I received a phone call from a distraught reader and mother a few days ago, that really hit home. She called me because of the strong positions I have taken in past columns about Big Pharma, opioids and doctors that might administer them.
I asked her to write me a letter explaining her situation. Here it is:
“My daughter has been on methadone for over 15 years, which is breaking my heart. From what I understand methadone is supposed to be helpful to get off other drugs, such as heroin, and not to be used for 15 years.
My daughter is 35 years old. She has two children, which she gave up for adoption because she couldn’t take care of them because of her drug habit. The children want a relationship with their biological mother, but it is not possible because my daughter is sick. Methadone has caused her to lose much weight and she had to go to the ER because she has pancreatis.
After being clean from drugs and methadone for several months she felt the need to get back on methadone. She went to a clinic, and without testing her, they gave her the same dosage she had had for 15 years.
These people are the biggest drug dealers! I called them several times and told them my daughter was clean, and not to give her any more methadone, but they used excuses and told me I do not have any rights because my daughter is an adult.
Please try to help me get her off this horrible stuff.”
To be honest this person’s plight is not different from thousands of others. Doctors prescribe methadone to get patients off heroin, but if it isn’t closely monitored, they become addicted to methadone. It’s a vicious cycle that many parents face.
This mother blames the clinic because they are responsible for her methadone addiction in her eyes. If what she writes is true, they are certainly not blameless. Like many of us, she wants to help her adult daughter, but it is extremely difficult because the daughter doesn’t necessarily want help.
Big Pharma and unscrupulous clinics have done this to us. We are a society that craves drugs to take us away from the ills we may face. Anymore they have a drug for most any problem one might have, but the real danger is when one graduates to illicit drugs. Its not uncommon, most of us have relatives or friends that have been “hooked.” Some of us are able to kick the habit but others go in to a downward spiral ruining everything they cherish.
She wants solutions but I am having a hard time offering any. I would suggest rehab, but the daughter has already been through that. Maybe a more extensive in-patient multiple month facility would work. But then again, maybe not. The patient has got to want to change the vicious cycle.
Just wondering if anyone else out there in reader land, has some suggestions. This lady is at wits-end and would consider any options one might suggest. If you have a suggestion shoot me an email at wilcoxnewspapers@gmail.com
In the meantime, pray for this distraught lady and her daughter. May they find drug-free peace.
If you need to place blame it starts with the mother. What did she do to help her daughter when she found out? We don’t know. The second place is with the daughter. She chose this path. No one held her down and shot her up. “Big Pharma” didn’t get her daughter hooked on heroin. Sadly in-patient rehab will not work if the patient is not fully behind it and it sounds as if her daughter is not. Pharmaceutical companies as a whole are a major part of the problem with our broken health care system along with insurance companies but using this story as a basis to condemn them is a reach. We need real reform in the form of single payer health care. As long as the current system is in place it will never get any better.
Boy do you all have it all wrong. There is so much misinformation and ignorance in Mike’s Musings that I’m appalled. If the daughter had been taking insulin for 15 years would you have said such nonsense? It appears that Methadone treatment has saved this woman’s life, kept her off illicit drugs and all youi can say is get off it? She has a medical condition called opioid use disorder. Don’t destroy her life.