If not and dont wish to talk about it , click out of the thread. Its a sensitive issue. i know it affects alot more people then you think
I live in Union County, my town borders Morris County as well. Anyway, everytime I catch up with a HS buddy or a friend I hear about more and more kids I know (and I know their families) getting hooked on oxycontin then moving to heroin. Some of these kids are the ones who come from great families and have been brought up as best as possible. Addiction sure doesn't discriminate.
My cousin lives in Ocean County and just came out to my Aunt and Uncle that he is addicted to opiates( pills, heroin) Basically any opiate to calm down his withdrawal. He says that cars are constantly running from Toms River up to Newark and bringing back dope and pills daily. I know the State Police just stepped into Newark and are going to try and lock down the gangs and what not. He told me its easier to find heroin then pot down there. Thats crazy
Anyway, he is going into a rehab, but I literally know of so many kids who are having to do this. HS coaches, insurance brokers, to Fire Squad guys I went to HS with or one of their brother or sisters. I live in a small town.
Ive seen it ruin some friends lives in less then a year. Why is this happening? Ive already had at least 5 kids I graduated with overdose and die the past 5 years. One was a dear friend.
And to think all these thugs making that money is sickening. Dishing out poison to make a living?
I know people will say its due to parenting, but that's not true for all. Many of these young adults come from the best. Great dads and mothers. Supportive brothers and sisters. They just cant stop
I hope our government can come out with a remedy for these physically addicting substances. Opiate users just use to function. They dont even get 'high' after they become addicted. My cousin told me that after he realized he had a problem that he only continued to use so he wouldn't have to lose his job and he did the dope just to function during the work day so he wouldnt suffer withdrawal effects in front of co-workers like sweating and shaking, to throwing up and having cold spells
My mother does some volunteer work in my area and the numbers just keep growing. And the medicines they have to combat it suck. Ive heard of some horror stories of kids trying to kick this crap. I signed up to start volunteering at a local rehab, strictly dealing with people looking to live in a clean house, halfway house - whatever you may call it after they complete their 30 day rehab and 7 day detox.
Its depressing honestly, nothing seems to be working. Now my Uncle who is the best guy, is heartbroken. He thought he had a wrap on his kid. I tried talking sense into him several times but once their hooked, talking is only that- talking. So he lost a good job working for the local town municipality.
More of me ranting, but where is the answer to this? Anyone else have a family member battling this crap? The numbers keep rising by the month. Especially the northeastern part of our country.
Cocaine and pot are being replaced by opiates. Starting with percocets and ending with a needle in their arm shooting heroin or snorting heroin. So terrible. If anyone has any advice Ive probably heard it, but you never know.
It boggles my mind knowing that you will end up in prison, rehab, or a morgue and yet sooo many kids are doing this. Ive got like 5 cousins who are entering HS over the next few years and their parents(my cousins) are so worried.
My advice is simple yet may sound somewhat stupid. For the most part, it's out of his hands. Your uncle needs to seek out a support group. There are many sprouting up that deal with adolescent addiction for parents and other family members. You really feel all alone, and it's good to have people who have been there or are going through the same thing. It helps. People tend to point fingers and parents feel as if they caused this to happen, or did something wrong. For the most part, they didn't.
The second thing is to go to his doctor. The stress he's going to experience is beyond belief. His blood pressure, diet, sleeping patterns are going to be affected. He'll need to keep an eye on all his numbers.
Good luck to him and the family. Keep me posted.
Fortunately it never went beyond that.
Unfortunately it's been disastrous enough as is.
I've seen drugs(and alcohol)destroy many lives and there is seldom a common thread. Whether its poverty or exposure to temptation some people make it through and some don't.
I don't know if I feel sorry for many people anymore...but I do so hate to see a life thrown away.
Why even bother coming on the thread at all, if your only point is that rich people are less deserving of sympathy than poor people? Do you really think BillyBoy needs to hear "Good luck, I guess" from you? Is that your idea of being supportive? Or is it just your way of saying, "I really don't give a shit about your family, but I needed to read my name on a BBI thread so I posted on it anyway."
If you haven't got anything constructive to contribute on a thread about someone dealing with drug addiction in the family, maybe you should just stay the fuck off the thread.
He has been in shelters after losing his apt. The shelters are filled with drug addicts and other criminals. Sad story.
I know a few people who were addicted to painkillers but luckily most of them never used heroin. I know a few who took suboxone to help them quit.
I came to find out a lot of the losers she hung out with and got high with in high school are now all pushing/using oxycontin to the point of multiple prison terms, deaths, destroyed lives, etc. These were all well to do families whose parents were just plain shitty and let the kids do what they wanted and this was the result.
My wife's battle with percocet ended only to devolve into a truly bizarre 2 year period of ambien overdosing (again she took it during the day to get high unbeknownst to me) that ended with her crashing her car, then my car, then totaling her new car and almost killing herself and another driver while overdosing on ambien. I was forced to drive home from Albany about 10 hours after I arrived for camp after I found out she had been arrested and tossed in jail for DUI, causing an accident and apparently cussing out a magistrate and the arresting officers because her mind was so far gone on ambien.
During those two ambien years, our marriage just ripped apart, her behavior when on it was the stuff you see on movies and then some. Broken doors, smashed chairs, broken phones, a broken windshield, a broken garage door, wine bottles tossed downstairs and at appliances and all over our kitchen and this is on SEVERAL SEVERAL occassions. All of them she claims to have no memory of but countless days I woke up to some bizarre mess and her in a haze.
I think this speaks to the addictive personality, she has a brother in similar trouble for almost the identical things and the one thing they share is an enabling look the other way mother who just tosses money at them and always tell them how great they are doing. She is truly an awful parent in that way and I put a lot of this at her feet. My wife is supposedly in AA now but she has called me drunk on a few occassions rambling on about God knows what so clearly she doesn't take arrest, jail time, license restriction, court ordered classes, fines and countless court dates and legal fees enough of a deterrent. I moved out 5 months ago after she got out of jail and proceeded to try to kick over head stones in a historic VA town we were visiting after we were out celebrating with our friends. I had no idea she had downed nearly 2 bottles of wine while we were out having fun and out came the gnarly angry violent drunk I had hoped was gone. I had no choice but to leave, it killed me, still kills me and seeing her kill herself in numerous ways and endanger me forced my hand.
On the surface we appeared to be a happy couple and she painted herself as a successful career woman and happy wife but she was most of the time a drugged up or drunk mess only cleaning up long enough to do a few jobs, do some chores and have a few days of normalcy which would then devolve into some odd behavior and just stupidity for several days, then it was "i'm done drinking" and she'd eat well for 3 days, get upset and then dive into junk food, pills, booze or all three. It's her inability to cope with stress and her inability to express much verbally when things go badly for her or those around her. I think some is genetic, but I know for damn sure if she had a mother who was less concerned with what celebrities were wearing what and where her next expensive house item was coming form they may have had a chance. Her mom painted over all mistakes, never held them accountable and always bailed them out with not as much as a lecture or stern word it was always "mommy will fix it". Lovely woman, great mother in law, terrible person to be raised by though. She will soon have two of her 3 adult children moving back into her house because both have spouses who left due to the substance abuse and I honestly think she's perfectly OK with that.
We didn't have a whole of of touchy/feely parenting at home, my grandfather rule with an iron boot that he had no qualms about beating you over the head with (figuratively) if you got out of line. To the point where even taking an aspirin or Tylenol was considered weakness, pain was considered natural. I always thought it was funny and a little extreme, but I guess the further you stay away from the slippery slope the better.
I guess you didn't feel bad for rich parents who had their kids killed by Adam Lanza. Some people are so retarded.
Then there's the benzos, which are as hard, if not harder to ever get off. Anti depressants and speed drugs for "add" are also everywhere. I mean, this great nation of ours is loaded on pills.
Meth is terrible too.
I have a close friend and family member under its spell. And there's nothing I can do about it.
Pay no mind to anyone showing insensitivity on this thread. Some people float through life dodging rain drops, I guess.
Ditto. You got some serious sack to endure that and get out. Pray for your ex-wife. As hard as it seems to believe sometimes, I don't think anyone wants to be an addict.
- Dr. Michael Kelley
Truly frightening the power of addiction these substance hold.
Link - ( New Window )
And Headhunter is right. It was courageous of you to post it.
I'm very sorry for everyone who has to suffer through this.
I took every one of them, even after the pain was gone. I probably needed 20 for the pain, at most.
I never felt compelled to seek more out when they were gone, but that high was definitely strong enough where I can see people predisposed to addiction or who just liked the feeling for whatever reason motivated to acquire more pills by any means necessary.
I don't know anyone I'm aware of who has a problem, but I wouldn't be surprised by anyone.
Everyone on this thread has my thoughts and prayers.
Sometimes we all say something off the top of our heads without thinking it through.
And there's really no easy solution. Incarceration? Other than maybe (maybe) drying them out, what is it going to do? Might disrupt the supply, but it's still a bandage (and a costly bandage, with second and third order consequences) for a bullethole. Inpatient drug treatment for the families that have the resources to do so, but even that isn't going to work in a majority of cases, at least not the first time around.
That said, there was a point where I found myself taking one once every few days just for shits and giggles, so I purposely put an end to that to nip it in the bud before it turned into anything more. So I can definitely see where someone with an addictive personality can run into trouble.
2.There is tremendous pressure on physicians now to not prescribe narcotics.The amount of prescribed narcotics in the community will definitely decrease.
3.How many people will seek illegal drugs for treatment of pain is anyone's guess.
4.Heroin is far worse than any pill because it carries the risk of HIV and hepatitis.
Had a high school friend die from heroin addiction. Was an all star baseball player. Died 3 years after high school. I use to drive him to Paramus to get his methadone treatments. He always said he would kick the shit out any of us who even thought of trying the stuff. He died in 73'.
If anyone remembers, good old Joe Friday had a episode on Dragnet on trying to close down a pill mill doctor in LA. How long ago was that?
Pain pill mills in Fla. are basically done. Feds cracked down on them a few years back.
Buford. I'm like you. I still have vicodin left from a prescription from 2 years ago. Every once and a while I'll take a half of pill at bedtime if I'm sore somewhere. They do nothing to me but take pain away. Never had a feeling of getting "high" or have an urge to "need" one. Guess we are lucky that way.
http://www.shatterproof.org/
You can also hear him talk at the Clinton Foundation in 2013 where he tells his story and his son Brian's, when the organization was called Brian's Wish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wGjtajI0IE
Sorry if there's a way to embed link. I'm not that savvy!
This is a huge issue for our communities. It's robbing many of us of our key investment, resource and love.
We need to have a national response to this that moves beyond the simple stigma of moral failing to a rational approach to "getting high" whether pills, powders or even alcohol.
Quote:
with lots of money who don't fall into this, so this group of people are the least likely for me to feel sorry for. Good luck, I guess.
I guess you didn't feel bad for rich parents who had their kids killed by Adam Lanza. Some people are so retarded.
I do feel bad when people's lives get messed up no matter what their financial status--tragedy is tragedy.
However, this isn't a no-solution scenario that so many people find themselves in--without the means to address this from a medical standpoint. Without the education to know what to do. This group of folks is in a scenario where the means, the ability and the knowledge are there to a) try to avoid the situation from starting (see it coming; communicating with the kids), as it is happening, be aware of it and address it by every means possible. To me it sounded a little like Robert Downey Jr started a thread telling us how rough it was being wealthy because it is so easy to fall into the trap of drugs when you have a ton of dough and are bored.
Best of luck to the thread starter--I didn't mean to be a dick.
Good luck to you.
that's why you see so few smokers or fat people these days.
that's why you see so few smokers or fat people these days.
Being wealthy doesn't make you a great parent or immune to falling victim to drugs or alcohol..it actually makes them more accessible because you have the means to get them..
Being wealthy doesn't make you a great parent or immune to falling victim to drugs or alcohol..it actually makes them more accessible because you have the means to get them..
It amazes me how many people don't get this. Whenever I saw dealing going down in the projects, there was a common thread - expensive car that wasn't from around there. For some reason, people think living in a good neighborhood and having some money automatically insulates you from every evil the world has to offer.
To this day I still reach out to help her, I know it's not easy and I feel an obligation to assist. Marriage vows don't last and I'm not a church goer but I do firmly believe in the promise I made that day, it is that oath I took in front of my family and friends that keeps me helping her. It's the whole "What GOd has joined, no man may break" thing that really struck me and it still pushes me to help.
addiction is not a class issue. it hits every possible combo of class, race, sex, out there. It doesn't care if you're intelligent, stupid, hopeless, or have it all going for you. rules of logic need not apply.
that doesn't mean the individual doesn't hold a great deal of responsibility in the matter. It does, however, mean you're a big dumbass if your view is that 'you can afford rehab, what's your fucking problem?'.
I wasnt saying anything in regards to rich/poor families. I noted several times that this addiction doesnt discriminate. The poor, the rich, whoever. Im just saying it seems kids from great families(and a great family doesnt have to be 'rich' with money) are falling prey to this.
Its time the government really tries to find an opiate cure bc i've seen too many pointless 30 day rehabs not work. It has for some though so kudos to them. It just seems more then a month is needed to recover.
Thanks to those who can relate or have noticed this disturbing trend and added some advice or information to the convo. Why some people have to be dicks about everything is beyond me. I told those that didnt want to post about to exit. At yet i get a message telling me that someone doesnt care about my situation bc the user was rich? ADDICTION DOESNT DISCRIMINATE. Rich, poor, blck, white, latino, The homeless to CEO's to NFL players are all in the same situation. Thanks for the input guys
Special thanks also to Joey for the intimate revelation and heart wrenching story, and Kudos! to Sonic Youth for fixing himself. There's a lot of wisdom and insight above.
One general comment to add. I think the root or underlining of addiction is a mental disorder, and I think it's a mistake to just try to separate the "addiction" itself from some form of mental illness that precedes or at least coexists with it. We as Americans have far, far too little sympathy and support systems for mental illness in our culture, and I think it's sad. This I have dealt with, a little brother who I've been out of touch with for years because he's mentally ill, and I fear potentially violent.
Joey, watch out that you have not been sucked into some kind of "hero" thing regarding your soon to be ex-wife. You gotta take care of yourself man. Like Sonic said, the path to recovery HAS TO start within. I am a bit afraid that all you do for your wife is enabling her. I hope you have had the opportunity to get some psychological therapy yourself while you have undergone this nightmare...
I hope that comes off ok, I am not a psych/shrink and have zero training in that area. But I have lived with mental illness in my immediate family. I think family members need counseling almost as much as the ill ones do.
I firmly believe that some people are more prone to addiction than others. I don't know if it's 100% biology, some combination of nature/nurture, or whatever, but it's scary.
Pill Ring - ( New Window )
This paragraph alone makes me want them thrown in jail and forgotten. OH THE PRESTIGE.
That being said, there are plenty of success stories out there, it just takes will and hard work. But it has been done and will continue to be done. So there is no reason your loved one can not be successful. But recovery is an ongoing process for life and must be the most important thing in the recovering addicts life above all else.
Family members need to get involved in al-anon or something similar. So much can be learned, especially about enabling behaviors that one wouldn't even know is hurting the recovery of the addict.
The stigma of bad parenting as the most common reason for addiction is not necessarily true. True, many addicts do come from rough family backrounds, but I know plenty who came from great families whose siblings were all successful but they fell into addiction for myriad reasons. Emotional and mental issues like depression, anxiety, poor self esteem etc. are at the helm.
Tell your Uncle not to be too hard on himself. The past is not important right now. Just look to the future and getting your cousin better one day at a time. An al-anon group or something similar can do wonders for your cousins family. I cannot reiterate enough how important it is to be educated on the topic of addiction through these groups. They have to learn they have no control over the situation and can only provide support, but it has to be the right kind of support.
Best of luck.
Even with this very common experience and without abusing the medicine at all, I was given a sneak peak at what people potentially deal with. I'd be lying if I said I didn't develop an inconsequentially small dependence.... dependence is the wrong word. I didn't need it. But there were cravings. It was a release to take the medicine even when I wasn't experiencing pain. It reminded me of when in college I found my cigarette intake increased to about a pack a week and there was suddenly this subtle desire within to have more.. and more. I recognized it and quit cigarettes soon after.
I didn't have an issue with the pills. My injury was very minor, my prescription ran out and I returned to my life, but it got me thinking about people who undergo things like serious back surgeries and how all of us are very susceptible to developing a dependency. I was very lucky to experience my mild cravings in the way I did. If I do suffer a more serious injury someday I'll be prepared... I wasn't prepared last time.
I hate when something like that is taken away by addiction. My sister went through something similar and two years later is still trying to cope with getting her life restarted and not being a crutch for her ex-husband. It really does tear the entire relationship down - both parties.
My thoughts are with you.
I'm not sure that this can ever be totally changed, but it certainly has improved, I imagine, from previous generations. I think the internet is really helpful in terms of openning up about your feelings on adiction message boards and remaining anonymous, but nothing is more powerful than a face to face discussion.
If the interpreted your actions as tying to game the system in any way they likely took those steps to protect their practice from unwarranted scrutiny.
What I am absolutely certain of is that 28 day rehab is a joke and a waste of time. The only way people get clean is a sincere desire and a long term lifestyle change including severing ties with former drug buddies, sometimes even relocating.
All I can say to the people sharing stories about themselves or loved ones is you have my best wishes.