OPIOID DROP A GREAT ‘FIRST STEP’

Mom, recovering addict cheers news of prescription reduction

Felicia Moody makes sure her teenage daughter knows all about the dangers of addiction.

Moody has been clean for a decade. She started abusing opiates when she was 16 years old. She began taking Percocets, then Oxycontin and eventually heroin.

Yesterday, the 29-year-old mother of two was happy to learn of the results of a new report that found the number of people filling prescriptions for opioid painkillers dramatically dropped nationwide last year — the biggest dip in 25 years.

“It’s great,” Moody told me, “Prevention and awareness are the best solutions.”

Across the country, there has been an 8.9 percent average drop in the number of prescriptions for opioids filled by retail and mailorder pharmacies, according to new data released yesterday by the IQVIA’s Institute for Human Data Science.

Declines topped more than 10 percent in 18 states, including all of New England, and the drop comes amid a boost in legal restrictions and public awareness of the dangers of addiction.

“We still have a lot that we’re faced with,” Moody said, “but if that’s the first step then that’s great.”

Moody works with addicts as a recovery peer specialist for Peer2Peer, where she runs groups and does recovery coaching. Nearly 90 percent of the people she helps started out taking some type of opiate pain medication, either prescribed or bought on the streets.

Moody started taking opiates out of curiosity because all her friends were using them.

“When I grew up, we had more of the DARE program, which focused on what the drugs did and what they looked like and where you’d get them, than prevention of the actual drugs and what they did to you,” Moody said.

Moody said if the focus included more drug awareness — and not just underage drinking and cigarette smoking — when she was growing up in Quincy, it may have prevented some of the heroin overdoses that claimed the lives of her high school classmates.

“Unfortunately, a lot of the kids I grew up with are dead now from heroin overdoses,” Moody said. “Now that the parents have more education on it, too, they’re able to see the signs and symptoms. My mother didn’t know. She wasn’t aware.”

When she was using drugs, Moody weighed 98 pounds. Every morning, she’d tell herself she wouldn’t get high, but she would.

Moody got clean four days after her 19th birthday after her house was raided and her daughter was taken into custody by state child welfare officials.

Now, life is so much better. “I have two healthy kids, two jobs that I love,” Moody said. “I’m content and I’m happy. And if I was getting high I’d be miserable.”

‘A lot of the kids I grew up with are dead now from heroin overdoses. My mother didn’t know. She wasn’t aware.’ — FELICIA MOODY recovery peer specialist