Strong Texas Women, ACL's the Talk of the Town, and Fentanyl's Shadow.
Marijuana kills? Plus "more than queso and Dr. Pepper."
How Will We Survive This Fentanyl Poisoning Epidemic? Support Safer-Use Suppliers
By Kevin Curtin
A couple weeks ago, I had lunch with an acquaintance who’d just been discharged from an extended hospital stay. He looked like shit.
“Congrats on living,” I told him.
He sighed heavily, “Barely.”
I already knew he had overdosed.
He told me that he’d taken half of a 5 mg Percocet – a pain reliever you might get prescribed after a minor surgery and certainly small potatoes for a person of his recreational habits – and stopped breathing. Turns out, the convincing-looking pressed pill contained the potent synthetic opiate fentanyl.
This kind of thing happens every day in America (where fatal overdoses totalled a record-breaking 112,000 over a recent 12 month span) and here in Austin, where this spring has seen several surges in accidental ODs, including last week’s spike where fentanyl-related drug poisonings are suspected in at least nine deaths.
Art by Laura Gonima
With what we’re dealing with…
… and let’s be clear with what we’re dealing with. It’s reductive to just say “Fentanyl.” Fentanyl has existed since the 1950s, it’s FDA-approved, and it’s a commonly employed analgesic in emergency rooms and hospitals. And for some drug users, fentanyl is their mind altering substance-of-choice and they know how to dose it correctly. What we’re dealing with is illicitly manufactured fentanyl showing up unexpectedly in the drug supply.
I call Maggie Luna, Executive Director of the Texas Harm Reduction Alliance, and ask what types of substances they see connected to fentanyl poisoning. Her response: “It’s everything.”
In addition to pain pills like the frequently counterfeited blue OxyContins with M-30 imprinted on them and chill pills like Xanax, Luna says her organization’s outreach team has been aware of fentanyl in cocaine, meth, and crack – all of which should have opposite qualities to a synthetic opiate.
“We just saw, the other day, a bunch of crack that had fentanyl in it,” she points out. “When people are going to smoke crack, they are taking huge hits and they’re not expecting to get an opiate feeling that’s why it affects people so fast. That’s why it’s so important for us to be able to have testing supplies.”
Marijuana Kills?
It’s also been widely reported that recent overdoses were related to fentanyl-laced… marijuana? Such a claim reads suspect to me, for three reasons.
The stigma against opiates and stimulants in health care settings and with law enforcement has historically led to patients or their associates misreporting what substances were ingested.
I can’t comprehend how (or why) one would saturate a bag of weed with fentanyl… I guess just sprinkle it on the buds and hope that when the smoker breaks it up it will disperse itself amongst the plant matter?
American law enforcement has a 90 year history of trying to make weed seem scary and similar claims have been debunked in the past.
But, for what it’s worth, police have claimed this recently arrested individual’s bag of weed to have tested positive for fentanyl.
Anyway, to finish a sentence I began eight paragraphs ago: With what we’re dealing with, it’s hard to feel safe using drugs right now. But drug use is a reality and it shouldn’t be inherently life-threatening. And there shouldn’t be a bunch of moms in Austin spending Mother’s Day thinking about burial arrangements for their sons and daughters. It takes a village to deal with a problem this dire, so let’s support the people offering safer use supplies.
The Dance Around Narcan
In addition to operating a drop-in center at 1803 Cesar Chavez (where users can receive safer use resources, legal aid, peer support, and help getting into opiate management clinics) and maintaining an outreach team that goes into encampments and sets up shop in parking lots four times a week, the Texas Harm Reduction Alliance also gives out the opiate overdose reversing drug Narcan and fentanyl test strips.
By distributing the latter, they are breaking the law. That’s because Texas is one of a handful of states where fentanyl test strips are considered drug paraphernalia. Bafflingly, a proposal to legalize the inexpensive, easy-to-use, life-saving test strips died in the state Senate last year.
“We haven't had any legal ramifications,” Luna says of distributing test strips. “But we do have people come in and ask for them – and we know how important it is.”
Luna tells me that THRA gives out free test strips whenever they have them in stock and, if not, they refer people to Dance Safe, which – as far as I know – is the only online seller that ships to Texas addresses. You can get them slightly cheaper on Amazon, but you have to get an intermediary in another state to order them and then mail them to you.
If you’d like to support the Texas Harm Reduction Alliance’s efforts, you can donate here.
There are many invisible barriers – social, legal, and economic – that keep people from using drugs in the safest way possible. When Em Gray started stocking vending machines with free Narcan, the idea was a zero barrier operation.
Even when she’d previously worked at a needle exchange, she felt the demographic data collection and used-for-clean syringe trades were transactional in nature. So, in 2022, she launched the N.I.C.E. (Narcan In Case of Emergency) Project. N.I.C.E. maintains three free, self-service vending machines. One is on the side of the Sahara Lounge (1412 Webberville Rd.), one outside the Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center (4430 Menchaca Rd.) and the latest one is at Cenote (1010 E Caesar Chavez St.). Users or peers who are dealing with an opiate emergency or just want to be prepared can walk up and take what they need with no interaction or information gathering.
Gray tells me that usage of the N.I.C.E vending machines is consistent and the program has become a reliable and sustained part of Austin’s safer-use landscape that is decidedly community-driven.
“As far as I understand, law enforcement can opt in or out of carrying [Narcan] so it’s not a given that they do,” she says. “It really needs to be in the hands of people who use drugs and their loved ones. There is nothing liberatory about police carrying Narcan when they are often the arbiters of the drug war.”
Through unprompted anecdotal feedback, Gray knows the N.I.C.E. Project has saved lives, including an unhoused person who ran a great distance to grab Narcan for their friend in the midst of an opiate emergency. Sometimes the results are less clear, but the need is evident, like people seeing cars speeding up to the machine, the driver grabbing Narcan, then speeding off. But it guts her when a potential user reports that a machine is empty (she restocks them every 36-48 hours, but people can grab as many as they want) – so the anxiety of wondering if it’s empty at someone’s time of need kills her.
“There’s all kinds of reasons why we’re glad it’s there and it makes us wonder why there’s ever been a barrier,” offers Gray, who has registered N.I.C.E as a nonprofit and can receive donations here.“ This should be as ubiquitous as condoms in the fishbowl on the counter.”
ACL’s GOT THE TOWN A-TALKIN
TEXAS WOMEN AND THE NEVER-ENDING FIGHT FOR EQUALITY.
By Alan Berg
“It takes a heck of a lot more than queso, Dr Pepper, and hair spray to make a real Texas Woman. The single truly essential ingredient that every real Texas Woman must possess is this: she must know that she is exactly as special as the state she comes from.” Sarah Bird, A Love Letter to Texas Women.
Here comes Mother’s Day, and as I look at our landscape — the political one — I’m reminded both how far we’ve come and how far we’ve retreated. As a 60-year-old cis white male, I’ll never know the precise pain caused by men denying women their rights. But I do feel the impact. Our daughter moved to Massachusetts for a job, and talks of her relief to be in a “friendly state.” The other reality being she’s farther from us, farther from Texas, further from home. I also see how misogyny shaped my mom — subjected to height and weight requirements when she became a flight attendant, forced to retire when she married, pressured by Mad Men era norms her entire working life. These collective experiences produce a certain kind of grit, a determination. So, on Mother’s Day weekend, let’s hold up three Austin women whose stories thread through six decades of pushing back to push forward.
Sarah Weddington
University of Texas Law School student Sarah Weddington secretly travelled to Mexico in order to get an abortion, with the risk of being charged as an accomplice to a crime if she got caught.
“Women could leave Dallas airport on a Thursday night and go out to have the procedure and be back Sunday night so they could go to work or class on Monday.” Sarah Weddington as quoted in Glamour Magazine.
Weddington signed on to litigate Roe v. Wade for free. She was 26 years old, and her arguments swayed the U.S. Supreme Court, which voted 7-2 to overturn the Texas abortion law, making the procedure legal.
Regina Rogoff
Despite the Supreme Court ruling, Texas women also realized the fight wasn’t over — as fellow UT Law alum Regina Rogoff wrote the following year in The Rag.
Rogoff worked at Legal Aid of Central Texas before moving to the People’s Community Clinic, where she’s served as CEO for the past 21 years.
Alice Embree
Alice Embree, another co-founder of The Rag, helped start the Austin Women’s Center and an Austin birth control hotline to address “two issues women faced: access to birth control and access to safe, legal abortions.”
Embree’s an award-winning author who happens to be married to artist and activist Carlos Lowry, who we’ve profiled for his work with The Dicks (more on that a little further down). They belong to that particular breed — along with one-names like Ann and Molly — the women who make Austin what it is.
“I hope I bring a sense of staying power, a reminder not that we did things better in the ‘60s and ‘70s but that movements in our younger years changed the trajectory of our lives, not for a decade or two but for a lifetime.” Alice Embry as quoted in Red Fault.
GENDER AND POLITICS
I do not wish to learn — because of course we already kinda know — how often in her career Stormy Daniels was pressured into doing things she’d rather not. On the one hand, it comes with the profession she chose. But on the other, it’s a history of one person — producer or president — exploiting another’s brokenness. I see Trump’s relationship with America through the same lens. We cannot dismiss the economic distress, the angst that drives his support. Nor can we dismiss the cynical way in which he manipulates others for his own benefit, doing what he’s always done best— screwing anyone he can reach.
While we’re talking politics, a headline on The New York Times website caught my eye.
“Kennedy is going to mobilize people who would otherwise stay home, and those Kennedy voters are going to be more likely to support Allred than Cruz.” Rice University Political Science Professor Mark Jones in The New York Times.
The article notes Democratic candidate Colin Allred’s focus on courting Republicans and women, with issues like bipartisan cooperation and access to abortion.
“What’s happening in Texas is really — it’s a tragedy,” Mr. Allred said during an appearance on “The Daily Show,” while discussing the effect of Texas’s abortion ban on pregnant women with medical complications.“ That doesn’t sound like freedom to me.”
ONE LESS DICK IN THE WORLD
Gary Floyd, 1953-2024.
“I didn’t care who I offended, as long as I did offend.”
Last week we said goodbye to the legendary Gary Floyd, lead singer of Austin punk band The Dicks, featured last spring in Happy Heat.
Frontman Gary Floyd ejected himself from a small bible-belt town named Palestine. Landing in Austin, he builds buzz for The Dicks before the band even exists by posting flyers for fake shows they’d headline, with tag lines like: “The first twenty people to show up with a gun get free drinks all night.” The Dicks Hate The Police, Happy Heat vol. 2
Arts+Labor’s wrapping up a pocket doc on the band, which The Austin Chronicle sneak-peaked last week. Give it a watch, it’ll take you thru a little bit of our history.
HAPPENINGS
A few places for moms, families and everyone else to have some fun over the next week. Happy Mother’s Day y’all.
FOOD FIGHT - 05/11 7-9PM: Total DOMination and Slam Portal presents "FOOD FIGHT". A night of drag and wrestling! All proceeds go directly to Free Lunch ATX
SECOND SUNDAY AT MUELLER - 5/12,10-2: This farmer’s market at Mueller’s Branch Park Pavilion has been voted the best in town by the Austin Chronicle four times.
MOTHER’S DAY MUSICAL SUNSET PICNIC - 5/12 6:30-9PM: Enjoy a guided nature walk, meditation, and live music picnic as the sun sets on Mother’s Day!
MOTHER’S DAY WITCHES MARKET - 5/12 6-10PM: Come shop a variety of vendors this Sunday at The Far Out Lounge. Entry is $5 all ages and friendly pets are welcome!
PUPPY YOGA - 5/12 10AM: Benefiting Texas Great Pyrenees Rescue. Each session not only supports your wellness journey but also increases adoption chances for the puppies by providing them with socialization and exposure.
Go see something, tell us about it, we’ll share more stories next week.
Let’s build something together. We’d be forever grateful for your help, and an easy way to do so is by subscribing to the Happy Heat Substack. What comes in goes right back out in artist commissions and live shows. To which you’ll get to come! For the first 100 subscribers, we are offering 20% off forever.
I am so baffled WHY fentanyl keeps ending up in so many other drugs. Like did a bag (or bottle) of it explode over a brick of weed? Did someone confuse it for coke? Is it some weird serial killer? What is the point? The whole “lacing” thing has been an issue forever - I knew a girl in high school who nearly died from weed laced with formaldehyde …why that happened I have no idea. Also no one is talking about the morbidity - the many people were harmed and now have awful shit like heart lining infections and kidney damage. Ugh.