Nate

I once knew this kid named "Nate", he was a pretty cool kid, played football for my local High School. Nate never really did really good, nor did he do bad in school. When we all graduated and went about our business, Nate began working with his father. His Dad owned a pretty good sized landscaping business in my town. Nate always looked good, Abercrombi shits and jeans, you could regularly see him out at the local nightclubs, usually arriving by himself and always knowing everyone there. Nate had no problem getting girls.
The thing about Nate is that he really spent a lot of time alone. I mean, Nate had friends and hung out with my crew. He come over to the Apartment on Sundays and watch football and play Playstation with us.
It wasn't a secret that Nate like to eat painkillers. I like to catch a buzz and every once in a while we would be having a few pitchers of Miller Lite at the Ale House and I would toss him a five for a Percocet. He always had perks, tabs and a muscle relaxer or two.
You see, Nate was in a bad car accident one night while out with his girl and he really screwed up an already bad back, awakening an old injury that he suffered on the field in High School. That is why he always had painkillers and no one ever thought much of it.
As time when on we all grew older, everyone settling in with their families, homes and careers. Some of us became young professionals, while others, like Nate, did things like take over the family business.
Over time Nate's Father passed on, it was now time for Nate to take over the family business and that's what he did.
We all knew that Nate hated working for his Dad, he hated the whole business, but he felt like he had no choice and just accepted it as his destiny.
Every Friday night we would all meet at "Evie's" where some of us began to notice that Nate was quite belligerent most of the time. He would act rude to the waitresses and was always either mumbling some aggressive nonsense or falling asleep in his chair. He rarely left a tip.
It was sad to watch Nate's demise. Most of us knew that he was quite broken up about the loss of his Dad and it didn't help that he hated his job, but Nate just became impossible for us to be around.
We all had families now and wives and careers and some of us were pretty prominent members of society. We only met up Friday nights and maybe Sunday afternoon and Nate was an embarrassment and a drag. No matter where we were he was making a scene, or not making any sense at all. I remember the conversation one Friday night over a pitcher of Blue Moon. No one wanted Nate at their homes or anywhere that they were anymore. We discussed switching our Friday hangout to "Monk's" in hopes of ditching Nate. I mean, Nate had a girlfriend, he had other things to do and frankly, my wife didn't want him around our children anymore on Sundays, he had a filthy mouth and last week spilled beer on the floor not once, but 3 times.
I never did get the courage to uninvite him to Sunday football at my house. Every week we switched houses and we just sort of messed up the rotation on him and made excuse for what we were doing.
Once Sunday, after a couple of months of "No Nate" he showed up at my house a little more chipper than usual. We all were having a great time watching the game and talking trash when I noticed water starting to cover my living room floor. I made mention of the water and me and a few of the boy's began looking for the source. It was coming from the bathroom, the door was closed and the light was on.
"Holy Shit" I thought, Nate was in there, "How long had he been gone?"
No one really noticed that he was missing, we all pretty much blocked him out when he was around and as we banged on the bathroom door there was no response.

We could hear water running.

As we pounded on the door, I realized that I had no choice but to kick it down. I kicked once and then again and the door swung open. To my surprise there was Nate, bloated and floating in my bathtub. On the bathroom sink was a syringe and a bottle of pills marked "Oxycontin".

We pulled Nate out of the door and I checked his pulse.

My friend had died in my bathroom!

As we began to go through the motions, notifying family, next of kin attending funerals, I wondered: "Why didn't anyone ever know that Nate was IV'ing drugs?" We always knew he had painkillers, but didn't anyone every put 2 and 2 together and realize that he was doing this evil to himself?

No one ever noticed.

I later learned from Nate's girlfriend that the regular painkillers had lost their effect. The Doctor had upped Nate to the lethally strong OxyContin and after his Fathers death, he began scraping the time release coating off of his pills, crushing them up and injecting them. No one every noticed, because no one ever saw any signs. Nate simply went to the Doctor once every few months, just like everyone else and the Doctor wrote him a prescription for a drugs powerful and almost identical to Heroin.
It was easy for him to slip up, he never went to a drug dealer, never ran out and it was always affordable.

The only reason his girlfriend knew was because on evening after a tough day at work, he went to her house and broke down in tears and told her, showing the marks on his hands from where he injected the venom.

A lot of people around me and around our great nation are dealing with friends like Nate and maybe don't even know it. Pharmaceutical companies and Doctors are making big money flooding our streets with a drug that is the exact same thing as Heroin. It's easy to get and even easier to justify because it's from a Doctor. These drugs come in many forms, pill, liquid, patches and they even make a Morphine lollipop.
Yep, that's right, MORPHINE (A LARGE DOSE) inside a piece of candy.

Our friends are dying people and if you are between 16 and 35 I guarantee that you have a friend like Nate.

Growing up here in Florida, I have had many. As a matter of fact, Nate is a fictitious character who I created out of a handful of true stories of actual friends who have died at the hands of the Pharmaceutical Industry.

It's not a joke people. Corporate America, our government and our medical professionals are flooding our streets with poison.
And making BIG BUCKS.
They don't want us legalizing a safe alternative like Marijuana because they do not want to put the power back into the hands of the American people. We are being dismantled internally buy our system and our too blind to realize it.

It's almost too late.

It's time to get our hands dirty and save some lives. Pay attention to your friends and notice if they are acting strangely. But more importantly, get out there into your voting booths and put these people out of business by voting to legalize safe and natural drugs like Marijuana, a crop that we can grow and farm and create an industry here for our people which can be farmed creating jobs and the many other products which can use HEMP. And also write your congressmen for laws banning the distribution of strong opium based medicine. These drugs use OPIUM, which comes from a poppy plant in terrorist infested places like AFGHANISTAN, not here on American soil.

Hold these drug pushing Doctors accountable, they are drug dealers. While your children and friends are dying, they are spending time on a vacation provided by the drug manufacturer for their excess of sales of these deadly narcotics.

More importantly, be involved in your friends lives. It is that easy for a friend to hide a secret, a deadly secret, that could kill them in an instant.
Let's get control of our communities again, let's take back control of our country and take care of each other.

Love Each Other

~tilly