In Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, heroin is far from ‘chic’

In 2021, after years of societal neglect and denial across the difficulty, the variety of overdose-related deaths within the U.S. reached greater than 100,000, the most important it had ever been. A kind of folks was my father.

In December of that yr, his life was lastly taken from him by a deadly cocktail of heroin and fentanyl after a lifelong dependency. It is a story that many Individuals, particularly these within the Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington the place he lived and I grew up, know effectively.

For those who search for movies of the worst of the opioid epidemic, you will notice Kensington’s “zombies.” Individuals appear to go to sleep standing up, lingering below bridges and close to subway stations. They stagger with needles nonetheless of their arms or hunch over within the pains of withdrawal, typically immobile in the midst of the road making an attempt to maintain standing. In these movies, you may see the home the place I grew up.

It’s a home in an intensely red-lined neighborhood. I went to highschool on-line and I studied music throughout city, in a extra prosperous a part of Philadelphia. I had “pals” from my music courses who would by no means go to my home out of concern of all that lay inside Kensington. Opting to keep away from the horrors of drug use related to my area, they as an alternative occupied Rittenhouse Sq. in Heart Metropolis, a neighborhood park that supplied them ample protection to smoke pot and cigarettes however did not scare their dad and mom or nannies as a lot.

In my very own youthful desperation for the approval of those friends, I as soon as tried to host a small social gathering for these folks at my home whereas my mom was out of city. I went by means of plenty of hassle and everyone informed me they had been coming. I met folks on the subway and walked them to my home. However out of all invited friends it was solely the opposite minorities within the group that got here. And it rapidly grew to become obvious that nobody else would.

Over texts they claimed that they did not know I lived in Kensington and had they identified, they by no means would have promised within the first place. However after all, they knew. It is why they’d by no means come earlier than.

I used to be offended, and I let folks know. I used to be informed to cease complaining; it wasn’t that massive a deal. One particular person mentioned he knew what it was wish to be a minority: “I am used to bizarre seems on the road. I dyed my hair inexperienced.”

Quickly after, on social media, we noticed that the white youngsters I might invited had their very own social gathering someplace else. However they took selfies, tagged me, and claimed to be at my home having a good time.

Flash ahead just a few years, and the friends who prevented the realities of my impoverished upbringing once we had been youthful are actually spending their time in California, New York and even just a few blocks from my former house in raver warehouses, dressing up like addicts. They put up and pose on social media, sporting distressed classic, “spouse beater” t-shirts they purchase on Depop and heavy eyeliner, all the higher to look sullen but cool. And it’s not simply my previous verdant-haired friends. TikTok and Instagram Reels have limitless streams of individuals adopting this look. Snapshots from these events present them there standing immobile in the midst of the dance ground, hunched over their telephones like a zombie in withdrawal, watching the like depend develop on their very own posts of them too pretending to be at someplace like my previous house.

That is, after all, not new. The identical impulse made earlier generations lengthy for tv appearances and their very own Warholian quarter-hour. It is a recurrent style pattern for the prosperous to put on the rags of the marginalized. When somebody pale, skinny, fairly and well-known will get hooked, condemnation flips to adulation and imitation.

You possibly can argue the aesthetic of “heroin stylish” was born in the identical metropolis I used to be. Mannequin Gia Carangi was born in Philadelphia and died there as effectively, of habit identical to my father. She is the place plenty of the fixation on heroin’s “engaging” qualities come from, an early supermodel whose fame rose at the same time as medicine and illness whittled her away. A whole new era was launched to her from Angelina Jolie’s eponymous portrayal of her in 1998. She died in 1986 at 26. The identical age my father was once I was born.

Rising up, I confronted the painful juxtaposition of the folks outdoors my window, solid apart by society whereas on my tv, gossip information glamorized addicted celebrities. At the same time as a toddler, it appeared clear to me that the one distinction between my neighbors and their identically addicted counterparts in California was wealth and shade.

Right here, on the literal improper aspect of the tracks of Philly’s blue Market Frankford prepare line, there is no such thing as a glamour to be discovered amongst these with habit — no modeling gigs, no festivities, no solace or grace. And few assets to get out of the quagmire.

My complete life my father lived trapped — in a metropolis that would not belief his brown arms with a job, in a physique that withered away from AIDS, and in a thoughts that solely discovered temporary reprieves from the substances that held him in thrall. I constructed my relationship with him throughout these occasions when he might abstain for just a few weeks or months at a time. However they did not final. I don’t fault him for taking the identical path so lots of his friends did. I fault a system that gave them few different choices. And a tradition that once more tries to idealize habit.

My father’s overdose wasn’t stylish, so why are folks making an attempt to appear to be him?

The worst events I’ve been to have been stuffed with what the Washington Submit’s Robin Givhan first referred to as a “nihilistic model of magnificence” again in 1996. With out poverty, habit can afford to look cool. Crushing actuality for some will be seen as an aesthetic alternative for the privileged.

They will afford to not know the way we dwell, simply to select the elements that really feel like a pleasant sufficient departure from their day-to-day. They return to luxurious.

To these folks, superiority is as a lot a drug as another they devour.

Guillermo A. Santos is a disabled Puerto Rican and Native American author and poet from Philadelphia whose additional work will be discovered at GuillermoASantos.com or @guillermoasantos on Instagram. He now lives in New York.