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Six Years Ago This Week Fentanyl Took My Brother
Since then, hundreds of thousands have died from overdoses and what is Congress doing about this?
It was six years ago this week. I had just flown into Munich and taken a train to Austria where I planned to spend the weekend preparing for a long week at the World Economic Forum in Davos. When I finally turned my phone on after the flight and long car ride, it exploded with WhatsApp messages: Call me, where are you? Hey, call me, come on my brother had written half a dozen times.
“He died sometime during the night….she found him on the floor near the couch…seems he shot up fentanyl.”
Colin was 32. He had survived an overdose in the summer of 2016 and spent a week in the hospital recovering. Before I left him in the hospital then, I told him I loved him and that he needed to get his “shit together.” As I was leaving his hospital room, I said, “Colin, as much as I love you, I am not flying home for your funeral if you OD again.” I was flying back to Russia.
I was angry. I was trying tough love. I actually don’t know what I was trying. Who knows what to say in such situations? It was just the thing I said at that moment trying to scare him, to get him thinking about his own funeral.
