Emotional Highs...and Lows

Emotional Highs...and Lows

   The article began by telling about Staten Island in New York, its high prescription drug use among its young, its relatively easy access to pills and heroin (New York itself is the heroin capital of the U.S.), its high rate of overdoses and with it, its high rate of overdose deaths.  Then the entry of another opioid, an antagonistic one and so labeled, a "narcotic antagonist" called Narcan.

   Now available in a nasal spray, Narcan can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose, and does so almost instantly.  Here's one description from the article in The New Yorker, a former "junkie" who overdosed telling about her treatment with naloxone (the opioid part of Narcan):  ...all I remember is waking up and feeling so horrible that I thought the people I was with were being mean to me.  I didn't thank anybody for saving me--I was only angry and upset that they had made me feel like this.  The withdrawal came on immediately and it was very, very painful, like twenty times worse than the worst flu I ever had.  But without the naloxone I don't know what would have happened.  The thought of being left passed out where I was scares me.  We were homeless junkies.  Nobody who saw me would have bothered with me.

   What was interesting about the drug's discovery is its leading scientists to discover the human body's own pain relief systems, its endorphins.  Pleasure, pain, stress, sometimes even hunger urges all seem to come from the body's endorphins, all of which naloxone can block.  Ironically, naloxone origins can be backtracked to its start, the poppy (although a different variety of poppy than that grown for opium production).

   It's all very similar to the tale created by Isaac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy.  In one of the books, a conquering alien leader uses mind control, testing the limits of human emotions;  when one of the human ambassadors meets with the leader, he is sent to the heights of his joy then plummeted down to the depths of his depression, then brought back to his normal emotional state, all within a minute.  And don't forget, the leader tells him, I can do that over millions of miles to millions of people.  All seems lost (if you haven't read the original trilogy, there's much more to follow as the alien leader will discover).

   But it is this emotional swing that is so fascinating, as any of us who have dealt with life's ups and downs knows well.  Good days and bad days, unexpected developments, yin and yang, call it what you will, it happens and some of us deal with it better than others...or at least seem to.  Listen to one mother as she watches her children play with dolphins:  I cannot walk.  I was rolled to the lagoon in a wheelchair.  I cannot support my own weight, even in water.  John (her husband) carried me from the chair and held me so I would not drown.  I cannot lift my arms to feed myself or hug my children.  My muscles are dying, and they cannot return.  I will never again be able to move my tongue enough to clearly say, "I love you."   Swiftly, surely, I am dying.  But I am alive today.  When I saw the photograph of myself kissing the dolphin, I did not cry.  I was not bitter for what I had lost.  I smiled instead, living the joy.

   That all comes from the best-selling book, Until I Say Good-Bye, written by award-winning journalist and mother, Susan Spencer-Wendel, as she battled ALS.  In her book, she asks:  If you were dying, what would you do?  What would you see?  Who would you spend your last year with?  Since my children were born, I had put off special trips, always thinking, I'm too busy now, but when the children as older, when the job slows down...now the excuses were gone.

   How does one use the body's own naloxone, the body's own ability to overcome moments that would cripple most of us, to face an outcome courageously, one that most of us would fear or dread or cower from.  Such stories about, the selfless giving of one's life in war to save another, the sacrifice of a mother to protect her children, the placing of one's self in danger so that others may live.  For some, this is done without a thought, a reaction to a situation, an impulse to "do what's right."  Many of us might feel, might hope, that this is how we would respond; and many of us hope that we will never be put to the test to find out.  In a panic situation, our true reactions emerge...we might freeze or run or jump to the front to defend.  Many of us simply won't know, at least not until that moment comes.  And that might be when we least expect it...physically, mentally or emotionally.