I left a very white, very affluent Philadelphia suburb for NYU in 2007. When I go home, Oxys always come up in conversation with friends: Who got really "bad" (and can you believe it was him?!), who started selling, or what new pill-based friendship is the strangest. On one visit, I found pens gutted to be used as straws (to snort pills) and tin foil in my old best friend’s bedroom, to smoke Oxys.
In Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, suburban moms and dads enjoy a short commute to the city and send their kids off to a “Blue Ribbon School of Excellence” to prepare them for the educational institutions to which they aspire. Aside from school and work and partying in big houses, there is not much to do.
Boredom tends to inspire some creative takes on “fun.” Out of my town, for example, came the Jackass crew. Their worm snorting and reckless self-injury (shocking their testicles, paper-cutting their eyelids) might not have occurred if they had the resources of a city. When Jackass star Ryan Dunn died in a drunk-driving accident June 20, he crashed his car on Route 322, a road members of my community use regularly.
Drugs are another common way to escape boredom. Pop one pill and working at the local pizza parlor after school might not be such a drag.
Of all the prescription pills people used – Xanax, Klonopin, Percocet, Vicodin, Adderrall, Rittalin, Codeine – OxyContin, the brand name for slow-release oxycodone, is king. The most potent painkiller of its class (opioids like codeine, Percocet and Vicodin), Oxys are what you graduate to. Being hooked on percs wouldn’t make sense. Eventually, as tolerance increases and more pills are needed (not just to get high but to avoid withdrawal) Oxys seem like the way to go...
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Kristen Gwynne @'AlterNet'
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