Health secretary shares personal tale
Secretary of Health and Human Services Marylou Sudders has been an architect of the Baker administration’s fight against the opioid epidemic. The ravages of addiction have hit close to home for her personally, when she witnessed a family member, long struggling with addiction, receive a life-saving dose of Narcan earlier this year. Sudders told her story on Boston Herald Radio:
I was literally pulling into the family home and there was an ambulance in front of the house and there are two driveways, so I wasn’t exactly sure where the ambulance was. I thought it was actually their elderly mom. I went running to the door and there was the elderly mom. I asked where my family member was and they were in the ambulance. When I ran to the ambulance, I saw them be Narcaned.
(The relative) has had a 40year, on- and off-history with opioids, prescription pills, doctorshopping. Found out there was an emergency room where they lived that didn’t know them ...
The good news is, they are in long-term treatment now. It doesn’t hurt to have the secretary of health and human services be there to help them get into treatment. They have been in treatment since July and I am hoping they are on a good path toward recovery. We know that it’s 12 to 14 months for someone to have lasting sobriety and minimize the risk of a relapse.
It’s a reminder, it affects everyone, and that’s what we are dealing with in the commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Sudders said the family had tried for years to help their struggling relative.
We did some interventions in the family and helped the individual to get into treatment. We believed they were on the road to recovery, but I think we needed to stay more present and more urgent. This is an individual who is an adult, who can say, ‘I’m fine, I have a sponsor, I am going to treatment.’ It turned out, over time, they had relapsed, but they were pretty good about covering it up.
One of the things I do want to say is, there is hope. We have expanded access to treatment in the commonwealth. We have a long ways to go before, you know, in that moment there is treatment available when people say ‘I am ready for it,’ but it’s a reminder the illness affects not only the person with the addiction, but their entire family, however you define that family.
Because addictions are a disease of relapse, so we need to not walk away from the person, but to really lean in and stay with them. It can be extraordinarily hard because there are times where families have to step back and say ‘you’re on your own right now (but) when you’re ready for treatment, we are there with you.’