My brother is addicted to pain pills. Has been for years. My mother has spent thousands of dollars of her own money to buy back heirloom jewelry of hers that he stole and pawned. She refuses to press charges. He continues to live at home. Sadly, I’ve had to divorce myself from my family as a result.
This stuff is tantamount to legalized cocaine and heroin, and in many ways its worse. It’s so easy to get on the street that most kids laugh when you mention pot. “Pot is for hippies,” the local kids have said. They want Oxys, Roxys, Percs and Vikes. This is all being ignored on a national level, but it’s become too big to ignore in most places. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say there were massive payoffs by “big pharma” to lawmakers to keep this out of the public eye.
You are likely to be no more than 2 degrees of separation from someone who is themselves an addict or knows someone who is. My wife’s late husband died from a deliberate Oxy overdose, and my brother will likely end up on a slab before he’s 40.
We have neighbors whose 30+ YO son has a lifetime struggle with addiction, been in and out of rehab so many times. Paramedics called to the house numerous times. In and out of jail. Most recently, he’s been chopping Oxy into powder and snorting it. His parents have come to the conclusion he probably won’t live to see 40 either.