Former Drug Addict Deanna McFarlin on Why America’s Churches Need to Help the Two Million Opioid Addicts

Former Drug Addict Deanna McFarlin on Why America’s Churches Need to Help the Two Million Opioid Addict

I was a slave to opioids that ruined my entire life.  It started when I was 30 and my doctor prescribed me hydrocodone, a generic compound opioid of Vicodin and Tylenol, after a car accident revealed during an X-ray that I had a congenital defect in my lower back called spina bifida occulta.  The crash aggravated that disc, causing debilitating pain. 

Initially, I took just one tablet at night before bed.  My prescription said that I could take up to two tablets a day as needed.  Within three months, I was consuming two hydrocodone tablets, three times a day.  When the opioids coursed through my veins, I felt invincible. They not only made my double shifts bearable as a geriatric charge nurse – responsible for 30 patients and nurse’s aides – but they helped me cope with my job’s stress between 6:00 am and 10:00 pm.

Within a year and a half, I’m ashamed to admit, I was ingesting six hydrocodone tablets, four times a day!  I became increasingly erratic, rude, and short-tempered as I experienced manic mood swings.

But it got worse.  I began stealing!

When my doctor’s monthly prescription ran out in four days, I resorted to breaking the Seventh Commandment.  I stole opioids from the nursing home where I was employed, claiming that I had given the patients their drugs when in fact I had pocketed them.  Plus, I also stole hydrocodone tablets which were on the verge of expiration. When the pharmacy, came to retrieve them to safely destroy them, I lied, claiming I didn’t know where they had disappeared to.  All told, I had stolen 500 hydrocodone tablets.

It didn’t end there.

I was so enslaved to my opioid addiction that I even stole $800 from my beloved father by cashing checks and buying the pills on the street for $5 a pill. My life became a vicious cycle of stealing, using, and acting erratically. The payoff was no longer there. I was pathetic.  In fact, I became so disgusted with myself that I contemplated suicide several times.