I grew up in Kensington, Philadelphia. Let’s not glamorize habit — once more : Shots

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I grew up in Kensington, Philadelphia. Let’s not glamorize habit — once more : Shots



Guillermo A. Santos on his highschool commencement day in 2021, along with his father, Guillermo Jose Santos. The elder Santos died later the identical yr of a drug overdose.

The Santos-Honkala Family


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The Santos-Honkala Family


Guillermo A. Santos on his highschool commencement day in 2021, along with his father, Guillermo Jose Santos. The elder Santos died later the identical yr of a drug overdose.

The Santos-Honkala Family

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 biggest it had ever been. One of these 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. This is a narrative that many Americans, particularly these within the Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington the place he lived and I grew up, know effectively.

If you lookup movies of the worst of the opioid epidemic, you will note Kensington’s “zombies.” People 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, generally immobile in the midst of the road attempting to maintain standing. In these movies, you may see the home the place I grew up.

It is a home in an intensely red-lined neighborhood. I went to high school on-line and I studied music throughout city, in a extra prosperous a part of Philadelphia. I had “associates” from my music lessons who would by no means go to my home out of concern of all that lay inside Kensington. Opting to steer clear of the horrors of drug use related to my area, they as a substitute occupied Rittenhouse Square in Center City, a neighborhood park that offered them ample protection to smoke pot and cigarettes however did not scare their mother and father 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 celebration for these folks at my home whereas my mom was out of city. I went by way of a whole lot of bother and everyone informed me they had been coming. I met folks on the subway and walked them to my home. But out of all invited company it was solely the opposite minorities within the group that got here. And it rapidly grew to become obvious that nobody else would.


The creator as a child held by his dad. Guillermo Jose Santos was 26 when his son was born.

The Santos-Honkala Family


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The Santos-Honkala Family


The creator as a child held by his dad. Guillermo Jose Santos was 26 when his son was born.

The Santos-Honkala Family

Over texts they claimed that they did not know I lived in Kensington and had they recognized, they by no means would have promised within the first place. But in fact, they knew. It’s 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 huge a deal. One particular person stated he knew what it was prefer to be a minority: “I’m used to bizarre seems to be on the road. I dyed my hair inexperienced.”

Soon after, on social media, we noticed that the white children I’d invited had their very own celebration elsewhere. But they took selfies, tagged me, and claimed to be at my home having a good time.

Flash ahead a number of years, and the friends who prevented the realities of my impoverished upbringing after we had been youthful at the moment are spending their time in California, New York and even a number of blocks from my former dwelling in raver warehouses, dressing up like addicts. They publish and pose on social media, carrying distressed classic, “spouse beater” t-shirts they purchase on Depop and heavy eyeliner, all the higher to look sullen but cool. And it isn’t simply my outdated verdant-haired friends. TikTook 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 flooring, hunched over their telephones like a zombie in withdrawal, watching the like rely develop on their very own posts of them too pretending to be at someplace like my outdated dwelling.

This is, in fact, not new. The identical impulse made earlier generations lengthy for tv appearances and their very own Warholian quarter-hour. It’s a recurrent vogue development 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 can argue the aesthetic of “heroin stylish” was born in the identical metropolis I used to be. Model Gia Carangi was born in Philadelphia and died there as effectively, of habit similar to my father. She is the place a whole lot 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. An whole new technology 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 after I was born.

Growing 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. Even as a baby, it appeared clear to me that the one distinction between my neighbors and their identically addicted counterparts in California was wealth and coloration.

Here, on the literal fallacious facet of the tracks of Philly’s blue Market Frankford practice 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 sources to get out of the quagmire.


The commencement picture adorns containers holding the ashes of Guillermo Jose Santos, considered one of greater than 100,000 Americans who died of drug overdoses in 2021. That quantity was greater than 111,000 in 2023.

The Santos-Honkala Family


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The Santos-Honkala Family


The commencement picture adorns containers holding the ashes of Guillermo Jose Santos, considered one of greater than 100,000 Americans who died of drug overdoses in 2021. That quantity was greater than 111,000 in 2023.

The Santos-Honkala Family

My entire 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 transient reprieves from the substances that held him in thrall. I constructed my relationship with him throughout these occasions when he may abstain for a number of weeks or months at a time. But they did not final. I don’t fault him for taking the identical path so a lot 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 attempting to appear to be him?

The worst events I’ve been to have been stuffed with what the Washington Post’s Robin Givhan first referred to as a “nihilistic model of magnificence” again in 1996. Without poverty, habit can afford to look cool. Crushing actuality for some could be seen as an aesthetic selection for the privileged.

They can afford to not understand how we reside, simply to choose the components 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 every other they devour.

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

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