Another day, another round of doctors. I had 5 I was going to see that day. Dr. M at 9:00, back pain from slipping on the ice (or so I would tell him). I was good at faking the injuries. When I first started, I was so nervous and so afraid I’d get caught but now that I know I can have a ready supply, it’s easy. No problem with Dr. M. “No, Doctor I don’t have any questions, and yes, if I’m still in pain after a week, I’ll call”. Uh huh, you betcha I will. On to Dr. J’s office. Um, Neck pain, maybe a pinched nerve. I played that one off really well too and got my second prescription for Oxycontin for the day. My next appointment was across the river at Dr. R’s office. This guy turned out to be a gold mine! He was really loose with the pain pills and told me just to call when I needed more and he’d refill the prescription.
I hit a snag with the next appointment, Dr. W’s office. Seems I had gone to that one too often and he was starting to notice. He said he’d give me one more prescription but if I still was having trouble after that then I’d need to go to pain management and physical therapy. Dr. number 5 flat out said no. He recommended …blah, blah, yadda, yadda. Yeah, ok doc, thanks. I went to 4 different pharmacies to fill the prescriptions and held onto one of them. I went home with my treasure and called my friend Sheila to tell her I struck gold. She said she’d be right over. While I waited, I went through the stack of unpaid last notice bills and notes from the kid’s school. I figured I’d get to them sooner or later but now it was time to enjoy my score.
It was Sheila who taught me that you can chew the Oxy for even more of a buzz, or you can crush it and snort it or mix it with water and inject it. Jeez, the house was a pit. I don’t know when the last time I cleaned it was. When the knock came at the door, I figured it was Sheila. It wasn’t. It was Child Protective Services. They got a call from the school. They wanted to see the kids and the house. What the hell? Don’t these people call ahead? When the kids came out, I’d really wished I’d had cleaned them up. Of course, the CPS people weren’t happy with the condition of my house either but said that the kids were fed and gave me a week to get the house clean. As they were leaving, in walked Sheila. “What did they want”? She asked me. “Nothing” was my reply. On to partying!
I became addicted to Oxycontin my senior year in high school following a football injury that gave me a broken collarbone. Even after my doctor stopped prescribing it, I was able to get my hands on it thanks to a dealer at school. This happened in September and in May, my family sat me down and got me into a drug treatment program. I was able to make up my last bit of coursework following my stay at the drug rehab center and began getting my life back together. I lost the football scholarship I was aiming for but planned to enroll at the local college.
I had just been out of treatment for a few days when my mother had a minor stroke. It surprised the family as she was incredibly healthy, a non-smoker, athletic and never sick. When her neurologist said it was most likely stress induced, I was beside myself with guilt. I took care of her religiously. I helped her when she got out of the hospital and I fixed meals for her. My uncles and their families helped, too. I was just really scared I was going to lose my mom.
I drove her back and forth to physical therapy during those weeks she was on a walker. I had so much guilt inside me. I felt like her stroke was my fault. By Thanksgiving, she was getting around on her own but my guilt was so great that I had to fight the desire for Oxycontin even more. I just wanted to forget but I knew I could not let my mother down again.
We have a tradition at Thanksgiving to go around the table and say what we are grateful for. Several said they were grateful my mom was okay. When it was her turn, she said she was grateful to have a son like me who was there to help her when she needed it the most. I broke down and turned to her and told her she would have never had the stroke if it weren’t for me to start with. My grandfather said that wasn’t true and so did my mom and the rest of the family. We all helped each other when a family member needed it the most just as we always had. The family helped me with my addiction so I could be there to help my mother.
When it was my turn to give thanks, I said I was grateful to have the smartest mother in the world to get me in touch with a successful drug rehab program so I could be there for her when she needed it. That was six years ago. Now I counsel other drug dependent kids. And my mother? She is doing great and just as proud of me as I am of her.
High school was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I was on the football team, had a beautiful girlfriend and I was headed to a scholarship at my dream college. Then I broke my collarbone. I was benched for the rest of the season. The pain was awful and my doctor put me on oxycontin. When it came time to get off of it, I fudged and told him I was still in pain. He had no choice but to believe me. You see, the oxycontin helped me forget that my life was over in my opinion.
My mother became concerned about my medication. Although I was an adult in the eyes of the law, having turned 18 just days before my injury, I was still her child and she badgered my doctor about monitoring my medication. He could not really discuss it with her but he told me he was going to stop my prescription at my next appointment. I panicked.
That is when I went to talk to one of the kids I had never really hung out with but who was rumored at school to be able to get his hands on anything. It cost me a lot but he was able to keep me in oxycontin for the rest of the school year.
My mother, however, was not about to let me turning 18 prevent her from stepping in and she bugged me constantly about the changes she was seeing in my personality, my grades and my day to day life. My girlfriend dumped me. My friends on the football team stopped coming around. I am sure I cared but the addicted state I was in prevented me from really feeling much of anything at that point.
Then one day in May, I came home from school and my mother was in the living room with my grandparents, my uncles and our minister. There was a stranger there, too. They did what was called an intervention. The stranger was a drug counselor and they all told me I needed help. I was so angry that they had teamed up on me. I felt like I was in the end zone being tackled with my teammates just standing on the sidelines.
That was not really the case, though. My family were my teammates but they were supporting me 100%. They had my back. They got me into a treatment program. My family saved my life. Because of the intervention that day, I was able to be there the following August when my mother needed me the most.
