Drugs, angry emails and Liam Neeson doing comedy
Hi there👋 . Building Blocks is a weekly roundup of content to prickle your mind.
Today’s stories in a nutshell:
💉Health: The drug that’s killing America
🤬 Useful skill: HALT
🎸 Weekend tune: Johnny Cash
🤣 Comedy: Liam Neeson tells off-colour jokes
🧩 Weekend games: Try four Wordles at once (New)
*To have a smoother reading experience, I recommend reading the article in your browser. To do so, click on the heading.
💉Health: The drug that’s killing America
Last year, 107,622 people in America died of a drug overdose - the highest rate in the country’s history. Opioids caused three-quarters of these deaths.
For comparison, 350,831 people died in the U.S. due to Covid-19 in 2021.
According to The New York Times:
“The opioid epidemic is devastating America. Overdoses have passed car crashes and gun violence to become the leading cause of death for Americans under 55. The epidemic has killed more people than H.I.V. at the peak of that disease, and its death toll exceeds those of the wars in Vietnam and Iraq combined.”
The most lethal culprit amongst opioids is a drug called fentanyl - a super addictive, lab-made opioid 50 times stronger than heroin and roughly 100 times more potent than morphine. The tiniest amount can kill you or leave you addicted.
Fentanyl is also often used for lacing other drugs, so many people who take it, do so unwittingly. Music icon Prince died of an accidental overdose in 2016 after taking counterfeit Vicodin pills that, unknown to him, were mixed with fentanyl. Since then, Rapper Mac Miller and actor Michael K Willians suffered similar accidental fates after taking drugs they didn’t know contained fentanyl.
Until 2019, most of the fentanyl that entered the U.S. came from China. But after the Trump administration got the Chinese government to ban the manufacture of the drug, Mexico has become the chief source. Today, Mexican cartels make fentanyl in labs using ingredients from Chinese suppliers sending it north across the border. Only minuscule amounts are needed to get you high as a kite, so U.S. law enforcement struggles to patrol the inflow into the country.
Drug addiction is dark. It devastates the lives of the addicted and those who love them. I end with a snippet of David Sheff’s 2005 essay about a father’s experience of his son’s struggle with drugs:
“Through Nick's drug addiction, I learned that parents can bear almost anything. Every time we reach a point where we feel as if we can't bear any more, we do. Things had descended in a way that I never could have imagined, and I shocked myself with my ability to rationalize and tolerate things that were once unthinkable. He's just experimenting. Going through a stage. It's only marijuana. He gets high only on weekends. At least he's not using heroin. He would never resort to needles. At least he's alive.”
If you want to learn more:
👉 Sheff’s piece was turned into a best-selling book and movie.
👇 This video by the BBC shows how fentanyl is causing havoc in downtown San Francisco.
🤬 Useful skill: HALT
I’m reading The Boron Letters. The book is a compilation of letters written by copywriting icon Gary C. Halbert to his son during Halbert’s stint in prison for tax fraud. Although unrelated to the book’s main focus of copywriting, this is a great tip that Halbert shared with his son:
“HALT - Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired.
Never make a big decision when you feel one of these four things.”
It’s the late afternoon after a long day, and you are ferociously slamming away at your keyboard, responding to an email that pissed you off.
Don’t click send.
Sleep on it.
🎸 Weekend song: Hurt by Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash’s Hurt is a cover of the song written by Trent Reznor of the Nine Inch Nails in 1994. The idea for Cash’s cover was that of the famous white-bearded music producer, Rick Rubin. Both Cash and Reznor were sceptical of the idea at first, but Rubin convinced them otherwise. Rubin’s vision for the song turned out to be spot-on.
The beauty of the cover is that the song’s meaning changes when sung by the two artists. Reznor’s version (click here) is about a young man spiralling into self-harm and drug addiction. But when Cash sings Hurt, it’s about an old man looking back at his life with regret.
“I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's realThe needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everythingWhat have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the endAnd you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt”
The song is especially poignant considering that Cash died within months of the song’s release in 2003.
That’s interesting 👉 Time magazine ranked the music video for Hurt as one of the top 30 music videos of all time.
🤣 Comedy: Liam Neeson wants to do comedy
The subject matter of this week’s letter was heavier than usual, so I’m ending on a lighter note.
I’m a big fan of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. The Office remains one of the most original and hilarious TV shows ever made.
The video below is from Life’s too Short, another series written by the duo. In the clip, Liam Neeson (the Schindler’s List and Taken star) presents an austere version of himself who wants to get into comedy. He then proceeds to tell unfunny stories, that are incredibly funny, because they are unfunny.
Genius.
🧩 Weekend games
Test your vocabulary: Wordle, Mirriam-Webster quiz, Try four Wordles at once with Quordle (New)
Test your geography: Globle
Test your knowledge of maps: WorLdle, You don’t know Africa.
Guess the country based on its exports: Tradle