Deadly Addictions
A friend of mine pointed out your [Aug. 9] cover story to me. It has brought me a flood of emotions. I hope I can fit a huge story into a brief letter.
My father also was an addict. He began seeing a family practitioner in March 2000. He was placed on Alprazolam x 90 per month and Hydrocodone x 90 per month. Beginning in January 2001, he was additionally prescribed Oxycontin x 90 per month. Along the way, he became mixed up with some twenty-something-year-old addicts. They basically took him for everything he and/or my grandmother had.
During the months of June and July, he evidently did not pay any of his bills—only shopping sprees for them. From May 22 to June 8, he received 360 Hydrocodones, all from the same doctor and all at the same big-name pharmacy with the exception of 90 of them (filled at a different pharmacy). On July 2, he got his monthly 90 Oxycontins, but on July 10, he received an additional 30 Oxycontins 80 mg (same MD, same pharmacy).
On July 14, my father wrecked his car and was charged with DUI. I was humiliated. On July 15, my brother and I went to look at his wrecked car; that is when I found all the pill bottles. We went to his house, and I confronted him. He told me I didn't understand. His speech was slow and his thoughts were jumbled. I told him that maybe he needed some help.
He went into the house, laid down on the bed, and put a sawed-off shotgun in his mouth. We pleaded with him to stop. We went to the other room to call 911. I got so scared I went outside leaving only my brother and father in the house. Then I heard the pop.
Now not only is my dad dead, my brother and I are left to figure out how this could have happened. He left us a letter stating he had overdosed, but I believe he had too much tolerance to do that.
We took all the information we had to the sheriff's department. They said that they were aware of the doctor but, criminally, there wasn't much we could do.
I always thought addicts were people who did cocaine, pot, ecstasy, or who knows what. No, addicts are fathers, mothers, sisters, neighbors, or maybe even co-workers.
Drug dealers aren't those guys with all the jewelry and attitude. They can easily be those guys in the white coats with their degrees on the wall.
I don't understand why a doctor would do this and why a pharmacy didn't notice it. How could this have happened to us? I pray that God will give "Tory" the courage to stay clean and sober, something our dad didn't get a chance to do.
Melanie Flynn Lowe
Knoxville
Get a Grip
Toward the end of her anonymous [Aug. 9] article on addiction to Xanax, "Tory" wrote: "I take my share of the responsibility for getting addicted again."
Until she is willing to shoulder the entire responsibility for becoming addicted, it is likely she will fall into it again. Some of us become addicted very easily. It's not a character flaw nor a weakness, it's a medical condition. But stopping the abuse is ultimately a matter of will.
Tory does a disservice to the people for whom Xanax has been a Godsend. As one who has suffered panic attacks and bouts of clinical depression for as long as I remember, Xanax has improved the quality of my life immensely, just as another much-maligned drug called Oxycontin has made life bearable for some people suffering from chronic pain.
There was a time (and I remember it well) when panic attacks and depression were treated as character flaws that could be fixed with righteous living or by talking to a therapist for months or years at a time. Well guess what? Now we know these are physical problems. Anxiety and depression are caused by disorders in the brain. We can't cure them now; we can only treat the symptoms. But thank God for that.
Every time Tory or someone like her decides to go public with a tale of how the bad doctors (and there are bad doctors) started them down the road to addiction or caused them to fall off the wagon, it makes life a little more difficult for patients who really need the drugs. How? Because doctors who are already rightly terrified of being accused of over-prescribing certain classes of drugs tend to tighten up the medicine, even for those who need it.
Doctors, good or bad, don't cause addictions. Certainly no doctor prescribed the crack cocaine to which Tory was once addicted. She went out and bought it on the streets, just as she did the Xanax after beginning to abuse that drug. Each and every one of us—putting aside those poor souls who suffer from a severe psychosis and are completely out of touch with reality—is responsible for our own abuse of chemicals.
David Hunter
Knoxville
| 
