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  Rx Addict Action
Defining moments in Rx addiction
April 2012
In This Issue
Not MY Kid. Not MY House
The Blogosphere
Dirty little secrets
Brandon Update
pillsMy Kid Would Never...

  The ugly truth about where the drugs come from

 

Do you keep, or have you kept, drugs where your kids or other members of your household can get them?

 

Let's play a little Q & A game that I like to call: 

 

"My Kid Would Never..."

 

Question #1: Have you ever filled a doctor's prescription for a painkiller that you still have? 

 

Question #2: Have you ever put a pill bottle on a sink, side-table, kitchen counter, or bathroom medicine cabinet?

 

Question #3: Do you ever leave your house to go to dinner or the store and leave your teenagers home alone?

 

Question #4: Would your kid ever try your prescription painkillers if he/she had pain?

 

BUT, MY kid would NEVER...!

 

Okay, so your kid would never ever touch your prescription drugs. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt. Moving along...

 

Question #5: Have you ever had a teenage babysitter over to care for your kids?

 

Question #6: Have you ever allowed a housecleaner, pet sitter, care provider, into your home?

 

Question #7: Do your teenagers have friends over to the house?

 

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may unwittingly be contributing to the spread of this epidemic of drug abuse.

 

The saddest thing is, a nice babysitter might start in your medicine cabinet and, because both are opiates, end up a junkie on the street selling her body for a hit of smack.

 

The truth is ugly. Really ugly. 

 

Drug Take Back Event April 28

The Blogosphere 

Check out these sites/posts you may have missed: 

 

 Janna Burson's blog: New Drug, old problems

 

 Michael Jackson's doctor, his sentencing, and also a Santa Barbara Pill Mill Dr. 

 

Two more father-activists whose lives were changed by opiates, and their support site:  HERO



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And please, forward this to your friends and others who you think would get something from it. Thanks!
Greetings!

 

I met the US Surgeon General and the Deputy Administrator of the DEA. I sat in the green room with Mary Bono Mack and a dozen other American lawmakers who are beginning to recognize the scope of the problem our country is experiencing with opioid abuse. The word "epidemic" was used at every level. 

 

The National RX Drug Summit took place in Orlando, Florida, a state where every day seven people die from prescription drug overdoses. Seven people a day. Could you imagine if seven dolphins a day were dying? Seven dolphins washing up on the beach every day would create an international press event. Yet seven children, could be my child, could be your child, their deaths fly under the radar.

 

Even away from the conference staging, every time I went to a restaurant, every time I stood on a line next to someone, it seemed that they too had been afflicted by addiction. I always carry my book with me--like all good self-publishers-- and conversations with strangers are something I participate in enthusiastically. Not surprisingly, in Orlando, the conversation starter is "What brings you to Disneyworld?" In my case, it was the Rx epidemic. 

 

The most unbelievable connection occurred at the Orlando airport.  Click HERE to read about it.  

 

You can't tell me that the discussions I'm participating in aren't important. They're epic, like this epidemic is epic.

 

The pharmaceutical companies and their lobbies, they own this. They are making fistfuls of dollars and leaving death and destruction in their wake. Their money manipulates the laws to favor their bottom line. What needs to be done? 

 

I've come back from this summit even more committed to the idea that we need to attack this problem from many directions. I am writing about these on my blog, so be sure to click over and add my blog to your RSS feed. Let me know what you think and let's have intelligent, experience-based discussion at the ground level. 

 

Best regards,  

 

Bradley V. DeHaven

[email protected]

Sisters: Dirty little Secrets 

 

Not too long ago, I received a call from a woman I'll call "Sheri." She called me after finding my website, and she needed answers to questions she couldn't even articulate. Her son, who we'll call "David," is a twenty year-old who has been addicted to Oxy and heroin for two years, since receiving a prescription for an injury.  

 

Sheri is a single mom whose best friend is her sister, but they hadn't talked much lately because Sheri couldn't bear the thought of telling her sister that David is a heroin addict. Sheri felt shame over her son's addiction, and she felt like a failure. These are two things I understand all too well.

 

Sheri said that she and her sister had been very close, and even their sons had been born about a year apart. I am not a trained psychologist, but I have spoken to hundreds of parents who are in the deepest darkest moments of their life and they pour their heart out to me and they need what my wife and I needed, simply someone to talk to who wouldn't be judgmental.

 

I told Sheri that she needed to call her sister. She needed not to go through this alone. 

 

A few hours later, Sheri called me back. She had just hung up from a long call with her sister, where she had discovered the unbelievable. Sheri's nephew, her sister's son, had been in rehab for two months for heroin addiction, and her sister had been too ashamed to call her best friend and sister, Sheri. 

 

At a time when these two sisters--mothers and best friends--needed each other more than ever before, the stigma of addiction and the need to keep the dirty little secret had robbed them of the much needed support they could have had in each other.

 

I felt so happy to have been a part of this reunion, hopefully facilitating some kind of healing. Don't keep this secret. You need them and they need to know. 


Brandon Update 

portrait of Brandon
Brandon is doing great, still on the same path of working out nightly and working a regular job, just being a regular young man.  Lofty goals and distant dreams are replaced with simple pride and an understanding that my son is rebuilding himself and his life one day at a time.  He has his whole life in front of him and whatever he does in the future I am blessed every day to put my arms around him, clean from the drugs that once dictated his every move.  

Be responsible about your pain management. 
Lock up your meds! 

 

RXDrugSafe Don't let the neighborhood get their illegal prescription drugs from you unwittingly.  If you have a house cleaner, a baby sitter, a teenager, dinner parties, anyone at all in your house and you take prescription meds, lock them up! 

RxDrugAddict.com friends get a special deal with RxDrugSafe. Check it out on my website!