Zahwa G. Pringle 8/22/95 – 10/29/19
Zahwa is a radiant light and is loved by so many!
He left this plane at age 24 after a hard four years of immense struggle with opiates prescribed for a broken clavicle in a skiing accident at Spirit Mountain.
I miss him here on earth so much and it hurts to think about the dreams we had and the plans I wanted to see him fulfill in his young life. An “out of order death” is a difficult journey.
Now, I carry the medicine of those four years being by his side almost every day, the medicine of addiction, of what opioids are doing to our people.
Zahwa had a huge group of friends, both in Santa Cruz, CA back “home” and also in The Northland, MN. He loved to make Tiramisu and his favorite restaurant was The Kensington in The Twin Cities, in Duluth, we would have special occasions at Scenic Cafe on the shore of Mother Superior.
He was skiing in the terrain park on February 5, 2016, fell on a rail, and severely broke his right clavicle. My being a “thyroid obsessed” Momma, as he told me I learned many things through this experience of injury and addiction. I revived him not less than 25 times with Narcan, followed ambulances, brought him to the ER with Tachycardia and Diaphoresis, stayed by his side through treatment, and defended him over and over.
It came to be that he overdosed many times due to fentanyl in the street supply chain. I would “sense” him and go find him where he was. He would be revived by paramedics and look up and say, “Mom, how did you know where I was?” Eventually, he told the police and paramedics as this was quite an unusual addiction for “slo,” where most people feel sedated, slowed down, Zahwa was energized and no one knew why! He sweat, he got energized, spastic, he began to sing and organize things, “clean,” and it was that most of 2018 and 2019 I was unable to sleep for fear that he would overdose, my fatigue being so high that he may be dead when I woke up.
I have interviewed many who have had a long-term addiction and all have related that they never saw anyone like Zahwa when he was using opioids. He was tested many times if we were in the ER and doctors surmised that he was on meth or a stimulant, perhaps a sympathomimetic drug but each time it came back positive only for opioids. I now know why he and a few others had this reaction. I wouldn’t stop researching all those nights I knew not to go to sleep and still, since his passing I have dug and dug to find answers even meeting with Dr. Watts who owns the HTMA lab for over forty years.
Zahwa is one of the hundreds of thousands of people who struggled with anxiety and depression, and who got caught up in a pharmaceutical trap. These drugs should never have been created nor dispensed. Zahwa regularly overheard me teaching scores of thyroid workshops and his thyroid I had palpated on my massage table had felt like goiter. As a young man, he suffered from energy loss, fatigue, insomnia, and the break on his clavicle was in part due to a bone cyst – common in thyroid deficiency!
I have studied, researched, taught, guided, palpated thyroids for decades. I have done my best to educate people in the Goiter regions like The Great Lakes of the US that they have even more concern, and those who live on The Mesabi Iron Range, to have this test due to absorbing and having higher concentrations of iron in their blood. Iron feeds cancer.
Zahwa loved the outdoors, surfing, skiing, snowboarding, hunting since the age of 12, he was a full-fledged marksman by age 15, he could go out get a grouse, clean it and cook it up. He was a strong entrepreneur, a cannabis lover like many with the issues that are calmed by cannabis.
He had dreams of living in Palos Verdes, California by the beach, Air B&B stays and sampling life, having a boy one day in football. I, had dreams of being grandma, living on some land, growing and preparing our whole foods, homeschooling my babies and writing my books, helping people heal, getting my long-earned medicine out.
I longed to show Zahwa that he needed three elements and had elevated lead, arsenic and that his levels could be balanced by nutritional correction. The thing is that when our children go to “school,” which I never wanted, but was a solo maverick Momma, they absorb the mainstream culture, eat like many, drink the drinks, go to fast food and drink Mt. Dew all of which contribute to nutritional problems and energy lack, thyroid imbalance is greater the result of these habits but there is a drive in a child to do what everyone else does: eat pizza, cheese, drink soft drinks, and there is often little nutrition.
My heart is broken – the joy of my life is with me spiritually, he took me through The Realms which I never expected, but I saw a great many things on his journey and he is with me now, one of the greatest Shamans ever.
I love you Zahwa,
MamaZ