Estimated read time: 8 min
Unless you have been in a cave for the last 50 years, you have probably figured out the best, safest and cheapest drug dealer around is a doctor. Misinformed doctors, and those with questionable ethics, helped prescribe our nation into an opioid crisis. While we may like to think of it differently, the end result was the same as a guy on the corner hawking small baggies of heroin.
Somehow, despite what at times was my best effort, I couldn’t find a legal, drug-dealing doctor anywhere. The entire nation seemed to be walking around with little brown bottles, and I was stuck brown bagging booze.
For that reason among others, I can say that I began and ended my days in addiction as a garden-variety alcoholic. Many of my friends can claim cross-addiction, and for a period in rehab, I so wanted to be a part of that crowd, but, alas, I’m just a boring boozehound.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those people who think that I can smoke weed or pop pills and be okay since alcohol was my drug of choice. I firmly believe, and at least one doctor has verified, that I have all the makings of a drug addict. I have no desire to do any drugs anymore, but in early recovery all the cool people were cross-addicted. Not me, I got to be boring. (For more on cross addiction click here.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your motivation, I existed in a land of crappy drug dealers, in towns where you had to drive 30 minutes to find liquor, and no one sold booze on Sundays for all of my days in active addiction. Had booze and drugs fueled me, I may have dove headfirst straight to my bottom. The 28 years I spent battling active addiction could have been significantly shorter, or I might have been deader.
The lack of availability, and my job as a school teacher, kept me from cruising the streets to seek out drugs, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t try other means.
In the height of the opioid-sales madness, before someone forced pharmaceutical companies to admit they were pushing addictive drugs, I was able to try a couple of “harmless” pain pills for various reasons. When I underwent an emergency appendectomy, I took home enough pain pills to cover three days of post-surgical pain. My ex-wife also gave me one of her pills on two occasions for mind-numbing headaches. She had legitimate pain, but probably didn’t need the 90-120 pills she was prescribed per month.
What I learned from the experiences is that one or two of those pills with my regular drinking schedule turned me into a “normal” drinker. I also really liked being able to drink less and feel a similar buzz. As I slipped further into addiction over the years, the thought crossed my mind several times that if I had a minor issue, I might be able to get a prescription. It would be a win-win. I would be less bloated from chugging booze, and I would still have the effect I needed.
One day, the possibility arrived; I managed to hurt my elbow bad enough to have a diagnosis. I didn’t do anything to intentionally harm myself. Between my job as a basketball assistant coach, often throwing more than 100 passes a day during shooting drills, playing in the back yard with my sons, and yard work, I managed to get tendonitis so bad that I couldn’t raise a coffee cup with my right hand.
I try not to be wimpy, especially when it comes to pain, but I also couldn’t lift a can of beer, either. That was never going to be okay. Between work and practice, I had about an hour and a half so I scheduled an appointment with the general practitioner who was currently refilling my wife’s prescriptions. (See, I plan ahead.)
After an examination of the elbow and my explanation that I just “needed to get the pain under control for the rest of the season,” I waited for my prescription. Instead, this quack sent me to a specialist, without so much as a pill or two to tide me over.
At least, the specialist should be qualified to see I was hurt and send some pain-pill relief my way, I thought. I was soooo wrong. At the appointment, instead of a routine, “Yep, you are hurt. Here’s some pills to take care of that;” I was x-rayed and imaged enough to glow in the dark.
Then, the doctor came in after checking the film and said the following, “Your elbow is in pretty bad shape. (Ding. Ding. Just hand me the script!) What we need to do is give you SEVEN cortisone injections in your ELBOW, which will ease the inflammation. If that doesn’t work, you may have to have surgery.” After that, he mentioned a nurse would be in to give me the injections and just LEFT.
Perhaps you, dear reader, would wait to be stabbed SEVEN times in the ELBOW. But, I have had cortisone injections before. I know the pain this type of cure causes. I politely waited for the hallway to clear and walked to my car before the nurse had a chance to find me.
That began and ended my attempts at doctor shopping for drugs. Not only could I not find a real drug dealer, the ”drug-dealing” doctors I knew were smart enough to not give me drugs. I know. I’m a quitter. Someone else would have tried a third or fourth doctor. After the threat of SEVEN injections in my ELBOW, I didn’t want to roll the dice on a higher number.
That experience definitely made it easier for me to manage one of the problems that plague people in early recovery, drug-dealer doctors. Well-meaning doctors sometimes prescribe a relapse for addicts and alcoholics. I’m not sure if there are doctors who don’t completely understand addiction or, addict patients that convince a doctor to prescribe mood-altering drugs. (I strongly suspect it is the latter.) Whatever the cause, I have met more than a few people who have started their relapse with a legal prescription.
Prior to entering treatment, I had actually not been to a doctor in months. On my first visit after rehab, I told my new doctor that I was a recovering alcoholic and would prefer to avoid any narcotic medication. On more than one occasion, substance abuse counselors at rehab shared this advice.
I also went further than suggested by my rehab counselor. I told my dentist and my pharmacist that I was in recovery and would like it noted in their files. In fact, every time I have an appointment with a medical professional, “I’m in recovery,” is the second thing out of my mouth. The first is some form of hello.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not one of those people who plan to have surgery or a root canal and tough it out with no pain management. I will follow a doctor’s recommendation in the hospital and try to be narcotic-free before I leave. By making sure that the doctors and I are on the same page, I won’t have to find out if I’m ready to handle the temptation of taking a prescription correctly at home, alone.
I know me. If I brought home a prescription of say hydrocodone or klonopin, I’m taking three times the amount prescribed and probably ending up at the liquor store shortly before a trip to jail, if I’m lucky. (If I’m not lucky, my wife finds out ,and hopefully, the worst that happens is a trip to rehab.)
Joking aside, I honestly can’t say for sure what I will do once a narcotic enters my bloodstream. From that point on, the drugs are in more control than I am. My brain just works that way. And, my prior history shows how many times, my two-drink limit turned into a two-week bender. I am not a person I trust with certain medications.
Not only do I have an understanding with medical professionals, my wife and I have a plan should I ever need prescribed narcotics at home. She will make sure I take my medication exactly as prescribed by keeping the medication out of my hands. Hopefully, it won’t come to that any time soon. I, personally, try to avoid a medical crisis that would lead to at home care.
Still, with all of those precautions in place people make mistakes. With just a few months of sobriety under her belt, my wife had to refuse a bottle of prescription codeine cough syrup prescribed for her bronchitis. In many ways, she is stronger than I am. I am not sure that I would have done the same with less than a year of sobriety.
I remember talking to my sponsor and my substance abuse counselor about my need to be cautious about medications. I was thinking of getting medical help for my anxiety. Both men cautioned me to avoid benzodiazepines, which they called “alcohol in solid form.” They both knew that I did not need to head down that road. Fortunately, with help, I have been able to get my anxiety to a controllable level without medication. (For more about living with a dual diagnosis please read “Which Came First: The Chicken or the Egg?”
Whether it is because I take better care of myself in recovery or just plain luck, I have been able to overcome all of my aches, pains, and illnesses without needing a single narcotic or other mood-altering drug. Amazingly, even the severely injured elbow I mentioned at the beginning of this story healed without needing SEVEN shots or painkillers. If people like me were patients for a drug-dealing doctor, he would quickly quit the business.
Perhaps, I am overly cautious when it comes to prescribed medications. However, I am the one responsible for my recovery so I get to choose the risks I take. If I ever flirt with relapse it is going to be my conscious choice, not a medication that reignites my compulsion to drink. I am absolutely comfortable with that.
Besides my past has shown me, even if I wanted to turn my doctor into a drug dealer, it wouldn’t happen. I’ll just end up at another specialist waiting to be stabbed by a nurse, and this one may be quicker on the way to the room than the last one.
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