying about their kids. Is this subway somebody can reach you to help out with any of this? Yeah, absolutely you can reach out. Go to Third Realmintegration dot com, send me an email info at Third Realm Integration dot com and in fact, go to de EA dot com slash Sentinel Awareness. There are tips on there for parents on how to monitor your

kids and their online conversation is very important. It's a great everybody, have a great, safe weekend and get your knocking in your pocketbooks.

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