I had an oxycodone addiction in high school 20 years ago. Quite a few other students I knew did as well.
Many of them sought help for it. I did not - I quit cold turkey after my third mild overdose. I had access to a nearly unlimited amount (>400 pills) left over from an earlier surgery.
For me opiates were a very effective relief against terrible emotional pain. I think just being there for your son a lot, including him in your activities as much as you can, treating him like an adult that you accept, will go a long way to immunizing him against addiction.
It’s important that your son feel it’s safe to bring his shameful actions to you for hands-off advice and support.
That last sentence is definitely not how I felt growing up - not because I had bad parents - but because their parents were pros at shaming them and they didn't realize they were carrying on that legacy. I hope to break that cycle. Thanks for summing it up so succinctly.
I've been prescribed oxy a couple of times for minor injuries. I cannot function on oxy so I've never taken more than one or two of them. If a doctor offers me oxy, I flat out refuse.
Oxycodone should never be a default medication. Suffering through the pain of recovery from an injury or surgery is better than what I understand the suffering from oxy is.
I think that culture of medicine in the US where if you are injured or sick docs have to give you something to relieve all pain, at the cost of feeling totally numb or be a zombie, is totally wrong.
Obviously pain medication needs to exist but they don't have to be that powerful. It is normal feel pain through recovery and puts good markers on your own improvement process. How are people supposed to listen to their body signals if we numb everything?
For me I was not a fan of opiates when I was in intense physical pain while recovering from surgery. I stopped early and that’s why I had so much left over.
However, it was an ideal drug for emotional pain in later years and I was extremely functional on it. Much more functional than I was sober.
> I had access to a nearly unlimited amount (>400 pills) left over from an earlier surgery
What the actual fuck? Was this some kind of surgery with long term pain that needed to managed (over a year?) and you slowly built up excess pills, or was this really the quantity that some doctors were prescribing (hence the lawsuits)?
Many of them sought help for it. I did not - I quit cold turkey after my third mild overdose. I had access to a nearly unlimited amount (>400 pills) left over from an earlier surgery.
For me opiates were a very effective relief against terrible emotional pain. I think just being there for your son a lot, including him in your activities as much as you can, treating him like an adult that you accept, will go a long way to immunizing him against addiction.
It’s important that your son feel it’s safe to bring his shameful actions to you for hands-off advice and support.