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Jordan McClements is an overdose crisis writer who will be attending Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism this fall for his master’s degree in social justice and solutions journalism. The Dover resident survived an overdose but lost a cousin to one.
A quarter-mile from the Phish festival named “Mondegreen” outside The Woodlands in Dover: I am surrounded by green, riveting trees; clear, blue waves of sky like an ocean; and the thundering hiss of cars rolling by on Del. 1 and U.S. 13. I am inside the shadows of my maroon tent. Rivers, like dreams, cascade my face, as I wake from dreaming of my uncle, who overdosed three months ago and survived. My uncle was known as Sun Bear/Papa Bear when he followed the Grateful Dead from 1991-95 for 151 shows. He followed Phish after Jerry Garcia died in 1995, until Uncle Sun Bear was busted at a Phish show and did five years of federal time in Indiana because he wanted the ride to stop. Everyone wants to get on the bus, but how many of us can stop once we get on? Everything I have done as an adult — my dream to be a writer and become something like Jack Kerouac or Hunter S. Thompson — didn’t come from reading “On the Road” or “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream”; I wanted to be Uncle Sun Bear.
My first memory is from when I was a little boy. While he was between Phish tours, Uncle Sun Bear would come home every day from cutting fish at a market, and he would put his fingers in my face and say, “Wanna smell my fishy fingers, buddy?” and I would laugh and scream, “Yay, Uncle Sun Bear is home.” The feeling of saying “Uncle Sun Bear is home” has always been the same every time I see him. I’m grateful Uncle Sun Bear is home, but I’m most grateful Uncle Sun Bear is alive.
Sometimes, I feel like I never made it back home from my overdose in 2017, after I went to rehab twice, and my cousin saved me. My cousin didn’t survive his overdose. My cousin overdosed and died in 2019. But that’s the thing about gratitude: Without it, sometimes, we feel nothing, till we lose it all. As I tossed and turned my aching shoulders in my tent next to The Woodlands, I realized my purpose. I realized my destiny. I began to love my fate. In my tent, I recalled when I visited Uncle Sun Bear in rehab before Mondegreen. Uncle Sun Bear passed me his Phish wristband and told me I had to go see Phish. I was chosen to continue Uncle Sun Bear’s legacy. He was at Phish’s first and (until Mondegreen) only show in Delaware, back when he was living and hanging out with the hippies on Wilbur Street in Newark, at the University of Delaware. And Uncle Sun Bear was with me at Mondegreen, like he always has been.
It isn’t that I think everyone should stop using drugs. It’s that the supply is poisoned, and Delaware isn’t interested in solving its overdose crisis, rather than try everything and anything to save Delaware. My family has had four people of three generations overdose in the last seven years, and Delaware hasn’t done anything for my family or any family concerning the overdose crisis. Read that again. Delaware is concerned with the nonprofits that make money for the state — groups that cannot handle the overdose crisis and are under investigation. You don’t believe me? Tell the truth. Take all the supposed things Delaware claims are curbing the overdose crisis with its use of statistics. This is rhetoric, rather than work for the community on the community’s terms, and it showed on the first night at Mondegreen. At Mondegreen, which was one of the epicenters of drug culture in Delaware, the state did not supply harm reduction practices, like a safer supply, testing strips and naloxone, despite four people overdosing at Mondegreen by 1 a.m. after Night 1.
Why does overdose matter?
I walked back from the black tree line over the blue ocean horizon under the crescent white-and-grey moon with K and held hands. Then, I watched an ambulance splash white and dead silence all over us, as a state trooper escorted from behind, and I wondered who was in the ambulance.
Why don’t they have a name?
I wouldn’t have overdosed. My cousin wouldn’t have overdosed and died. My uncle wouldn’t have overdosed. My cousin would be alive. My uncle would be able to move his left side. Our Delaware family needs a safer supply and overdose prevention centers.
There is no argument about it. How many people must die for Delaware to implement a safer supply and overdose prevention centers? How many people that you know must die for Delaware to implement a safer supply and overdose prevention centers?
Rehab alone doesn’t prevent overdoses in Delaware. How do I know? I went to rehab and overdosed after.
The overdose problem in Delaware is bigger than you and me. The overdose problem in Delaware is bigger than all of us. But the overdose problem in Delaware is not stronger than all of us.
How do we overcome overdoses in Delaware? We work together, through love. How do I know? I’ve overdosed myself. I’ve lost my cousin to an overdose. My uncle is fighting for life because of an overdose.
What can you do to let your family and your community know that you love them? The answer: Love your family and your community.
We love our Delaware family and community by giving them dignity and respect through love. Drug users need love. I know it, and I’ve seen it. Sometimes, drugs feel like love. That’s what we all are chasing: love. Our Delaware family and community shouldn’t hurt themselves. Our Delaware family and community need our love. Let’s love ourselves and our neighbors, Delaware.
Overdose isn’t going away in Delaware by recycling money to recycled nonprofits with recycled ideas. Delaware, we are continuing the same policy failures that kill ourselves and our loved ones. We need new laws, new ideas, new people and new practices to combat overdoses in our state, Delaware. We need to start with reducing harm by implementing overdose prevention centers and a safer supply.
If I, my cousin or my uncle had used from a safer supply or used an overdose prevention center, we would not have overdosed. If we would have overdosed by using from an illicit supply in an overdose prevention center, there would have been supervised consumption, so we would have been brought back to life after overdosing. It wouldn’t be the game of life and death we place our loved ones into by using rehab and abstinence as the only solutions to a lethal drug supply.
Let’s stop making drug use a matter of life and death, and give drug users the dignity and respect they deserve as human beings, Delaware. Implement overdose prevention centers and a safer supply. Without empathy, we are nothing. If you want to stop the overdose crisis in your backyard, Delaware must love itself and its neighbors by making innovative solutions to the overdose crisis, consulting users living on the front lines of the overdose crisis and implementing a safer supply and overdose prevention centers. Tell your loved ones you love them.
I wish I could still tell my cousin I love him.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org .
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