Entry August 31

What an excruciatingly long week it has been. I have been mentally and physically exhausted for weeks now, and it seems as if everytime I have the chance to collapse on my bed, my thoughts run with wild abandon. About two and a half weeks ago, while still at home in Massachusetts, I stopped taking pain medication that was prescribed to me for a rather severe shoulder injury. The medication stopped working anyways and I surely do not want to choke down pills for the rest of my life. About two days after ceasing the medication, I became rather violently ill. I certainly knew what was happening, as I knew the risks of high potency opioid pain medications and thier countless negative side effects. It was certainly withdrawl. The feeling can be alikened to an extreme case of the flu, though in my mind I knew the flu would be cured had I taken some more of my pills. All the pain in my body seemed to pervade my system ten fold, I was too tired to be awake, and yet too sick to sleep. Two weeks later and the sickness has subsided, but I still can't sleep and have an overall sensation of wierdness that has been clouding my thoughts. This made me think of the deplorable drug situation in my town. If I am feeling this nasty over the withdrawl from controlled prescribed medication, there is no wonder how kids using these types of drugs on the streets can become so addicted so fast.

These severe symptoms lasted for about five days. It infuriates me that doctors so freely prescribe such dangerous and habit forming medications. Surely a year ago, just after my shoulder surgery, Morphine was a neccesarry evil. But as the medication flooded my system and the pain stayed the same, my doctor would just prescribe me more of the medication. I feel practices such as these are more prevalent than people realize. My home town of Sandwich, Massachusetts has a massive problem with kids abusing prescription drugs. The state itself has become a joke among clinicians for its rampant abuse of narcotic based drugs. There are approximately 136,000 people in the state that abuse prescription drugs, and there certainly has to be a reason for that. For one thing, the multiple ports in the state are constantly responsible for the bringing in of Heroin and other illicit substances, thus making availibility quite simple.

There are also lots of doctors willing to write faulty prescriptions, such as my former family clinician Dr. Michael Brown, a.k.a. "Dr. Feelgood". Dr. Brown was arrested in 2005 when he was reportedly prescribing a third of the state's legal Oxycontin. Authorities said that he would prescribe them to patients and then buy them back from them for his own use. My town, Sandwich, on the other hand has far too many kids, young and stupid, doing these hard substances. We are from a small town of slightly well-0ff backgrounds, and the boredom and apathy during the winters becomes unbearable. Of course kids experiment with drugs under these circumstances, but it is when these types of narcotics are so readily availible that it becomes problematic. Teenagers as a general rule are stupid. Though, lacking intelligence isn't the kind of stupidity I'm referring too. This is the type of stupidity when being faced with people that are bored and apathetic. These kids are doing these drugs because they make them feel good, they make the mundane a little less so. The problem is, Oxycontin (High doses of Oxycodone on time release) is a highly addictive substance, on par with Heroin and Morphine. Oxycontin also has outrageous street prices in Mass, with an 80 mg tablet costing 80 dollars (more expensive by weight than gold). Kids run out of money fast, and then of coure the compulsion to use Heroin, the cheaper of the chemicals, to chase that same high. I have seen more than a few of my friends chase that high and drop out of schools and ruin thier lives. This is a problem that simply needs to be addressed, as Sandwich, Massachusetts is a growing community, and no longer just a beach retirement town. The elders of the town can't just watch the youth decay.