Addiction prevention – Page 4

POWER-less or POWER-ful?

Last week I wrote about regrets that John and I deal with – wishing that we had known about some type of long-lasting recovery option for our son, JL – and the SMART recovery approach and how it differs from traditional 12-Step programs such as AA. Continuing on with the concepts about individuals who struggle with life-threatening addictions of any variety, I have a few more thoughts.

With the genetic / disease model of addiction that scientific research has brought to the table, there are many in the recovery world who feel this mindset gives those living with addiction a green light to excuse their responsibility, their power of choice. But I disagree. It is clear that we had nothing to do with our family tree, our genetic inheritance (1). We were “powerless” as far as choosing to be born into our family. Yet, this doesn’t mean we are powerless to overcome the negative Continue reading “POWER-less or POWER-ful?”

Offering Recovery Options

One of the most recurring regrets John and I deal with is wishing that we had known about some type of long-lasting recovery option for our son, JL. He was becoming recovery resistant after so many cycles of detox and recovery programs and relapse. As the opioid epidemic sped up with mounting deaths by overdose, we now have statistics that make it clear that it usually takes many recovery/relapse cycles before a person can maintain long-term sobriety – especially for the main victims of this epidemic – those who started using opioids at a young age. Like our son. It’s not that he didn’t want to be clean and sober. He did, with all his heart. But opioids don’t let go easily or quickly. Continue reading “Offering Recovery Options”

Family Addiction

I had heard about Beautiful Boy by David Sheff for several years and finally made the time to read it. I wasn’t sure it would be of great interest to me since his son’s drug of choice was mainly methamphetamine – and his son is still alive, while mine is not.

It has been hard for me to put down, for many reasons. Sheff is a great writer and tells their family’s story in a way that brings the people and events to life. But what I find most significant – and, sadly, most similar to our story – are the dynamics of a family living with addiction. And it is also very similar to other families I know and ones I have read about in other books such as Gorgeous Girl by Mary K. Pershall.

The similarities? First, there is the genetic component – mainly alcoholism – in the Continue reading “Family Addiction”

Dreamland (Young Adult Adaptation): The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones (2019)

I am devoting this blog to a review by Shelf Awareness of an essential book in the battle against early exposure to opioids which has destroyed so many young lives – our son’s included – in the past 20 years. Please give a copy of this book to every teenager and young adult you know and love.

Journalist Sam Quinones’s lauded 2015 Dreamland was, according to our review, “a comprehensive and empathetic investigation into the Mexican pipeline feeding the United States heartland’s growing appetite for opiates.” This adaptation, pared down for a young adult audience, is a sharp, engrossing work of narrative nonfiction.
Dreamland snares the young reader immediately with the story of Matt Schoonover from Columbus, Ohio, who began using prescription opiate painkillers in high school, became addicted and moved to black tar heroin when the “street OxyContin” became too pricy. A day after returning from three weeks in rehab, at the age of 21, Matt fatally overdosed. Continue reading “Dreamland (Young Adult Adaptation): The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones (2019)”

What We Wish We Had Known…

August 2nd was the 5th anniversary of our son, John Leif’s, death by overdose from heroin. As we look back over the years, there is so much information available now than there was for the families of young people addicted to opioids in the early years of this century. So much we wish we had done differently with this son of our hearts – if we had only known.

In the early years of his addiction and recovery programs, we learned how co-dependency and enabling went part and parcel with alcoholism and addiction in family systems. We read all we could about it and worked hard to change from enabling and need-based love to detaching and loving with “tough love.” Sadly, as we now understand, tough love does not work for opioid addiction, because as Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, says: “The concept of letting children hit bottom with opioids is not the best strategy, because in hitting bottom they may die.” Continue reading “What We Wish We Had Known…”

BEING A FRIEND WHO CARES

The pervasiveness of opioid addiction was made clear to my husband and I, once again, on a recent trip. We were in California at one of our favorite Italian restaurants having a chat with one of the owners – catching up after not seeing each other for a few years. Somehow, yet very common for us, the conversation turned to the opioid epidemic and our son’s death from overdose. Our friend remembered us telling him about it, paused, and asked: “Do you mind if I tell you a personal story about heroin?”

Continue reading “BEING A FRIEND WHO CARES”

ANXIETY, Part 2: Appeal of Opioids to Millennials

Is there a particular reason that opioids have such an appeal to Millennials? In an article in the New Yorker Magazine (http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/02/americas-opioid-epidemic.html) entitled “The Poison We Pick,” Andrew Sullivan discusses the modern American life that we pioneered and how “epic numbers of American are killing themselves with opioids to escape it.” Sullivan goes on to say: “It is a story of pain and the search for an end to it. It is a story of how the most ancient painkiller known to humanity has emerged to numb the agonies of the world’s most highly evolved liberal democracy. Just as LSD helps explain the 1960’s, cocaine the 1980’s, and crack the 1990’s, so opium defines this new era. I say era, because this trend will, in all probability, last a very long time. The scale and darkness of this phenomenon is a sign of a civilization in a more acute crisis than we knew, a nation overwhelmed by a warp-speed, postindustrial world, a culture yearning to give up, indifferent to life and death, enraptured by withdrawal and nothingness.” Continue reading “ANXIETY, Part 2: Appeal of Opioids to Millennials”

ANXIETY, Part 1

In the summer of 2005, we discovered our 16 year old son was smoking “BT” ––Black Tar Heroin. A few weeks later, while we were in the midst of his withdrawal and simply putting one foot in front of the other as we searched everywhere trying to find the next step, I was rushed to the ER. After going to bed one night, my heart began racing and pounding out of my chest. After an hour, John called 911. At the hospital, I was given tests to see if I was having a heart attack. No. The diagnosis: extreme anxiety––deep, un-verbalized, foreboding. I was given IV morphine and as my heart rate slowed down, I slept. Who else but our children can affect our hearts at such a fundamental and unconscious level? Continue reading “ANXIETY, Part 1”

American Pain

From my earliest memories, I have had leg aches. They come on fairly suddenly for no apparent reason. It wasn’t until my 20’s when I figured out they related to the weather and changes in barometric pressure. I know, it sounds like folk-magic. But it’s true . As I was growing up, my parents would wrap my knees in stretch bandages and rub my legs with witch hazel. One thing they never did was offer me a pill for my pain. Never. In the pre-1980’s world, pain was part of life and mostly bearable.

My how things have changed. America–with 5% of the world’s population–went from consuming less than 5% of the world’s prescription opioids in the 1960’s to now consuming some of the highest percentages of prescription opioids such as oxycodone, morphine, fentanyl, etc.

In 2015, John Temple, an investigative journalist and journalism professor, wrote American Pain. It was one of three key books released that year in response to our opioid epidemic, the other two being Dreamland and The Big Fix. The title is taken from the “king” of the Florida pill mills, American Pain, a mega-clinic expressly created to serve addicts posing as patients. From a fortress-like former bank building with security guards, American Pain’s five doctors distributed massive quantities of oxycodone to hundreds of customers a day, mostly traffickers and those addicted, who came by the van load. Former strippers operated the pharmacy, counting out pills and stashing cash in garbage bags. Under their lab coats, the doctors carried guns. Continue reading “American Pain”

MYSTERIOUS WAYS

I love mysteries. From the time I began reading on my own, I gravitated toward mysteries: first Nancy Drew, then Agatha Christie, Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle. My husband and I continue to read and watch mysteries covering topics from historical to crime to espionage. Maybe my penchant for asking “Why?” is at the root of this affinity. The challenge of figuring out a conundrum and the satisfaction when the mystery is finally solved. Continue reading “MYSTERIOUS WAYS”