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Scratching the Surface of Addiction By Haley Niamh Connor I've been on a bit of a hiatus from my regular workload here at Saints. First off I'd like to thank my lovely bosses Emilia Russo and Kalani Jamil for their patience and understanding during this time. Now that I'm back to it, I don't feel like I need to explain why I was gone just for the sake of explaining it - it's personal and not something anyone would care to read about. The reason is important to talk about though, at least in my opinion. I've been prescribed the benzodiazepine anxiety medication clonazepam for three years now. I've got an anxiety disorder that can cause me to have panic attacks due to outside stressors, or even completely out of the blue. It's no fun for me or anyone present when it happens. Clonazepam can help alleviate the symptoms of a panic attack before it starts, or while it's happening. When I was prescribed the medication originally, I got right to my neurotic researching tendencies. I don't like taking anything without knowing precisely what it is down to a chemical level. I read up on clonazepam, and it scared me. The drug is habit-forming and commonly abused. Knowing the risks I chose not to take it much. However, I wanted it in my back pocket as a sort of 'rescue inhaler' if my anxiety got the best of me, so I'd pick up my prescription of thirty tablets every month. I'd use maybe one or two of them each prescription cycle. This led to me having a pretty massive stockpile of the medication. A few weeks ago my father passed away from a heart attack unexpectedly. This came on the heels of him beating cancer, so it was gutting, to say the least. The situation itself, the travel involved, the fact that I needed to keep it together for my family - all of this led me to use my clonazepam a lot more often than normally. I didn't feel capable of handling any of it on my own. I was experiencing fierce anxiety and regular panic attacks. The drug helped calm me and kept me from detracting from what was really important at the time for my family, which was mourning my father's death. Half a tablet per day turned to a whole tablet per day which turned to one and a half which turned to two. I wasn't thinking about the implications. I was mourning. I was anxious. I was simply trying to get by and keep it together. I was also building a tolerance to and a dependency on a drug I knew was addictive. It wasn't until I returned to LS from Ireland that I realized what I'd gotten myself into. Naturally, I wanted to go back to normal. The situation was sorted and, though I was still processing feelings and mourning, I could manage to be more vulnerable now. I didn't have to have a brave face on twenty-four-seven. I didn't need the clonazepam. The night I arrived back in LS I put the medication away and didn't think much about it. Two days later I felt sick. My head was pounding. My hands were shaking. I was nauseated, and couldn't eat. I was sweaty all the time. I felt depressed and tired. To top all of this off though, I had a panic attack. It was a pretty serious one. I turned to the clonazepam again to deal with this and, like magic, all the symptoms I described above vanished. I felt normal again. That was the moment I realized I was in it, and though my sense of fear was dulled by the drug, it terrified me. I'm obsessive about control over my life. I don't like surprises. I don't like unpredictable variables. I like to be in the driver's seat at all times for anything concerning myself. I refused, at first, to make any sort of peace with the fact that I'd developed a drug problem. "I'm me!", I thought. "This kind of thing doesn't happen to me!" It was happening though. I kept taking the pills every day just to function with some semblance of normalcy. It's only now that I'm beginning to pick up the pieces. The first part of it was realizing and admitting I had lost control. It was hard. I didn't want to keep taking the pills, but I felt as if I couldn't stop. That's loss of control. The second part, confronting it, that's where I am now. I write all this not for sympathy. This was a mistake on my part and I'm bearing the consequences. But it's forced me to put thought into a subject I've never really given the time of day, which is addiction and its effects. I never knew why people would choose to abuse drugs. The risks are plastered all over our cultural zeitgeist. How dumb would someone have to be to get themselves addicted to something?! Not so dumb, I guess. Over the past few days, I've been looking into prescription medication abuse and the statistics related to it. I guess I wanted to know that other people out there had made the same mistakes I did, that I wasn't that stupid person I talked about above. What I found was both comforting in that I knew I wasn't alone in the little Hell I'd put myself in, but many more times troubling when given serious thought. Prescription drug abuse is defined by the Mayo Clinic as, "the use of a prescription medication in a way not intended by the prescribing doctor." The problem affects all age groups, but young people especially. In fact, every day in the United States alone, 2,500 children between the ages of twelve and seventeen abuse a prescription pain reliever for the first time. The most commonly misused drugs are opioid painkillers, sedatives, stimulants, and anti-anxiety medications like clonazepam. The problem is growing in America, and now that I've gone and gotten myself affected by it, I feel like I've a poignant view of why and how it starts. I've described my own account above. The statistics about where it can lead are what led me to confront this problem personally, and I think it's important that they're shared. The 'opioid epidemic' we're facing as a country is a real problem. Regardless of your views on how this problem should be solved, the statistics are there. Use, abuse, and deaths from opioid medications and illicit opioids like heroin have risen dramatically in recent times. Opioid abuse can (and typically does) begin how I described above. A medication prescribed by a doctor is overused, a dependency is formed. Benzos like clonazepam don't get much attention in this arena. The statistics on opioid-related deaths are much better documented due to the times. However, the incidence of benzodiazepines being found in the systems of those who've died from opioid drugs - those stats are out there. As of 2018, one in four people who died from an opioid overdose also tested positive for some form of benzodiazepine. The most startling fact for me found in this data is that the incidence of opioids being prescribed simultaneously with benzodiazepines is also on the rise. In 2001, just 9% of people who were prescribed some form of opioid were also prescribed some form of benzo. By 2013 that number was up to 17%. In 2019? I fall into that statistic. I suffered a knee injury months ago for which I was prescribed oxycodone - a form of opioid pain reliever. The fact that I was currently prescribed clonazepam for my anxiety was not even mentioned by the doctors who treated me. The two categories of drugs are extremely dangerous when taken simultaneously, and simply due to the fact that I wasn't currently taking my clonazepam regularly during the time I was using oxycodone, I very possibly avoided life-threatening consequences. To say all of this has shaken me is an understatement. I feel like I dipped my toes into a world I wanted no part in only to, in a moment of stupidity, plunge myself head-first into it. It's not willpower or intelligence that drove me to recognize my problem and decide to confront it. I'm no better than anyone who has dealt with or still deals with this. I'm lucky. I had people around me who noticed something was up and decided to confront me about it. That last point is the reason I decided to write this piece. Drug abuse, be it of illicit 'street drugs' or prescription medications, doesn't just affect the user. It has an effect on those around them that can be frustrating, saddening, worrying, and heartbreaking. It's difficult to tell someone you love that they've got a problem as serious as addiction. But when you look at the statistics - like the ones outlined above, or the myriad of others that are out there - it's a no-brainer. If you know someone who shows symptoms of addiction to any substance, be it alcohol or pills all the way up to heroin - talk to them about it. If it weren't for my own problem having been brought to my attention by someone who isn't me, I'd never have made the decision to accept and confront it. It's not owed to anyone to save their life if they're drowning, but we do it anyway. It's human nature. Addiction is quite like drowning, and just like you wouldn't idly watch on as someone drowned, you shouldn't do so when they're in the throes of addiction. If you yourself are in those throes, there is help out there. I now know that no one wakes up one morning and decides, "I'd like to become an addict." I feel silly for ever having looked down on someone who was dealing with it. If you want control of your life back, you can take it if you let others help you. From checking yourself into the hospital to seeking out an addiction counselor there are so many ways to confront this demon. It may feel insurmountable, but it isn't. To sum all this up, my brief brush with drug abuse has left me in a strange place. Ideas I had about myself being "too smart" or "too strong" to fall into addiction have been shattered. I think though, that with time, those ideas being shattered will be a good thing. No one is above this. It could truly happen to anyone, and it does happen to people from all walks of life. As I said earlier, policy related to this on a macro level isn't something I want to or plan to discuss. But on a personal level, from person-to-person, a whole lot of good can be done. That personal level of help is what saved me. The opinions expressed in this piece do not reflect the opinions of Saints News as a whole, but those of its author Haley Niamh Connor.