July 1, 2024 • 20 mins
We're Overdosed looks at the history of opium and the drug's spread throughout the world. It traces the origin of morphine from opium, the subsequent synthesis of opioids, and the birth of the global pharmaceutical industry. From Barry I. Gold's point of view as a scientist, he offers thoughts about gaining control of prescription opioids […] The post We're Overdosed by Barry Gold appeared first on WebTalkRadio.net.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, book lovers, and welcome to Author's Corner. Get ready
for a whirlwind tour of the latest and greatest reads
and the fascinating stories behind them. Join us as we
chat with authors and newsmakers from all over the world,
diving into their journeys and creative processes. And now here's
the host of Author's Corner, the Emmy Award winning Kate Delady.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
We are so pleased as always to be joined by
Barry Gold to talk to him about actually a couple
of books. He's got a new one's that's coming out,
but we're going to talk about We're Overdosed and boy,
oh boy, this is such an important book and I'm
so thrilled to have him here on Author's Corner with us.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
So Barry, thanks for coming on.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
Pleasure.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Let's talk about the road too.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
We're Overdosed And first of all, what made you decide, Hey,
I got to write this book.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Well, for one thing, I'm a pharmacologist, So what else
am I going to write about except drugs? Right? What
do I know?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
I know?
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Drugs? Probably a little about parenting, given that I have
three I was I sat down and started researching the
history of opium because I'm a history nut. I tell
the story. I was in Dresden, Germany, running to a
(01:21):
meeting at a German pharmaceutical company, and I saw a
brass plaque on the wall and I am not afraid
to destroy myself as a brass plaque junkie, and I
stopped to read it. It was in German, but I
understood it and it said aspirin was invented here, and
I was fascinated. Well, I did a little research twenty
(01:42):
years later and found out that the fellow who discovered
aspirin or invented aspirin invented heroin. And I thought, that's fascinating,
And how did he do it? He was adding acetic acid,
well we know that as vinegar. Wow, adding acetic acid
to chemicals to see if he could invent something, and
(02:05):
he came up with aspirin because he added acetic acid
to salicilic acid and made actyl salicilic acid aspirin. And
he added it to morphine and made what he called
in German herosh makes me feel hero Well what's that
in English? Heroic? So it's heroin.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Wow, same person.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
The same guy three weeks apart.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Oh crazy, And you think of heroin, and you think
of how that had a grip on so many people,
Black tar, heroin, all the different variations, and the meat
of your book, I mean, we're overdosed.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Tell us about that. What do you mean about about
we're overdose as well?
Speaker 4 (02:48):
I wanted to write about opium, but I didn't want
to be accusatory to my readership. I wanted to say, hey, folks,
we're in this together. My job is to teach you.
We're overdosed. And I'm speaking to my readership saying it's
not you, it's us us the third part of my memoir.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
What's the biggest concern with that? Because obviously we look
around and we see what the statistics are.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
It's so grim.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
Well, the story has changed rapidly in the last decade,
and today the biggest killer is not heroin, it's fentanyl.
And the sad thing about fentanyl is, although we bring
it in from Mexico or the Mexican drug cartels, exported
(03:39):
into the US on the in trailers and hollows and cars,
and not on the backs of immigrants. Although they're using
drones now too, they dropped the heroin in Texas or Arizona.
Nothing like technology and so seventy percent of the deaths
(04:02):
every year now have fentanyl in their bloodstream. Well, someone
asked me, are the Chinese at war with us? And
I said, you know this is an active war. You
try to poison in other people, that's an active war. Yeah.
(04:24):
So I fully expect to not eat in a Chinese
restaurant near future.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
So we're over this.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
I mean you have the definitely you have the pedigree
for writing this kind of a book. Tell the people
who are watching this more about your background and how
you ended up in Germany and working for that company
and in that spot where you saw that plaque.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Oh. I I started life teaching medical school and discovered
that it really wasn't for me. I taught four to
eight four hours a year wasn't enough, and I was
losing interest in being a lab manager. So I moved
into the pharmaceutical industry, still managing a lab, but this
(05:12):
time an anesthetics lab. Well that lasted six years too,
because they said to me, your heart's not in this.
I said, fine, I'm out of here. And I went
to work for an American company in drug development and
they called me director of project management. Why project management,
because we managed by interdisciplinary teams and I led the
(05:37):
teams and then I had to report to the board
of directors. That was the not fun part of it,
and I Oh, they sold the division and I was
about to lose my job. So I called my headhunter
and she said, listen, I have an opportunity with a
(05:57):
German company, the nol Pharmaceuticals Cano ALF Deutsch KNLL. They
don't exist anymore because they were a subsidiary of BISF,
the largest chemical company in the world Badisha anilin un
soda fabric. I'm practicing German. I have to be there
(06:21):
in October and I used to work there, so I
knew German, but I've forgotten it in twenty years. So
I'm working on it and my fifteen year old is
going with me. Wow, it'll be a lot of fun.
So I went to work doing the same job, managing
project drug development for a German company for Noel, and
(06:46):
I enjoyed it thoroughly. I used to work in Ludwigshaven,
which is an hour south of Frankfort, but I stayed
in Heidelberg, which is an hour south of Ludwigshaven. But
I had dinner in Strasbourg France, because that's an hour
south of Heidelberg, and how can you resist eating Alsatian
food driving one hundred miles an hour in a European country.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
You definitely had fun there and you obviously liked what
you did too. What was the most fascinating part of that?
Speaker 4 (07:22):
I think the most fascinating part of it was learning
that Germans always thought I was German head of gold.
You have no accent, and the French always looked at
me and said, oh, I met Connor. They knew immediately
(07:42):
I didn't have to open my mouth, and that was
the most fascinating part of it. Was living in the
German economy a week at a time and enjoying it.
Just this is nice. I like this.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
What you worked on, because again with the compounds, with
what you did specifically.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
It was interesting what I worked on. I worked on dilauded,
which is hydromorphone. It's an opiate, and we tried to
make a twenty four hour formulation of it, and I
was developing that for the whole time I was with them.
(08:27):
They knew I knew a lot about opiates, and my
PhD dissertation was on alcohol. So I've been in drug abuse,
so to speak, all my life, and I capitalized on
it and I enjoyed working for them. In fact, I
(08:49):
have a friend who still we correspond every week and
I'm going to see him in October when I go over. Wow.
Well he's a former regulatory affairs expert on my teams.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Wow. And again we're speaking of Barry Gold.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
And the name of the book is were overdosed and
you found the history. You're looking back into the history.
Like you said, you're a history buff of opium. What
did you learn that you did not know?
Speaker 4 (09:18):
Well, I didn't know where opium came from, and it
turned out it comes from an area I guess we
would call it the Levante, the Mediterranean area, the eastern
Mediterranean area. Was it known to the early Israelis?
Speaker 3 (09:40):
No?
Speaker 4 (09:42):
Was it known to the early Jordanians? Yes, So somewhere
in there opium started. And how did it get to America?
They traded with us, and the colonists found out that
they liked this stuff, so they paid more, and of
(10:06):
course Britain got in trouble with the opium wars with
the Chinese. And it's a fascinating history the way it's
spread around the world.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
And as you mentioned, fentanyl now is the thing, but
there still is definitely heroin use. And at one point
it was way over the top where you had so
many high school students that had access to black tar
heroine and so many, many, many deaths. And I think
it's partially it's the way obviously it makes someone feel,
(10:39):
as you said in German, that feeling that was captured
in that drug that was so addictive.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Heroic, It makes them feel heroic. Yeah, it removes most feelings.
The interesting thing is if you speak to former drug
users and say why did you start? The answer is
always the same thing. I felt loud. I needed something
to take the loazzy feeling away. Well, if you drill
in and say what was that lozzy feeling? I walk
(11:06):
away saying it's loneliness. Because we live in an asocial society.
We all steer at screens all day and don't talk
to each other, right, and that's not the way we are.
We're social animals. Yeah, I tell my fifteen year old
(11:26):
all the time, this is a good idea. Go out
for sports.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
It's social right, be involved.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
Yeah, yeah, I tell addicts, if you feel terrible, go
find a crowd. And walk through it. You'll feel better.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Yeah, that's great advice. Do you work with addicts? Have
you done that? Have you volunteered?
Speaker 4 (11:49):
I taught a course to addicts to recovering addicts. It's
in the book. It's my first chapter.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
This was a long time ago. I was still traveling
to Europe every other week and I came in on
a weekend and I had signed up to teach a
course called Pharmacology of Drugs of Abuse to Recovering Addicts
at Jersey City State College. I think it's a different
name now, New Jersey State University or something, I don't know.
(12:22):
And we broke for lunch, and I went down and
sat at lunch and all my class followed me down
and sat around me, and I thought, oh, I'm flattered
they like me. And they leaned over and said, why
do you teach us? I said, why? For me, it's payback.
I like teaching you. I share my knowledge with you,
and I give you a strategy. Why do you ask
(12:44):
because only addicts are interested in us? And I thought
that is pathetic, and that stayed with me for twenty years,
and that became my first chapter.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
That is pathetic thinking.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
It's pathetic. Nobody cares about it, as there are people
of lower character, why should we worry about it? I
used the example of think back COVID two years ago.
What was on the news every night, pictures of us
wearing masks. My son zoomed his school work. We didn't
(13:18):
go to work. We just stayed home and tried not
to infect each other. I got COVID anyway, and I
was in San Francisco and I got COVID. Wonderful trip.
And you bring that to today. What's on the news
(13:40):
at night. There's not a mention of opium. Even though
we're killing almost twice as many as we did with COVID.
COVID was on the news. Addicts are not on the news,
and I think that's pathetic. We're treating addicts as though
they're not important, and we're treating COVID victims as though
they're important, and well, the reverse is true. Addicts only
(14:03):
want to help people now recovering addicts. They don't want
people following them into this addiction street. And COVID victims
are cursing the Chinese forgiveness up being.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
When people read we're overdosed, which you can get on
Barnes and Noble, get there, get in Amazon, all the
usual places.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
What do you hope Barry they take away?
Speaker 4 (14:33):
Well, I want people to become active. I don't want
you to say there's nothing I can do for these people.
Of course there is. Find a Narcotics Synonymous meeting and
go in and say I made dinner? Would anybody like some?
Do it? Don't be afraid people will gobble up your food.
(14:55):
If you find an addict on the street and he's unconscious,
bile nine one one and get the ambulance there to
give him narkhan. Narkihan is administered by nasal insufflation. They'd
sprayed up the addict's nose and they magically save him.
If you have a family member who's an addict, don't
(15:19):
beat your breast and say what should I do? I
can't do anything with this kid. Yes you can. You
can say to him, would you like to get clean?
I'll help you find out where the nearest rehab is,
give him the address. You've done more for that child
than you could ever do. Just get active, Just be
(15:43):
an active American. Do what you can do. Family class stranger.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Yeah, sage advice, great advice.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Actually so you've written We're overdosed, and now you have
a taste for writing, and you've got another book that's
coming out, Boomer Dad, A lifetime of resiliency, endurance and disconnection.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Give us a tease of that. What's this book about?
Speaker 4 (16:13):
Well, let's see twenty five years ago when I was
traveling to Europe every other week and exhausted, and I
began to think, what am I doing here? I also
suffered a heart attack. I was fifty two years old.
(16:33):
I was looking at a house. I had a heart
attack right in a driveway. I drove myself to the hospital.
I said, I got I'm having a heart attack. A
week later, I was in open heart surgery. Well that
kind of changed my life. I decided traveling to Europe
threatened my life. And three weeks after my open heart surgery,
(16:59):
when I was still seeping a little bread stuff out
of the where they cut me, I went skin diving
in Mexico. I took my European colleagues snorkeling in the
Gulf of Mexico, and they looked at me and said,
isn't it a little soon for you to go? I said, ah,
(17:20):
I'm fine, I'm fine, and I'm swimming along staring at
a beautiful bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, and I
see a barracuda looking for lunch, and I said, you
know what, this is stupid, and I got back in
the boat. That's resiliency.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
I like it. That's resiliency.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
And the book is about all those things, the things
that happened to you. What it's like being a boomer dad.
You mentioned you have a fifteen year old right now.
Speaker 4 (17:54):
Yeah, I have a fifty year old and a forty
eight year old also. I yeah, well that's the product
of two marriages.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
And I never expected to end up single parenting though,
And I'm single parenting my fifteen year old four days
a week. Wow. So he goes to his mom on weekends.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
What's that like.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
It's a lot of work. It's tiring. He comes to
me nine thirty at night. It's the dad, can you
do a load of wash? Richard. I don't want to
fold laundry at eleven o'clock at night.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
I'll do it in the morning.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
But I'm doing all these housework things that I I
guess I'm good at. I don't know, right.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Was it fun for you to write boomer Dad.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
No, Boomer Dad. I struggled. It was fun to write
We're Overdosed because it had a higher purpose, if you will, right.
And plus it was my first book, so I really
had to finish it. Boomer Dad. One of my readers
said to me, you got to do a memoir. You
(19:09):
have to. It's your legacy. So I started it, and
I struggled with it, and I wrote ten thousand words,
and then I had to finish Boomer Dad. And now
I have to market boomer Dad. And finally I did it.
It's sixty eight sixty nine thousand words. Wow. Finished it,
(19:30):
and people have read it and said to me, hey,
this is pretty inspirational. I said, really, you mean I
nailed it, And they said, yeah, You've had a hell
of a life. So I wrote boomer Dad.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Nice. I like the contrast of the two books.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
And it's always delightful to talk to you, Barry Golds.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
You are an inspiration.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
And again we talked about you know, your overdose word,
We're overdosed. Actually we're overdosed, and boomer Dad of course
coming up. And again it's always a pleasure to chat
with you.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
Thank you, Well, my pleasure is mine Pleasure is Mine
and my third book. I have a proposal into my agent.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
We'll wait for that one. I like it.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
Thanks Parry, thank you very much for this opportunity.
Hello, book lovers, and welcome to Author's Corner. Get ready
for a whirlwind tour of the latest and greatest reads
and the fascinating stories behind them. Join us as we
chat with authors and newsmakers from all over the world,
diving into their journeys and creative processes. And now here's
the host of Author's Corner, the Emmy Award winning Kate Delady.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
We are so pleased as always to be joined by
Barry Gold to talk to him about actually a couple
of books. He's got a new one's that's coming out,
but we're going to talk about We're Overdosed and boy,
oh boy, this is such an important book and I'm
so thrilled to have him here on Author's Corner with us.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
So Barry, thanks for coming on.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
Pleasure.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Let's talk about the road too.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
We're Overdosed And first of all, what made you decide, Hey,
I got to write this book.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Well, for one thing, I'm a pharmacologist, So what else
am I going to write about except drugs? Right? What
do I know?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
I know?
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Drugs? Probably a little about parenting, given that I have
three I was I sat down and started researching the
history of opium because I'm a history nut. I tell
the story. I was in Dresden, Germany, running to a
(01:21):
meeting at a German pharmaceutical company, and I saw a
brass plaque on the wall and I am not afraid
to destroy myself as a brass plaque junkie, and I
stopped to read it. It was in German, but I
understood it and it said aspirin was invented here, and
I was fascinated. Well, I did a little research twenty
(01:42):
years later and found out that the fellow who discovered
aspirin or invented aspirin invented heroin. And I thought, that's fascinating,
And how did he do it? He was adding acetic acid,
well we know that as vinegar. Wow, adding acetic acid
to chemicals to see if he could invent something, and
(02:05):
he came up with aspirin because he added acetic acid
to salicilic acid and made actyl salicilic acid aspirin. And
he added it to morphine and made what he called
in German herosh makes me feel hero Well what's that
in English? Heroic? So it's heroin.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Wow, same person.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
The same guy three weeks apart.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Oh crazy, And you think of heroin, and you think
of how that had a grip on so many people,
Black tar, heroin, all the different variations, and the meat
of your book, I mean, we're overdosed.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Tell us about that. What do you mean about about
we're overdose as well?
Speaker 4 (02:48):
I wanted to write about opium, but I didn't want
to be accusatory to my readership. I wanted to say, hey, folks,
we're in this together. My job is to teach you.
We're overdosed. And I'm speaking to my readership saying it's
not you, it's us us the third part of my memoir.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
What's the biggest concern with that? Because obviously we look
around and we see what the statistics are.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
It's so grim.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
Well, the story has changed rapidly in the last decade,
and today the biggest killer is not heroin, it's fentanyl.
And the sad thing about fentanyl is, although we bring
it in from Mexico or the Mexican drug cartels, exported
(03:39):
into the US on the in trailers and hollows and cars,
and not on the backs of immigrants. Although they're using
drones now too, they dropped the heroin in Texas or Arizona.
Nothing like technology and so seventy percent of the deaths
(04:02):
every year now have fentanyl in their bloodstream. Well, someone
asked me, are the Chinese at war with us? And
I said, you know this is an active war. You
try to poison in other people, that's an active war. Yeah.
(04:24):
So I fully expect to not eat in a Chinese
restaurant near future.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
So we're over this.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
I mean you have the definitely you have the pedigree
for writing this kind of a book. Tell the people
who are watching this more about your background and how
you ended up in Germany and working for that company
and in that spot where you saw that plaque.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Oh. I I started life teaching medical school and discovered
that it really wasn't for me. I taught four to
eight four hours a year wasn't enough, and I was
losing interest in being a lab manager. So I moved
into the pharmaceutical industry, still managing a lab, but this
(05:12):
time an anesthetics lab. Well that lasted six years too,
because they said to me, your heart's not in this.
I said, fine, I'm out of here. And I went
to work for an American company in drug development and
they called me director of project management. Why project management,
because we managed by interdisciplinary teams and I led the
(05:37):
teams and then I had to report to the board
of directors. That was the not fun part of it,
and I Oh, they sold the division and I was
about to lose my job. So I called my headhunter
and she said, listen, I have an opportunity with a
(05:57):
German company, the nol Pharmaceuticals Cano ALF Deutsch KNLL. They
don't exist anymore because they were a subsidiary of BISF,
the largest chemical company in the world Badisha anilin un
soda fabric. I'm practicing German. I have to be there
(06:21):
in October and I used to work there, so I
knew German, but I've forgotten it in twenty years. So
I'm working on it and my fifteen year old is
going with me. Wow, it'll be a lot of fun.
So I went to work doing the same job, managing
project drug development for a German company for Noel, and
(06:46):
I enjoyed it thoroughly. I used to work in Ludwigshaven,
which is an hour south of Frankfort, but I stayed
in Heidelberg, which is an hour south of Ludwigshaven. But
I had dinner in Strasbourg France, because that's an hour
south of Heidelberg, and how can you resist eating Alsatian
food driving one hundred miles an hour in a European country.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
You definitely had fun there and you obviously liked what
you did too. What was the most fascinating part of that?
Speaker 4 (07:22):
I think the most fascinating part of it was learning
that Germans always thought I was German head of gold.
You have no accent, and the French always looked at
me and said, oh, I met Connor. They knew immediately
(07:42):
I didn't have to open my mouth, and that was
the most fascinating part of it. Was living in the
German economy a week at a time and enjoying it.
Just this is nice. I like this.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
What you worked on, because again with the compounds, with
what you did specifically.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
It was interesting what I worked on. I worked on dilauded,
which is hydromorphone. It's an opiate, and we tried to
make a twenty four hour formulation of it, and I
was developing that for the whole time I was with them.
(08:27):
They knew I knew a lot about opiates, and my
PhD dissertation was on alcohol. So I've been in drug abuse,
so to speak, all my life, and I capitalized on
it and I enjoyed working for them. In fact, I
(08:49):
have a friend who still we correspond every week and
I'm going to see him in October when I go over. Wow.
Well he's a former regulatory affairs expert on my teams.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Wow. And again we're speaking of Barry Gold.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
And the name of the book is were overdosed and
you found the history. You're looking back into the history.
Like you said, you're a history buff of opium. What
did you learn that you did not know?
Speaker 4 (09:18):
Well, I didn't know where opium came from, and it
turned out it comes from an area I guess we
would call it the Levante, the Mediterranean area, the eastern
Mediterranean area. Was it known to the early Israelis?
Speaker 3 (09:40):
No?
Speaker 4 (09:42):
Was it known to the early Jordanians? Yes, So somewhere
in there opium started. And how did it get to America?
They traded with us, and the colonists found out that
they liked this stuff, so they paid more, and of
(10:06):
course Britain got in trouble with the opium wars with
the Chinese. And it's a fascinating history the way it's
spread around the world.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
And as you mentioned, fentanyl now is the thing, but
there still is definitely heroin use. And at one point
it was way over the top where you had so
many high school students that had access to black tar
heroine and so many, many, many deaths. And I think
it's partially it's the way obviously it makes someone feel,
(10:39):
as you said in German, that feeling that was captured
in that drug that was so addictive.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Heroic, It makes them feel heroic. Yeah, it removes most feelings.
The interesting thing is if you speak to former drug
users and say why did you start? The answer is
always the same thing. I felt loud. I needed something
to take the loazzy feeling away. Well, if you drill
in and say what was that lozzy feeling? I walk
(11:06):
away saying it's loneliness. Because we live in an asocial society.
We all steer at screens all day and don't talk
to each other, right, and that's not the way we are.
We're social animals. Yeah, I tell my fifteen year old
(11:26):
all the time, this is a good idea. Go out
for sports.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
It's social right, be involved.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
Yeah, yeah, I tell addicts, if you feel terrible, go
find a crowd. And walk through it. You'll feel better.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Yeah, that's great advice. Do you work with addicts? Have
you done that? Have you volunteered?
Speaker 4 (11:49):
I taught a course to addicts to recovering addicts. It's
in the book. It's my first chapter.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
This was a long time ago. I was still traveling
to Europe every other week and I came in on
a weekend and I had signed up to teach a
course called Pharmacology of Drugs of Abuse to Recovering Addicts
at Jersey City State College. I think it's a different
name now, New Jersey State University or something, I don't know.
(12:22):
And we broke for lunch, and I went down and
sat at lunch and all my class followed me down
and sat around me, and I thought, oh, I'm flattered
they like me. And they leaned over and said, why
do you teach us? I said, why? For me, it's payback.
I like teaching you. I share my knowledge with you,
and I give you a strategy. Why do you ask
(12:44):
because only addicts are interested in us? And I thought
that is pathetic, and that stayed with me for twenty years,
and that became my first chapter.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
That is pathetic thinking.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
It's pathetic. Nobody cares about it, as there are people
of lower character, why should we worry about it? I
used the example of think back COVID two years ago.
What was on the news every night, pictures of us
wearing masks. My son zoomed his school work. We didn't
(13:18):
go to work. We just stayed home and tried not
to infect each other. I got COVID anyway, and I
was in San Francisco and I got COVID. Wonderful trip.
And you bring that to today. What's on the news
(13:40):
at night. There's not a mention of opium. Even though
we're killing almost twice as many as we did with COVID.
COVID was on the news. Addicts are not on the news,
and I think that's pathetic. We're treating addicts as though
they're not important, and we're treating COVID victims as though
they're important, and well, the reverse is true. Addicts only
(14:03):
want to help people now recovering addicts. They don't want
people following them into this addiction street. And COVID victims
are cursing the Chinese forgiveness up being.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
When people read we're overdosed, which you can get on
Barnes and Noble, get there, get in Amazon, all the
usual places.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
What do you hope Barry they take away?
Speaker 4 (14:33):
Well, I want people to become active. I don't want
you to say there's nothing I can do for these people.
Of course there is. Find a Narcotics Synonymous meeting and
go in and say I made dinner? Would anybody like some?
Do it? Don't be afraid people will gobble up your food.
(14:55):
If you find an addict on the street and he's unconscious,
bile nine one one and get the ambulance there to
give him narkhan. Narkihan is administered by nasal insufflation. They'd
sprayed up the addict's nose and they magically save him.
If you have a family member who's an addict, don't
(15:19):
beat your breast and say what should I do? I
can't do anything with this kid. Yes you can. You
can say to him, would you like to get clean?
I'll help you find out where the nearest rehab is,
give him the address. You've done more for that child
than you could ever do. Just get active, Just be
(15:43):
an active American. Do what you can do. Family class stranger.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Yeah, sage advice, great advice.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Actually so you've written We're overdosed, and now you have
a taste for writing, and you've got another book that's
coming out, Boomer Dad, A lifetime of resiliency, endurance and disconnection.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Give us a tease of that. What's this book about?
Speaker 4 (16:13):
Well, let's see twenty five years ago when I was
traveling to Europe every other week and exhausted, and I
began to think, what am I doing here? I also
suffered a heart attack. I was fifty two years old.
(16:33):
I was looking at a house. I had a heart
attack right in a driveway. I drove myself to the hospital.
I said, I got I'm having a heart attack. A
week later, I was in open heart surgery. Well that
kind of changed my life. I decided traveling to Europe
threatened my life. And three weeks after my open heart surgery,
(16:59):
when I was still seeping a little bread stuff out
of the where they cut me, I went skin diving
in Mexico. I took my European colleagues snorkeling in the
Gulf of Mexico, and they looked at me and said,
isn't it a little soon for you to go? I said, ah,
(17:20):
I'm fine, I'm fine, and I'm swimming along staring at
a beautiful bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, and I
see a barracuda looking for lunch, and I said, you
know what, this is stupid, and I got back in
the boat. That's resiliency.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
I like it. That's resiliency.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
And the book is about all those things, the things
that happened to you. What it's like being a boomer dad.
You mentioned you have a fifteen year old right now.
Speaker 4 (17:54):
Yeah, I have a fifty year old and a forty
eight year old also. I yeah, well that's the product
of two marriages.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
And I never expected to end up single parenting though,
And I'm single parenting my fifteen year old four days
a week. Wow. So he goes to his mom on weekends.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
What's that like.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
It's a lot of work. It's tiring. He comes to
me nine thirty at night. It's the dad, can you
do a load of wash? Richard. I don't want to
fold laundry at eleven o'clock at night.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
I'll do it in the morning.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
But I'm doing all these housework things that I I
guess I'm good at. I don't know, right.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Was it fun for you to write boomer Dad.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
No, Boomer Dad. I struggled. It was fun to write
We're Overdosed because it had a higher purpose, if you will, right.
And plus it was my first book, so I really
had to finish it. Boomer Dad. One of my readers
said to me, you got to do a memoir. You
(19:09):
have to. It's your legacy. So I started it, and
I struggled with it, and I wrote ten thousand words,
and then I had to finish Boomer Dad. And now
I have to market boomer Dad. And finally I did it.
It's sixty eight sixty nine thousand words. Wow. Finished it,
(19:30):
and people have read it and said to me, hey,
this is pretty inspirational. I said, really, you mean I
nailed it, And they said, yeah, You've had a hell
of a life. So I wrote boomer Dad.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Nice. I like the contrast of the two books.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
And it's always delightful to talk to you, Barry Golds.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
You are an inspiration.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
And again we talked about you know, your overdose word,
We're overdosed. Actually we're overdosed, and boomer Dad of course
coming up. And again it's always a pleasure to chat
with you.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
Thank you, Well, my pleasure is mine Pleasure is Mine
and my third book. I have a proposal into my agent.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
We'll wait for that one. I like it.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
Thanks Parry, thank you very much for this opportunity.
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