Overcoming Opioid Addiction by Adam Bisaga

Author:Adam Bisaga
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Experiment

Part 3:

A Brief Guide for Families

CHAPTER 8:

How to Encourage Your Loved One to Get Help—and How to Help Yourself

Samantha comes home from the pharmacy and plops the weightless brown paper bag on the kitchen counter, as she has done a half dozen times before. It contains a box of needles—syringes her son Eric, now twenty-four years old, is expecting. As soon as he hears the door slam shut, he glides down the stairs into the kitchen, grabs the bag, thanks his mom, and heads out to Jefferson Avenue to get a fix. Samantha makes sure the unused needles and her son are gone before her husband, Tom, comes home from work. Tom knows she is supplying their son with opioid paraphernalia, but he only begrudgingly approves. So, as far as Samantha is concerned, the less he sees, the better.

Samantha’s sister doesn’t approve at all. She calls it enabling. Samantha’s parents think she is crazy and that she should call the police when Eric comes home high. Only “tough love” will get Eric to stop. The pharmacist has started rolling his eyes slightly in a show of contempt when Samantha asks for more needles. But she turns a blind eye to the criticism. It is not that she approves of Eric’s use. It’s just that she’d rather see him graduate from college someday and maybe even walk down the aisle than be “right.” She wants her son. Her real son. But she will take him here on earth as he is, alive and shooting up heroin, rather than reject him or watch him waste away from a drug-related infection caused by something as preventable as dirty needles.

Samantha knows that Eric is going to use whether she approves or not. She’s already tried every trick in the book to get him to stop, all to no avail. She could kick him out of the house, but that won’t help her cause. Samantha knows that opioid use disorder (OUD) is the most lethal of substance use and psychiatric disorders. Every time Eric decides to use an opioid, there’s a small chance he’ll die, from an overdose or infection, in an accident, or by dealing with the wrong people in the wrong neighborhood. She’s well aware that opioid use comes with some irreversible consequences. So, she does what she can to keep him alive.

Supplying him with clean needles means keeping him from contracting hepatitis C, HIV, or some other dangerous skin or vein infection—helping him to cheat death or a lifelong illness, at least in one small way. But she does more than buy needles. Samantha has provided Eric with the location of the nearest opioid harm reduction center, where he can learn which drugs not to mix and how to use safely, as well as get his street drugs tested before injecting them so he knows he’s not taking enough to knock out an elephant. She also stocks her home with items she’ll need if Eric goes through withdrawal or overdose—over-the-counter medications and naloxone, the opioid overdose antidote.

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