A brush with fame leads to thoughts on over-use of drugs

I met Tom Petty in Bigfork two years ago in a downtown bar, very early in the morning. I had no need to drink and meeting him was a surprise. Petty was drinking, but I assume rock stars have a whole different time-zone; night being morning and morning being night.

His regalia of long draping blonde hair, sunglasses, drinking by himself, made me believe the impossible. On a lone bar, I saddled up alongside him and ordered a Coke. He ignored me. But finally I made a move, “Excuse me, sir, has anyone ever told you, that you look like a famous rock-music star?” That was the best line I could come up with, not wanting him to run away, or punch me in the nose.

Slowly, he turned to look at me, wary of being identified, and replied in a melodious voice, “Yeah, that’s happened a time or two!” He then turned back around, and ignored me. Possibly because fame is unpredictable. So, we sat there ignoring each other. Actually he was ignoring me, and I could see I wasn’t going to get much further with this world-famous singer.

Not wanting to be a pain, I slipped off my chair and slowly walked out the bar, but not before making one smart remark for him to remember. “Well, you don’t have to be Petty about it!” I thought that was clever — and possibly it was.

Leaving a good impression with people is something I’m still working on.

I’m sad that Tom Petty died this year at 66 of a drug overdose, and angry that part of it was an overdose of Oxycontin.

The obituary downplayed the primary cause of his death because he died of prescription drugs. But Montana suffers from it every day. Undoubtedly, many other states suffer as well. People die, people lose their minds, and people are murdered. It’s a nationwide epidemic.

Many reports of our recent tragedies, reported from Las Vegas to Florida, have carefully hidden the obituaries and medical reports of the lunatics and mass murderers. Most of them are on powerful prescription medicine and the media is hiding the medical profession’s over-use of this drug. We need medical oversight, and we need it quickly in this nation.

We should not get off track and declare it’s a Second Amendment problem. There is way too much damage, and way too much suffering, going on, and America has little time left to fix it.

Donohue is a resident of Kalispell.