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If I heard on the news that they found a body somewhere,
I was always on edge, you know: Is that my daughter they're going to find?
I was married. I had two kids, owned a home, two cars.
I had a pretty good life, and it just went from bad to worse.
We had a son, Michael. He was our only child.
He was 26. It was three days before his 27th birthday. He died from a drug overdose.
The issue with the explosion of this problem in our community
means that there's very few families that haven't been touched in some way by this.
The opioid crisis is multifaceted.
It evolved into the problem it is today.
I’m Dr. Clements. I'm over here every other week.
We're seeing absent fathers, addicted mothers, and in many cases grandparents
becoming once again the primary caregiver for their grandchildren.
I have totally raised my granddaughter.
Her mother has been in and out of her life, mostly out.
Sometimes she would be gone a month at a time.
I wouldn't know where she was at.
I finally talked her into coming back home, and I got her into a clinic.
And she had no insurance.
So my life savings, which is probably a drop in the bucket for some people,
but it was everything to me — I had $3,000 —
I spent every dime of it.
And she took off again.
I don't look sick, but I'm very sick.
And I tried to explain that to my daughter:
“You've got to get straight. You know, you’ve got a baby.
I may not be here.”
I think I've finally gotten to her. She's got to do this. She doesn't have a choice.
She just has to. And I just have to keep it in my heart and pray for it every day.
My addiction started about 30 years ago when I got injured at work.
So I had to have three back surgeries and a couple of knee surgeries.
I started hitting pain clinics and doctor shopping, and then buying them off the street.
And it just kept snowballing until I actually overdosed and nearly died over that.
You do see a lot of folks my age addicted,
even older than me because back then I was buying pills from older people.
It was easier for them to get pain pills than the younger people.
So they would supplement their income by selling their pills that they was getting at the doctors.
They even got me in to some of my doctors
is how this got started.
When we open the door, the first two or three, sometimes five or six patients will be recovering addicts.
The sad thing, and one of the undiscussed victims of this whole process,
are the people with legitimate pain.
They can't get the medicines that they need—
cancer patients, people terminally ill are hassled to get their medicines
in a way that is very frustrating to them.
It's also affecting those parents or grandparents who have medical need.
I had a patient call me one time, and he was accusing me of shorting them their pills.
I knew I might offend him if I implied it might be a family member,
although that's one of the most common ways that young people get involved with drugs
is stealing from a parent or a grandparent.
So a week later he called me back with an apology.
He said, "It's my grandson. I would have never guessed that he would take my wife's medicine."
And that scenario for the over-50 generation is very, very common.
They're dealing with it personally with their own difficulties using opioids.
They're dealing with their children and their grandchildren.
It is an economic drain on them, and it has an adverse effect on society as a whole.
With addiction it's an entire family thing.
I mean, obviously she and I are the ones who are affected the most.
But grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, everybody is affected by it.
For family members or loved ones who are dealing with someone that has substance use problems,
you do anything and everything to try to save this person.
It was the hardest time in our marriage.
But there came a point when we sat down with each other and said,
"We don't know whether we're going to be able to save Michael with this,
but we have to save ourselves and we have to save each other."
And we kind of had to make that decision.
And I'm so grateful that we did because we did end up losing Michael.
And we were able to be there for each other.
I don't think anybody knows what to do with the people that are struggling with addiction.
And they're really hard to help, but that's something we've got to look at as a country
because it's devastating. I mean, we're losing a whole generation of people to this problem.
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I've missed out on four grandchildren. I have only met one.
Three I've never saw yet. My daughter who, we haven't had a conversation —
a good conversation — in probably 20 years.
Lost my parents when I was in addiction.
Never got to amend — fix those relationships.
My daughter has been sober 17 months now.
She gave me the most beautiful Mother's Day card yesterday.
She had gotten her first paycheck that she had ever earned for 10 years.
It just really breaks my heart.
But I'm so happy I have my daughter back.
There is no stereotypic family — OK, they were poor, they were drug abusers,
they were rotten people, therefore they died.
That's not the issue here. It is the very best of our community,
the very best of parents, the very best of upbringing and education.
Opioids do not discriminate.