On a brisk day at a restaurant outside Chicago, Deb Robertson sat with her teenage grandson to talk about her death.
She’ll probably miss his high school graduation. She declined the extended warranty on her car. Sometimes she wonders who will be at her funeral.
Those things don’t frighten her much. The 65-year-old didn’t cry when she learned two months ago that the cancerous tumors in her liver were spreading, portending a tormented death.
But later, she received a call. A bill moving through the Illinois Legislature to allow certain terminally ill patients to end their own lives with a doctor’s help had made progress.
Then she cried.
“Medical-aid in dying is not me choosing to die,” she says she told her 17-year-old grandson. “I am going to die. But it is my way of having a little bit more control over what it looks like in the end.”
That same conversation is happening beside hospital beds and around dinner tables across the country, as Americans who are nearing life’s end negotiate the terms with themselves, their families and, now, state lawmakers.
I wonder if you could grow your own papaver somniferum? It’s the same species as poppy seeds for bagels or baking. It’s grown ornamentally so I think it only “becomes” illegal when you milk the pods. Maybe it’s too fun, I don’t know I have no experience with opiates.
If I lived somewhere suitable I’d probably (eventually) try as I have some previous knowledge of growing …stuff.
With that said though, due to the local climate and amount of poppies you’d need even for a limited personal supply it’d be very suboptimal at best.
It’s also a lot harder to properly dose and keep your tolerance low with poppies unless you really know what you’re doing.