Several months ago, for reasons which have absolutely no bearing on this epistle, ABC elected to cancel the show Rosanne and reinstate it as The Conners , minus one of the main characters.  When a network does that, a couple of things can happen.  Either the character goes on a very long trip or takes a job in another city or engages in some other semi-reasonable behavior that explains why they are no longer present, or the powers that be decide to kill them off.  In this instance, the former title character was sacrificed for the story line.

That’s hardly a new event in the world of television, but what made this one extraordinary was the manner in which she died.  In their fictional world, what was first believed to be a heart attack suffered while she was sleeping turned out to be an opioid overdose, discovered during an autopsy—an overdose brought about by a secret addiction to pain killers.  As her family searched for answers they also began to find pill bottles hidden about the house . . . and the more they searched, the more they found—and the more they found, the more they came to understand how much they truly did not know.

Fans have been all over the place on this one, most making their feelings known via Tweeter.  For the record, I’m not on Tweeter, but the news media has a need to let me know what everyone else has to say.  Some have been mortified that they chose death to explain her character’s absence—and some have praised their acknowledgment of a real-life problem.

Whatever your thoughts on the matter, one thing is certain.  Opioid addiction (as well as other types) and the resulting overdoses and deaths are real problems within our society.  Not long ago, MSN posted a list of 83 celebrities who had “left us” during the year.  Of those 83, 21 died from either suicide or an overdose—or both.  Sadly, suicide is often someone’s answer for their inability to escape an addiction by any other means.  And if it isn’t an accidental overdose or escape by suicide, Death rides in on the violence this lifestyle can bring.

For years we have been a society too often fueled by drugs—both legal and illegal.  The magnitude of this epidemic went unrecognized, or at least not acknowledged, for far too long.  Now, as we try desperately to reverse the trend, we find ourselves fighting an uphill battle, one that we seem to be losing.

This is not a problem limited to “big cities”; our rural communities are just as affected and frankly, those addictions and resulting deaths probably touch more lives when experienced on a smaller scale.  Why?  Because in small towns and rural areas, everyone knows everyone.  The chance that you know someone who is an addict, or know a family that has lost someone to addiction seems to increase as the population decreases.  In metropolitan areas, those deaths can get lost in the crowd.  In the communities we serve we see the heartbreak firsthand, not on the part of the addict, but in the lives of those they leave behind.  Family members and friends who struggled for years to help them beat their addictions walk through our doors defeated, believing they should have done more while knowing full well it was a problem they couldn’t fix.  Their loved one, their friend, may at last be free, but the cost of that freedom was their life.

No matter how you feel about The Conners or the choices that were made in dealing with the departure of a character, they have focused a very bright light on a very harsh reality.  In the course of that dialogue, I hope we remember a few things.  1.  A sudden, unexpected death doesn’t automatically mean a drug overdose, so don’t automatically turn it into one, and 2.  No one is immune.  It doesn’t matter where you come from or who you are or how well off you may or may not be.  In the real world of addiction, anyone is fair game.

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