MIKE DUGGAN: My name is Michael Duggan.
I'm a person in long-term recovery.
What that means to me is I haven't had a drink or drug since April 14, 2009.
My introduction to opioids began when I broke my wrist senior year
playing hockey in high school.
Before that, I had experimented with alcohol and marijuana.
That also plays a part in my story that I think is important.
I was a three sport varsity athlete.
I loved playing sports, kept me out of a lot of trouble.
Senior year in high school, we were playing Hingham, Massachusetts.
And it was about the second game into the season.
I went to go check somebody and broke my wrist, shattered my wrist completely.
Went to the emergency room and was given a prescription of opioids
at the time to manage the pain.
Looking back at it now, there was no lesser alternatives that were given.
There was no questions, no family history that was drawn.
It was pretty much the immediate solution.
Because of my injury, I had nerve damage,
and I lost feeling in my fingertips.
So I had to go back and get surgery on my wrist
and also get the nerve damage repaired.
And the solution after that was another prescription
for opioid pain medication.
So there was a lot of access to the drugs initially from the doctors.
And I didn't really understand the immediate dangers
to these drugs at all.
And because of the injury, I was out of sports.
So I had a lot of time now on my hands at the end of my senior year of class.
And I was kind of getting to the end of school, so more spent kind
of partying at that time in my life.
And with the prescription opioid pain medication,
it seemed like there was an abundance of these drugs everywhere.
I had a lot of friends that also had injuries
that were being prescribed medication.
It just seemed like it was easier for my generation,
as an underage person, to get access to illegal prescription
narcotics on the streets than to get somebody to buy you alcohol,
because of the accessibility of these drugs.
And when you hear heroin, heroin has such a name branding
effect that terrifies a lot of people.
But when you hear things like Percocet or 30s or OxyContin or 80s or jams,
it didn't have that same effect.
I mean, we really didn't understand the seriousness of these drugs
and how they would completely take over your life once
becoming addicted to them.
So eventually, at first, I didn't know that I had a problem to them.
I didn't know I was addicted to them because I had a steady supply that
was being given to me.
And then I remember I went away on vacation that summer,
and my girlfriend's family had a house in Old Orchard Beach in Maine.
And she invited us up there for vacation for the weekend.
And we went up there.
And I forgot to bring something with me.
And I remember the first night, I was just deathly ill in withdrawal.
It was the first time I ever felt any sickness like this.
I was-- hot sweats, just crawling out of my skin,
tossing and turning, just completely restless and irritable.
And I knew that it was because of the drugs.
So the entire time as I'm feeling these physical symptoms there's also
a mental obsession that I need to get something quickly to make myself
feel better again.
And the next morning everybody went to the beach.
And I told her family I didn't feel good, I had the flu.
And they believed me, of course, because the last thing they were going to think
was Mike's addicted to drugs, you know?
We have this image of what a drug addict is,
but the reality is there's no such thing.
Addiction doesn't discriminate.
Doesn't matter who you are, where you come from, what you look like.
The reality of the situation was that I was very much indeed addicted
to these drugs.
So I left, and I went home.
And I met up with somebody, and I bought one of these pills off the streets
illegally.
And I felt immediately better.
And at that moment in my life I made a decision
that I would never go anywhere again unless I bring something with me.
And that's a real sad realization for a young 18-year-old kid
to make in his life, that he's such a prisoner to these drugs
that he can't even go away on vacation without taking them.
So what happened in my life at that point
is I honestly went from a period of having fun
by taking these drugs to living in fear of withdrawal.
So now, ultimately, my decisions were all based off of fear.
And the only way for me to go to school and go to practice or go to work
was I needed to take these drugs to just feel normal.
So it wasn't even the thrill of getting high.
It was just to feel normal on a daily basis, to function normally in society.
It's just really sad to spiral out of control at that point for me.
The prescription lasted a lot longer than the pain itself.
And I think that's very important.
There was lesser alternatives that should have been given.
The reality is, my family, there's a lot of history
with addiction and alcoholism that wasn't looked at,
that should have made me more of a high-risk candidate for somebody
who was being prescribed prescription opioid pain medication.
Back when my parents grew up, even my grandparents grew up, if you broke
your wrist you were given Tylenol.
You were sent home with Motrin.
You weren't given the most intense or strongest version
of pain medication that's not necessarily for somebody
who's just in that situation.
Last year-- actually it was about two or three years ago, I
went to an urgent care because I had a bad cough.
And they tried to prescribe me 100 milligrams of codeine syrup.
I mean, that should never happen.
And I think it's important for people to understand
that they need to be aware of these things
and not necessarily take the prescription that's given to them,
but ask questions.
If they are not asking you questions, you need to ask them questions.
You need to make sure that your family member is safe.
And if they are taking a prescription, that it's
something that ultimately isn't going to lead them down a long road that
has long-lasting effects for something that
might be an immediate solution that's given.