The world lost a good woman last week.  A woman whose life was clouded years ago by prescription drug addiction.  A woman whose recent years became a tragic struggle with dementia.  She was fifty-eight years old.  Her husband and her brother and her Mom gave her the gift of remaining in her own home until she breathed her last, when she was finally able to rest in peace.

My own Mom became a prescription drug addict and battled that for nineteen and a half years of my life.  She died when I was almost twenty; the cause of death was listed as accidental choking, but I believe the real cause of death was aspiration of food following an unwitnessed seizure.  She had seizures sometimes when she was coming down off of a weekend overdose.

I’m not sure how our friend’s addiction story began, but my Mom’s began when a doctor casually took Valium from his desk drawer and offered it to her.  That was the beginning and it never got better.

My kids have had their wisdom teeth removed in recent years.  The oral surgeon casually offered them a prescription for Percocet, an opioid pain reliever.  The surgeon offered no warning about possible addiction, no word of caution at all.  The internet, in its first sentence about Percocet, cautions against the addictive nature of the drug.

We have an opioid addiction crisis in this country.  Opioid overdoses caused over 70,000 deaths in 2019.  In 2017, the Health and Human Services declared Opioid addiction a national emergency.  And yet, oral surgeons are still casually prescribing opioids for pain relief following wisdom teeth removal.  And this casual approach to potentially addictive prescription drugs is likely happening in professional offices all over the country.

The woman we lost last week, and my Mom…they were lost to this life long before they breathed their last.  Victims, perhaps, of a casual, flippant approach to potentially addictive prescription medications.  We can do better. 

Calling for change,

Jill

©Jill Couch