Guillermo A. Santos on his highschool commencement day in 2021, together with his father, Guillermo Jose Santos. The elder Santos died later the similar yr of a drug overdose.

The Santos-Honkala Circle of relatives

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The Santos-Honkala Circle of relatives

Guillermo A. Santos on his highschool commencement day in 2021, together with his father, Guillermo Jose Santos. The elder Santos died later the similar yr of a drug overdose.

The Santos-Honkala Circle of relatives

In 2021, after years of societal overlook and denial round the problem, the collection of overdose-related deaths within the U.S. reached greater than 100,000, the biggest it had ever been. A type of other people was once my father.

In December of that yr, his existence was once in spite of everything taken from him through a deadly cocktail of heroin and fentanyl after a lifelong dependency. This can be a tale that many American citizens, particularly the ones within the Philadelphia community of Kensington the place he lived and I grew up, know smartly.

In case you glance up movies of the worst of the opioid epidemic, you’ll see Kensington’s “zombies.” Folks appear to go to sleep status up, lingering below bridges and close to subway stations. They stagger with needles nonetheless of their palms or slump over within the pains of withdrawal, from time to time immobile in the midst of the road seeking to stay status. In the ones movies, you’ll be able to see the home the place I grew up.

This can be a area in an intensely red-lined community. I went to university on-line and I studied tune throughout the city, in a extra prosperous a part of Philadelphia. I had “pals” from my tune categories who would by no means seek advice from my area out of concern of all that lay inside Kensington. Opting to avoid the horrors of drug use related to my area, they as an alternative occupied Rittenhouse Sq. in Middle Town, an area park that supplied them abundant protection to smoke pot and cigarettes however did not scare their folks or nannies as a lot.

In my very own younger desperation for the approval of those friends, I as soon as attempted to host a small birthday party for those other people at my area whilst my mom was once out of the city. I went via a large number of hassle and everyone instructed me they had been coming. I met other people on the subway and walked them to my area. However out of all invited visitors it was once handiest the opposite minorities within the staff that got here. And it temporarily become obvious that no person else would.

The creator as a child held through his dad. Guillermo Jose Santos was once 26 when his son was once born.

The Santos-Honkala Circle of relatives

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The Santos-Honkala Circle of relatives

The creator as a child held through his dad. Guillermo Jose Santos was once 26 when his son was once born.

The Santos-Honkala Circle of relatives

Over texts they claimed that they did not know I lived in Kensington and had they identified, they by no means would have promised within the first position. However after all, they knew. It is why they’d by no means come ahead of.

I used to be offended, and I let other people know. I used to be instructed to forestall complaining; it wasn’t that gigantic a deal. One individual stated he knew what it was once love to be a minority: “I am used to bizarre appears in the street. I dyed my hair inexperienced.”

Quickly after, on social media, we noticed that the white youngsters I would invited had their very own birthday party elsewhere. However they took selfies, tagged me, and claimed to be at my area having a good time.

Flash ahead a couple of years, and the friends who have shyed away from the realities of my impoverished upbringing after we had been more youthful at the moment are spending their time in California, New York or even a couple of blocks from my former house in raver warehouses, dressing up like addicts. They put up and pose on social media, dressed in distressed antique, “spouse beater” t-shirts they purchase on Depop and heavy eyeliner, all of the higher to appear sullen but cool. And it isn’t simply my previous verdant-haired friends. TikTok and Instagram Reels have never-ending streams of other people adopting this glance. Snapshots from those events display them there status immobile in the midst of the dance flooring, hunched over their telephones like a zombie in withdrawal, gazing the like rely develop on their very own posts of them too pretending to be at somewhere like my previous house.

That is, after all, now not new. The similar impulse made earlier generations lengthy for tv appearances and their very own Warholian quarter-hour. It is a recurrent model pattern for the prosperous to put on the rags of the marginalized. When somebody light, skinny, beautiful and well-known will get hooked, condemnation flips to adulation and imitation.

You’ll be able to argue the cultured of “heroin sublime” was once born in the similar town I used to be. Fashion Gia Carangi was once born in Philadelphia and died there as smartly, of habit identical to my father. She is the place a large number of the fixation on heroin’s “horny” qualities come from, an early stick insect whose reputation rose at the same time as medication and illness whittled her away. A whole new era was once offered to her from Angelina Jolie’s eponymous portrayal of her in 1998. She died in 1986 at 26. The similar age my father was once when I used to be born.

Rising up, I faced the painful juxtaposition of the folks outdoor my window, forged apart through society whilst on my tv, gossip information glamorized addicted celebrities. At the same time as a kid, it appeared transparent to me that the one distinction between my neighbors and their identically addicted opposite numbers in California was once wealth and colour.

Right here, at the literal mistaken facet of the tracks of Philly’s blue Marketplace Frankford educate line, there is not any glamour to be discovered amongst the ones with habit — no modeling gigs, no festivities, no solace or grace. And few sources to get out of the quagmire.

The commencement photograph embellishes packing containers maintaining the ashes of Guillermo Jose Santos, one in every of greater than 100,000 American citizens who died of drug overdoses in 2021. That quantity was once greater than 111,000 in 2023.

The Santos-Honkala Circle of relatives

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The Santos-Honkala Circle of relatives

The commencement photograph embellishes packing containers maintaining the ashes of Guillermo Jose Santos, one in every of greater than 100,000 American citizens who died of drug overdoses in 2021. That quantity was once greater than 111,000 in 2023.

The Santos-Honkala Circle of relatives

My complete existence my father lived trapped — in a town that would not agree with his brown palms with a role, in a frame that withered clear of AIDS, and in a thoughts that handiest discovered temporary reprieves from the components that held him in thrall. I constructed my dating with him right through the ones instances when he may just abstain for a couple of weeks or months at a time. However they did not final. I don’t fault him for taking the similar trail such a lot of of his friends did. I fault a device that gave them few different choices. And a tradition that once more tries to idealize habit.

My father’s overdose wasn’t sublime, so why are other people seeking to seem like him?

The worst events I’ve been to were filled with what the Washington Submit’s Robin Givhan first referred to as a “nihilistic model of attractiveness” again in 1996. With out poverty, habit can have the funds for to appear cool. Crushing fact for some can also be observed as a cultured selection for the privileged.

They may be able to have the funds for not to understand how we are living, simply to pick out the portions that really feel like a pleasant sufficient departure from their daily. They go back to luxurious.

To these other people, superiority is as a lot a drug as every other they devour.

Guillermo A. Santos is a disabled Puerto Rican and Local American author and poet from Philadelphia whose additional paintings can also be discovered at GuillermoASantos.com or @guillermoasantos on Instagram. He now lives in New York.