Naloxone kits not required

Dear editor, My father (Henry) was a drunk, but he only got drunk once a week. His habit would last from Friday evening until sometime Sunday.

He would to leave work Friday with his pay packet and have a couple of pints on the way home, as did other workers. But unlike the other workers Henry could not stop at two pints.

This was back in the ‘50s in Northern England

One Friday as I was walking down the street (I was about age twelve) I saw a crumpled heap on the sidewalk, a stream of urine flowing from it, I stopped in horror as I recognized Henry... not a few minutes later a black ambulance pulled up and two men tossed him into the back, slammed the door and they were gone. I ran all the way home crying and holding on tight to the jar of jam I had been sent for to the Co-op.

Many years later when Henry could drink no more and had settled down (too little, too late) I met him as I was taking a short cut through a small town centre park. He was sat on a bench looking at the pigeons. I stopped and we got talking and the subject turned to the old days. I told him about the day I ran home crying with a jar of jam. He studied me for a moment then said, “I have never told anyone this before… not even your mother!”

He went on. “I remember getting thrown into the Mariah, I noticed a kid across the street. I woke up much later with a warm sensation of water being poured onto me and an awful taste in my mouth. A man twice my size was peeing on me”.

Henry went on to tell me that the local cop had had enough of the likes of Henry and had him delivered to the insane asylum. He spent nearly three days in there with the staff totally ignoring his panicking pleas of, “You have made a mistake. I don’t belong in here!”

I can’t recall all the things he told me, but he did say he had never been so frightened in his life. He did quit the binge drinking, too little too late, and now all these years later as he is pushing up the daisies I remember Henry’s opioid.

Back then there were no Naloxone kits. He didn’t need one. Don Smithyman

Oliver