Let Them Die

I rarely write about things I see in the news media, as I know how there are two sides to every story. Sometimes there are three or four sides. This is a little different, as this topic hit home on a visceral level.

A few months ago, I read that a firefighter in Glastonbury, Connecticut uttered these words when confronted about overdosing addicts.

“I think you get rid of f*****g NARCAN, and when people overdose, you let them die.”

Narcan is also known as Naloxone and is a medication administered in an emergency to counter decreased breathing when an addict is dying from an overdose of opioids.

Unfortunately, the firefighter’s ugly words were caught on video and seen by many people. He later apologized and asked people not to judge him on one ugly moment but by his twenty years of public service.

The firefighter was wrong to tell others to let addicts die without administering Narcan, but he was also wrong to believe that this comment was a random terrible hiccup in his career. This comment came out of his mouth, but the sentiment was nestled and nurtured deep in his heart long before it was provided an exit. (Granted, he probably was struggling with caregiver burnout and should have stepped away for some much-needed respite care in order to gain clarity and recharge his batteries.)

I was reminded of Ebenezer Scrooge (prior to his transformation by the trio of Christmas ghosts) when I read about the firefighter.

In Charles Dickens’s classic novella, A Christmas Carol, two humble men approach the main character, miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, to ask him to make a charitable Christmas donation for those less fortunate than himself. Scrooge inquires of the men if the prisons and workhouses are still in operation. The men assure him that although these institutions are open,

“Many can’t go there, and many would rather die.”

“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

Ebenezer Scrooge thought himself above the sufferings of humanity and nursed his evil thoughts until they exited his mouth as a wish for his fellow humans to die. He would rather they go to a workhouse, which was essentially a cruel prison for the poor.  British workhouses in the 1800s were meant to be so inhospitable that people would, in essence, rather die than go there.  Parents were separated from their children; meals were deliberately scanty as to make people starve, clothing was a uniform that instantly identified you to others as ‘less than’ and make you want to never return.

Some people who struggle with addiction would rather die than go to a hospital, a rehab facility, or a sober living house. I cannot answer why. For some, it may be a fear of doctors or incarceration, a prior trauma, or a general distrust of others.

Jesus warned about harboring evil thoughts two thousand years ago.

 “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person, but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”   Matthew 15: 17-20

The firefighter from Connecticut had been housing similar evil thoughts against people who struggle with addiction. He is simply a more modern, likable, and sophisticated version of Ebenezer Scrooge, as he wears the uniform of a first responder, instead of a curmudgeonly miser.

This Christmas season, I would ask that if you think of a person struggling with poverty or addiction – please remember that what comes out of your mouth is first stored in your heart. Love wishes people to live.

“I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”   

•  Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

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