Lauren talks about her son's story with Opioid addiction. "He has become a very strong man"

Description

Lauren explains how her son started his addiction to Opioids. She provided the reasons that lead him to do it. She showed how he suffered and made his family suffer with him. She also showed how he fought this addiction and got his normal life back. Now, he is a strong man who helps people who are addicted.

Omar: How did you find out about your son’s addiction?
Lauren: First, he started to lose weight, he was just changing, his personality was changing, and he didn’t care about anyone but himself. He was sneaky and you never know when he was telling the truth.
Omar: How did it start?
Lauren: Well.. he started.. it was after his senior year in high school you know, he started smoking pot a little bit, it was not a big deal to smoke pot but it seemed to be getting into other things, things that played into it. Like me and his father were getting into a bad divorce.
Omar: Who showed him the way?
Lauren: I guess it was his friends and his father was on painkillers for many many years. They were always in the house. It was always very open but his father was sick.
Omar: What regrets does your son have?
Lauren: He has many regrets. Regrets that he flunked out of college, he screwed up his life for several years, the way he treated people which is including me, and his brother. Now he has to fight this addiction, illness every day in his life.
Omar: How do you feel about opioid addiction?
Lauren: It’s very scary. It needs to be controlled, it’s been controlled a lot in the past ten years. They cracked down on the pain management doctors. You get a ninety days’ worth of pills and then you just go back to get more, so it’s a very scary thing.
Omar: What do you feel when you go to the doctor and he gives you a medicine that has opioid?
Lauren: I don’t take them. Number one because of him, number two because I had surgery a couple years ago and I was on some opioids but they told me to stop because of the surgery and they never gave them back to me, so I withdrew also from them. I don’t touch them.
Omar: Do people treat your son different before and after he was addicted?
Lauren: No, I don’t think so. True friends will treat you the same and he doesn’t see many of his old friends anymore. He sees very very few, he can’t live in that community. He has to stay in his own community.
Omar: What about after the recovery phase? Do people cheer him up?
Lauren: No it was just family at this point. He saw and spoke to none of his friends because he couldn’t. it doesn’t work that way. If you go back to that, you go back to that. if you back to your friends, you go back to your old way of life.
Omar: Did your son suffer from any near death experience or anything close to that?
Lauren: I used to be afraid that I was going to wake up and find him dead all the time.
Omar: What major changes do you see in your son now?
Lauren: He has become a very very strong man, he is 29-years old and he is self-reliant. He was told after he was done his recovery that he couldn’t come back to live in my house anymore. He had to learn how to make his own way. Depend on himself, pay for himself, and I helped as much as I can. He has never had relabs and he works. He works in a rehab, he runs a rehab and his girlfriend runs a women rehab. They are in the community so they go to meeting five days a week and they do all of this. He has just become a new man. I’m very proud of him.
Omar: Do you see him a lot now or every once in a while?
Lauren: I see him once a month, I talk to him several times a week. He needs to live his own life, he is a grown man. When he needs me, he calls me. I will always be there.
Omar: How did you feel after you heard he was good, everything was fine with him, like when he was back to normal?
Lauren: Well, it’s never back to normal, it’s a struggle and he is not the same person he used to be. He is a little bit more judgmental, but it took me a while to trust that he was not going to go back to doing the drugs. that took me a while. Now I see him just amazing.
Omar: Thank you so much for your time
Lauren: You are welcome

Participants

• Omar Hassanein
  

Interview By

• Omar Hassanein