Snow and Pills

I woke up this morning to a little beautiful white snow. Unfortunately, the thought I had after delight was who is going to shovel? The last snow was a blizzard, during which I shoveled and hurt my shoulder. I eventually went to the doctor to have her check it out and she ruled out anything major. To help, she gave me some exercises to do and prescribed me Advil (over the counter).

Because I was honest with ere, my doctor now knows that I am in recovery and knows to never prescribed me painkillers.  My drug of choice (DOC) is alcohol, however, pills and marijuana all go to the same receptor in the brain. Doctors are finally catching on that painkillers and opiates are addicting and are killing our many people today. 

A report in the Washington Post yesterday state, “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported recently that the 28,657 deaths from prescription opioids and heroin in 2014 were a record. The agency said that more than six in 10 drug overdose deaths were caused by opioids that year.”

The numbers of deaths associated to drug overdoes are beyond frightening and this is an epidemic.

While in medical school, doctors spend about 20 minutes on addiction and the topic hasn’t warranted the attention until now. The New York Times has featured addiction and death rates on its cover for the last three Sundays. FINALLY someone is paying attention!

Addicts are not morally bad people! Quite to the contrary, addicts are people that are born with a gene that has been passed down from somewhere in there family tree. It has nothing to do with self will or ethics it has to with DNA! This gene does not mix with drugs and alcohol. In fact the combination makes people do things that they normally would never do and enables people to become menaces to society.

Enough with societies judgment! It is time to stop judging and time to start loving! Someone told me that a young person had recently said, “Alcoholics and drug addicts are weak, and have no self control!” I was in shock to hear that someone that was 13 still had an archaic view of what addiction is.

No more scaring our youth about addiction; there is nothing to be ashamed of! It is time to get real and talk about our family’s histories. Rather than telling them about shame and weakness, we should not be afraid to educate and tell our children about the signs associated with addiction.