PRESCRIPTION FOR DISASTER

Though I had read about it a good bit, and even served as a volunteer probation officer once, dealing with a couple of heroin addicts, the truly devastating effects of drug addiction never really hit home until I realized that my son was an addict. Mike (not his real name) is 24 years old and has been hooked on several prescription drugs now for many years. His drug use began in late middle school with marijuana, and evolved over the years to include experimentation with several other drugs. However, none have been as destructive, both physically and emotionally, as the particularly sinister prescription drug, Oxycodone. This now-infamous pain medication has not only led to a powerful addiction, but the ramifications of its use have nearly destroyed Mike’s life, causing all manner of legal and health problems, including obesity, the loss of nearly all his teeth, the near destruction of his sinuses (due to snorting the crushed pills), and ultimately, his incarceration.

To see a kind-hearted, loving, intelligent, creative and talented kid, turn into a self-indulgent, desperate, dishonest, manipulative person, often in fear for his life from various drug dealers and sleazebags and riddled with medical and hygiene problems, is quite simply incredible to me. And, of course, Mike is not alone—far from it.

The epidemic of prescription drug abuse is much more far reaching than most might think. Mike once told me that, at one point in time, back in the early days of high school, when he was on the Honor Roll and was one of the most popular kids in school (the “class clown”), he didn't know anyone who did not do drugs of one sort or another. That, I said, sounded like quite an exaggeration, but he assured me it was true, and also that he knew (either casually or personally) practically everyone at the school. There were, he said, a few egghead or nerdy types that probably didn't do drugs, and maybe a few health-conscious athletes (though most of the football players did take steroids), but other than those he couldn't think of one kid who didn't at least dabble in drugs, most of which were of the prescription variety.

I have asked Mike to keep a journal while in jail, and as soon as he is able to buy some writing materials, he said he will (we cannot send such things to him, only money orders for his account, from which he then can buy things from the proverbial “company store”). He has, in the past, kept a journal, and as the years passed and he became more honest with me about his drug problems, his writings began to reveal a lot about the overall drug situation among teenagers of the 90s and early 2000s.

According to Mike, though marijuana was prevalent during his middle school and early high-school years, and other illegal drugs were also available, around the time he began high school, the drug scene changed in a way that drew in kids who might never have even considered doing illegal drugs. That change, he said, was due to the discovery by some kids that the prescription drugs they found in their parents’ medicine cabinets could also be used to get high. And the main reason they (and others they informed of this unexpected treat) were willing to try these drugs, was that they were not illegal, but were actually prescribed by doctors, and therefore “must be safe.” Once they realized what these drugs were being prescribed for, it was a simple thing to fake the necessary symptoms and have the drugs prescribed directly to them, rather than having to steal them in small quantities from parents. And in many cases, it was the parents themselves who facilitated this drug supply by believing the kids medical complaints, sending them to their insurance-paid-for doctors, and supplying them with insurance-supplemented prescriptions for drugs that would otherwise have cost hundreds of dollars.

Soon, alerted to the possibilities, there entered the clever drug dealers, many of whom were not street-drug pushers or anything like that at first; but were just kids or young adults who had access to money, and would offer to pay for clandestine doctor visits and expensive prescriptions, if the “mules” they supplemented would agree to give them a portion of the pills. And so began the era of teenage doctor shopping, and an explosion of pill-pushing doctors, who prescribed everything from muscle relaxants and anxiety meds, to the many painkillers, of which the worst offender was Oxycodone (basically synthetic heroin). These prescriptions were often prescribed with little or no testing or verification of the supposed physical problem they were intended to treat (back pain being the most prevalent imaginary ailment). And, of course, in the case of psychotropic drugs, there really was no way to verify medically that someone was suffering from anxiety or depression.

All this was enhanced and made ethically acceptable for the doctors by the fact that Oxycodone, when first placed on the market, was touted as being non-addictive, due to its synthetic nature. There are now dozens of lawsuits against Purdue Pharma and other manufacturers of pain killers like OxyContin, that contain Oxycodone, which is now known to be just as addictive as morphine or heroin.

Eventually, the underground trade in illicit prescription drugs became a large cottage industry, mostly carried out in the middle and high schools and among the created addicts who had grown into their early twenties. It starts with the idea (either original or induced by a peer or a teenage drug dealer) that a kid can go to a doctor, claim some type of ailment, receive prescription drugs, have the drug dealer pay for the doctor visit and prescription, give the drug dealer, say, half of the pills, then use the rest for recreational purposes. Of course, the newly created addict soon begins to run out of pills before his/her next doctor visit, so he/she decides to go to a different doctor with the same complaints. Meanwhile, the addict enters the world of drug trading in order to satisfy his/her needs until more pills can be acquired. This trading scenario, which is rampant among all these addicts, basically works like this: the addict, in almost desperate need of pills, goes back to the drug dealer (or a fellow addict) and begs for a supply. The drug dealer agrees, but only on the condition that the addict pays back twice (or more) the number of pills he/she has been advanced, thus reducing the addict’s “net gain” at each turn.

It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to extrapolate what happens from there on out. The situation almost automatically compounds itself, turning into a vicious circle, wherein the drug addict requires more and more, allowing the drug dealer to demand more and more, and so on until the addict begins committing crimes to acquire money, or cheats his/her dealer and is assaulted or killed, or dies of an overdose, or ends up in jail or prison. Meanwhile, the dealer has no real worries about losing a particular “mule,” because there is a nearly endless supply at any local middle or high school.

I know this scenario will sound to most folks like something that would only happen in the ghettos or rougher neighborhoods of large cities, but this all took (and takes) place in the most academically and socially prominent schools in Pasco County, Florida, which now serves as an upper-middle-class bedroom community of Tampa. Unfortunately, most parents suffer under the illusion that if a child is brought up strict enough, in the right neighborhood, with enough restrictions on his/her lifestyle, and is well provided for, they need not worry about him or her getting involved with drugs. Actually, this is far from true, especially when it comes to prescription drugs. I have known many of Mike’s now-addicted friends (including those who have died from drug abuse) from early on, and they run the gamut from modestly well off to rich, strict to liberal parenting, restricted to unsupervised social interactions, deeply religious to agnostic families, and just about every other variable you can think of. Plus, they all went to the same, highly rated schools. And the idea that kids could not possibly hide their drug use from parents, even in the strictest most heavily supervised and restrictive family environments is, according to Mike and his friends, a running joke to them.

There are no-doubt some exacerbating factors in the lives of many teenagers (including Mike) such as a low self-esteem due to the growing obesity epidemic, wanting to be accepted as “one of the guys/girls,” etc. However, according to Mike, it is more a matter of proximity, desire and peer pressure than anything else. And, as any seasoned parent who is honest with him or herself will acknowledge, once a child becomes a teenager, outside influences from peers become far more important and persuasive than anything a parent says or warns against. If you add to this the fact that parents often take prescription drugs for one thing or another, the idea that there might be danger in abusing them can be nearly non-existent in the minds of their children.

I’m sure this will sound like an exaggeration, however, I am not kidding when I say that no less than seven of Mike’s “friends” from high school have died in the past four years. Including his “best friend,” and three young girls. All these deaths have been associated with drugs, both prescription and illegal, mostly in deadly combinations and quantity. Some have been suicides attributed to anxiety disorders and depression, clearly brought on by drug use and exacerbated by the over prescribing of psychotropics. And at least one was due to an auto accident caused by a driver impaired by prescription drugs and alcohol.

Of course, this epidemic of prescription drug abuse also leads to other drug use, since the “high” created by the prescription drugs lowers inhibitions and opens the way for experimentation with just about anything out there. Drugs like LSD, ecstasy, crystal meth, cocaine, heroin, and many others are still readily available, and are used by kids as well, especially when they are first introduced to getting high through prescription drugs, which they thought of as “safe” in the beginning (Mike’s “best friend” had a total of six different drugs in his system, plus a good deal of alcohol, when he died).

I have spent hours, days even, discussing this with Mike in an attempt to get him to see that he needed to break the chain and exit the vicious circle. But even though it was crystal clear to him that he was headed down a dead-end street, with physical and mental devastation at the end, if not death or prison, he was unable to stop. Not that he didn’t try. Many times while he was living with me as a young adult, he would voluntarily give me his pills and let me ration them out to him, in hopes that he could eventually cut down on his intake, but it never worked. If he couldn’t convince me to stop the rationing, he would simply steal them back, or make other arrangements to get more from his dealer(s) and “friends” through the trading scenario, or by doctor shopping.

Everyone has heard about Rush Limbaugh and his addiction to Oxycodone, an addiction that led him into doctor shopping and other illegal activities. And there have been other high-profile cases in the news that have begun to expose what is really only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to prescription drug abuse. What is not getting enough publicity as of yet, however, is the enormous and growing problem among this nation’s youth that promises a next generation of addicts entering the workplace and society with enormous handicaps that will put extreme pressure on our legal and medical systems, not to mention causing the deaths of many and leaving families devastated with grief.

What I am hoping to do with this entry is to motivate parents who are either in denial about the growing epidemic or are simply ignoring the facts, to open their eyes and work hard to curb prescription drug abuse before it traps their children in the vicious cycle that has captured Mike and millions of others. Mike hopes to use his journal entries and experiences over the years to put together a book, or perhaps a series of articles on the subject, in order to help raise consciousness among parents and others and alert the public to the growing storm that approaches. Perhaps such personal reporting, written in first person with true stories, insights and observations, will have more impact than cold, factual, news reports buried on Page 14 of the newspaper. In any case, it is something to hope for and something that may help give Mike some purpose in his life; a life that has been adrift like bottle with no message bobbing on a sea of chemically induced apathy now for several years.

In the end, though, it will be up to parents and, to a lesser degree, the schools and the media, to educate and alert the next generation of kids to the truly devastating effects of prescription drug abuse. The time to do this is in grade school, not when kids become teenagers, which will often be far too late. As much as parents fear discussing such things with younger kids, and as hard as it may be to do so, believe me it is far easier than seeing one’s child lost to the prison system; or to the psychiatric ward; or, ultimately, to the morgue.