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Showing posts with the label Essay

My Own Heroin Story and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Overdose Death

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The Late Philip Seymour Hoffman Photo (cropped): Georges Biard (Wikipedia) ______________________ The death of Philip Seymour Hoffman  is shocking and very, very sad, especially since the cause of death appears to be from a heroin overdose (at this writing, news is still breaking, so this may change as autopsy and toxicology tests prove or disprove Hoffman’s cause of death as heroin overdose). I have always wondered why seemingly intelligent people use heroin – why they even start, knowing full well the addictive qualities of this drug. We can laugh and poke fun at Reefer Madness and its overblown hype regarding the addictive qualities of Mary Jane, but in the case of heroin, the hype, sadly, is all too true. One hit of heroin can be instantly addictive. Yes, you read that correctly: instantly addictive . That is not say that all heroin users become addicted the first time around, but the possibility should be enough for potential users to pause before shooting up. W

John F. Kennedy’s Assassination: Where Were You on November 22, 1963? My Story

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Artist: Aaron Shikler (1970) Posthumous Official Portrait of John F. Kennedy Wikipedia ________________ Anyone who was alive and at an age of awareness 50 years ago today remembers exactly where they were and what they were doing on that terrible day. These memories are etched deeply in our minds and our hearts, after all these years, still breaking. As I watch the grainy TV footage, I am reminded of what we lost that day – much more than our beloved President. But we couldn’t know that then. I was 13, an especially vulnerable age. Too old to be unaware, too young to process this tragedy on a sophisticated level. In many ways, my grief is still stuck at this level, the child grasping for an explanation – anything to make everything better. But there were no and are no adequate words to smooth over the crushing grief that blanketed me – and most of us – that day. I loved President Kennedy. In my mind, he represented the young father I never had and Jackie the mother wh

Memoir Madness: Driven to Involuntary Commitment