I was eight years old the first time I swallowed a Percoset. I lost count of how many times I was handed them… or Oxy… or Vicodin… before I even reached ten.
They made me itchy but there was something about that itch. I liked it. A prepubescent pillhead. That’s a more accurate term for a child ballet prodigy.
My parents had signed paperwork allowing the school to make medical decisions for me on their behalf. I lived there. They were over an hour away. I’m sure all my father was thinking about when he signed those papers was about getting me help quickly in an emergency, not hand-feeding opiates to his child. But medical decisions at a school meant to pump out prima ballerinas on a conveyor belt of broken bones and twisted ankles meant doing whatever it took to keep us dancing.
By the time I turned ten, I’d broken every single one of my toes at least once. I’d lost most of my toenails. My feet bled every day and shoving the swollen, bruised, and blistered damage into my pointe shoes was a pain I was allowed to only express in my movement. It was forbidden to cry. I’d learned that lesson very young.
They only gave us painkillers sometimes. Usually on the first day of a broken bone. The last thing the school wanted was to earn a reputation as a child pill mill. So we’d dance for a day in an opioid haze and then struggle to hold our body weight on broken bones with nothing more than Tylenol as they proceeded to heal.
If you could call it that.
Later in my life, when I had injured out of ballet and my body started punishing me for all that I’d put it through, I developed chronic migraines. It’s a common condition of child dancers because your skeleton doesn’t form properly. My cervical spine is completely misshapen and that means two things — frequent and severe headaches, and absolutely no such thing as a comfortable position in which to sleep.
I never mentioned my history in ballet to my doctors. I learned early on that they were quick to jump to conclusions without looking any further and it had been to my detriment too many times. So when the headaches were so unbearable that I went to see specialists, I didn’t tell them. I had no idea that the two were connected. So they looked for far more frightening reasons like an aneurysm or brain tumor.
They found nothing.
I was tested for everything under the sun but they never took an X-ray of my neck. In over a year of testing, there were no answers and I think the neurologist got bored. She gave me a prescription for Vicodin. A high dosage of Vicodin and she gave me 90 of them per month. Three per day.
It wasn’t long before I was addicted and taking more than I was supposed to. I found ways to get my prescriptions refilled early. Sometimes I’d claim to be going out of town and wouldn’t be able to fill it. Sometimes I’d claim they were stolen or that I’d accidentally spilled them into the sink. When that didn’t work, I said they had stopped working. They gave me a prescription for Percoset instead and asked me to return what was left of the Vicodin. I never did because they were gone and they never questioned it.
Then I claimed the Percoset made me vomit. They gave me a prescription for Oxycontin and asked me to return what was left of the Percoset. I never did because they were gone and they never questioned it.
If you’ve watched (or read) Dopesick and Painkiller, you know the story of Oxycontin. It’s basically candy-coated heroin. It’s highly addictive and the feeling it gives you can’t be touched by Vicodin or Percoset.
And doctors were instructed to keep their patients' dosages titrated up. That one was strong enough that I didn’t take extra. Not at first. But rather than titrate me up, my doctor decided to put me back on Vicodin.
After the Oxy, Vicodin barely touched me. I took so many of them that I’d run out long before I could get more. Doctor shopping worked occasionally but I needed new reasons to get them. I was more than willing to hurt myself for the pills but I knew the injury had to be pretty bad. Breaking a bone was the easiest way. My toes broke easily and I barely felt it anymore but I could fake it like a champ. They offered me Oxy, but I stuck to Vicodin. Despite the high of Oxycontin, I actually preferred the Vicodin. I could function better on it.
And it had that delicious itch I’d become so fond of.
When I had to wait before I could hurt myself again and needed more, I bought them on the street. Oxy was easier to find and cheaper (amazingly) but I stuck with the Vicodin. I was a full-blown addict. And it became the only thing I cared about.
I passed out on my couch one day and didn’t even realize it was Christmas Eve until my brother came knocking on my door. Everyone was waiting for me and I had no clue what day or time it was. I popped a couple of pills and went with him to my family dinner. I was asked why I looked strange and was speaking slowly and I have no memory of the night beyond that.
I was still refilling my prescriptions each month on time. I would be so excited to get my giant bottle of 90 pills that my insurance paid for. They were lasting shorter and shorter lengths of time before I’d need to find other avenues to get them. Until I got to the point that I took all 90 of them in less than three days. I popped pill after pill. I was a zombie.
I officially scared myself and I knew that I needed to stop. I was about to enter a version of hell that I never could have imagined.
Quitting an opiate addiction cold turkey and on your own is no easy thing to do. However, I have a strong aversion to hospitals and refused to go to rehab. I was positive I could get through it. I only survived because my best friend stayed with me as withdrawal took hold of my very soul. He locked us in together and brought Xanax with him. The only thing that can help the effects of opiate withdrawal is benzodiazepines. He had a prescription but he needed them and couldn’t spare much. He told me the worst of it would last three days and he’d give me only one per day.
I don’t remember much of it but I do remember it was horrible. I threw up everything but my hopes and dreams and was shaking and sweating and often screaming. If I passed out, he put me in the shower and ran water over me. He would change my clothes for me and clean the vomit out of my hair. The Xanax let me sleep a little but in between those respite pills, it was the most grueling three days of my life. And I was only allowed to have them if I drank something and forced myself to keep it down.
It was only severe for three days. He was right about that. I wasn’t the first person he’d seen through it. He was also a ballet dancer — though unlike me, he was still dancing, and remains a dancer to this day. He knew the siren call of the little white pills all too well. I think if he hadn’t been there with the Xanax and everything else he did, I probably would have died.
Or at least, I would have gone to get more pills.
I went through absolute torture to get them out of my system and the shakes and discomfort, night sweats and chills, nausea and restlessness all lasted for a few more days. But they were more tolerable than the first three.
When I started to feel normal again, I swore I would never touch an opiate ever again. I got a new doctor, told them about the addiction, and was prescribed an antidepressant used in small doses off-label to help with chronic migraines. The headaches stopped. And I was doing better.
Not a single day goes by that I don’t crave them though. I still miss that itch. I still miss the numbing feeling that the high they gave me came with. I’ve backslid a time or two but only with a maximum of two pills. I will never go through that withdrawal again.
The truly insane part of this story is that opiates do nothing for migraines. They never stopped the headaches, they just made me care about them less. I was legally prescribed a highly addictive narcotic for something it could never treat. In fact — opiates cause migraines. They give you rebound headaches. Which is what started me on the path of popping more than three per day in the first place.
When I watched Dopesick and Painkiller, it was infuriating to see the history. How the Sackler family got rich from the deaths and addictions of so many and just encouraged doctors to prescribe more and more. I can’t blame them for what happened to me since Oxy wasn’t my pill of choice, but it was familiar and close to home and I was angry just the same.
I know the pain and desperation that comes with those pills wearing off and how easy it is to fall into a bottle and never want to climb back out.
I know how easy it is to swallow more and more and while it starts with pain that is very real, it creates someone who will fake pain to get more or cause new pain for a larger prescription.
I know that doctors have been extremely irresponsible in their prescribing practices. The people you’re supposed to trust with your life (quite literally) will hand you a slip of paper to fill at the pharmacy with little white tablets of your own demise.
Those pills destroyed everything about me and everything I thought I knew about myself. By then I’d been through so much that I honestly didn’t care and it would have been only too easy to just take a few more and float away forever.
So many people did.
The prescribing of opiates has since been cracked down upon but it reached epidemic dependency first.
I remember that first taste of them when I was eight. I don’t remember the last when I was so hooked and strung out that months and days became meaningless to me. Time was measured only by the remains of the bottle and figuring out how to get more.
I’m glad I don’t have a clear memory of those first days in withdrawal. I’m also glad that what I do remember is enough to keep me away from them. I managed to detox alone because I have a friend who loves me enough to see me through it. I was incredibly lucky and it was incredibly dangerous, but it started off incredibly legal.
That’s not how it ended though. And none of the doctors who put me on that path will ever pay a price for it. In the eyes of the law, they did nothing wrong.
In my eyes, they tried to kill me.
Maybe that’s a harsh judgment, but I don’t recommend getting addicted and going through withdrawal to understand it. It’s been just under six years since I ever touched an opiate. I never went to rehab. I’ve never attended an NA meeting. I don’t have a sponsor. I went my own way about it.
I don’t recommend that either.
When you have an addiction, even when years have passed between the last time you fed it and the current day — you’re known as “in recovery”. Never “recovered”.
It never ends.
Before my addiction, I thought the phrase “one day at a time” was so strange. I would jokingly ask if there were other options. Everyone’s life is lived one day at a time, not just addicts.
But now I know. Now I understand. I know what it means to be in recovery but never recovered because I know I still want them. I know what it means to take life one day at a time because though there may not be another option for anyone, for me it means that I still fucking want them. But I didn’t take them today.
I will face tomorrow, tomorrow.
One day at a time. For the rest of my life.
And it started with a very legal prescription.