FACT: ‘Pain pills can lead to heroin addiction’
Seat belts save lives. The Mets serially disappoint. Santa goes down the chimney. I like big butts. You don’t slurp soup.
These are just facts of life. Everyone knows them. There are millions more.
Here’s one to add to the list: Opioid use can very easily lead to heroin addiction.
Repeat after me: Opioid use can very easily lead to heroin addiction.
This, to me, should be right up there on the knowledge tree with your ABCs and 123s. Which is why I’m both surprised and disappointed by a study released by a Partnership for a Drug Free New Jersey (in conjunction with FDU PublicMind poll) the other day.
Disappointed, because according to the study, *only* 69 percent of parents with school-age children think there is a link between prescribed opioid painkillers (for such things as sports injuries and wisdom teeth removal) and heroin addiction.
Surprised, because the Partnership for a Drug Free New Jersey thinks this is a good number.
“Parents are the first and most important line of defense for prevention,” PDFNJ Executive Director Angelo Valente said in a press release. “It is encouraging that more parents are becoming informed on this issue and are better equipped to take preventive actions to keep their children safe and healthy.”
Seriously: To me, this is like the Partnership for Hey Dummies Wear Your Seat Belts crowing about how 69 percent of people think there is a link between wearing your seat belt and not catapulting through your windshield if you get rear-ended.
At this point of the heroin (and opioid, and now fentanyl) epidemic we have here in New Jersey, you’d think we’d all be pretty well-versed on the fact prescribed opiates are the gateway drug of gateway drugs. And not just pills prescribed to you; prescribed pills in general. A National Institutes of Health study found heroin users were 19 times more likely than non-heroin users to have used opioids before trying heroin, and 86 percent of heroin users first used opioids.
This is not a casual relationship. This a direct, deadly, link.
And *only* 69 percent of New Jersey parents are aware of it.
“There are people out there that don’t know the sun comes out in the morning,” said Kevin Meara, the Hamilton resident and former councilman who founded City of Angels, a nonprofit dedicated to helping people struggling with addiction, which was launched after his son, K.C., died of an heroin overdose in 2008. “It’s a shame, but people go through life fat, dumb, and happy, and I’m not saying that in a negative way. I enjoyed life when I was fat, dumb, and happy. There’s just a lot of people not clued into it. I was one of them, before K.C.’s death.”
Meara said his group works tirelessly to get the word out to parents about the risks of giving their kids opioid painkillers.
“No, 69 percent is not acceptable, but I can understand because of what I’ve experienced over the last 10 years,” he said. “If everything is going good for you in your family, you’re just not clued in. But you have to be clued in. Listen, I’m not a professional, I’m just a dad who buried his kid. But from the inside, I can understand. I see it happen everyday. I still see parents clueless.”
To be fair, I didn’t think much about this topic until a few years back. I mean, I knew I wasn’t going to start shooting heroin, and my kids were so young I didn’t need to worry about them doing it.
And then my then-4-year-old got her tonsils out.
She was prescribed opioids for the pain.
Didn’t think twice about giving the meds to her. I figured she was in pain, and it would help.
Now understand: This is my daughter who has some intellectual disabilities. Getting answers out of her isn’t always the easiest row to hoe. So when, after a few days, she approached us and asked straight-out for the medicine, we were blown away.
We continued to be blown away in the days and weeks after she stopped taking the medicine, because she kept asking for it.
Pretty much right then and there I decided my kids will never ingest a prescribed opioid, postsurgery or post-injury, period, end of story. Sorry you broke your leg kid, here’s a Tylenol PM.
I refuse to give my kids pills that can lead them all too easily down the path of addiction. Not happening.
And while I can’t tell other parents what to do with their kids, I can use this perch to help spread the word to the 31 percent of parents who inexplicably, here in 2018, haven’t realized the direct connection between pain pills and addiction.
Wear your seat belts. Enjoy big butts. Don’t give your kids opioids when a few Advil will suffice.