My Mother Gave Me My First OxyContin
How familial love and devotion fueled my addiction to painkillers
During my sophomore year of college, when I was 19, my mother gave me my very first OxyContin, and I fell in love with it. There were extenuating circumstances (there always are): I was deeply depressed and threatening suicide, she was terrified for me and on Oxy herself, and it was 2000, when we didn’t know what we do now.
Reserve judgment or don’t. Reaching some Final Truth about my mother’s innocence or guilt doesn’t interest me. What interests me is not what she did, but rather why she did it: out of love. Because love can be as destructive as it is redemptive.
In 1995, my parents opened up a pain management practice: My father was the clinic doctor and my mother was the billing manager. There was a pain-management revolution happening in America. The prevailing credo had become: believe the patient, treat the pain, no limits on dosages. Four years after they opened up their practice, I went off to college. My first year went well: lots of parties, perfect grades.
It isn’t easy to explain what happened next. All I can say is that when I went back to school the next year, after a lifetime of academic perfectionism and low self-esteem, some dam burst inside me, and loneliness and fear came…
