A cautionary tale: One of my neighbors has been having addiction issues

[Fumesucker]

A couple I know down the road are having problems, the wife is addicted to pain meds she started on and still uses for back pain. But that's not the cautionary tale part.

A couple of months ago I was close to getting home and about to pull into "the home stretch" so to speak when my neighbor runs the stop sign coming out of our neighborhood right in front of me, if I had been thirty feet further on her car would have t-boned me and I probably wouldn't be posting this right now. I knew she had been having addiction issues at the time and assumed she was high so after she backed up to the stop sign I drove around her and waved a bit and kept on my way home, I don't think she even recognized me. The next day after reflecting on what to do I told her husband about the incident, not trying to cause problems but because I would want someone to tell me if I were in that situation and I thought the wife needed to not be on the road if she is driving high.

Fast forward to a couple of days ago, I was talking to the husband who told me his wife has been back in the hospital, this time for seizures. What got my attention about his tale is that her family was in the hospital room blaming him for leaving her at home to go to work when she was having a seizure. The doctor was also present for this and told the wife's family very strongly that the husband was not at fault, her seizures and their aftermath even to a trained professional were difficult to distinguish from being spaced out on pain meds and to a casual observer they were basically identical.

With this latest information I have come to wish that when I saw the wife run the stop sign I had stopped next to her and asked her if she was OK, I now think she probably had a seizure or was in the aftermath of one rather than being high.

My cautionary point is this; even people who get high on drugs sometimes have other problems that can easily be confused with the effect of a drug, be careful what you assume about people and the reasons they might be exhibiting unusual behavior.

[seveneyes]

1. Blue pills and black smoke

[hunter]

2. People with untreated health issues, mental health or otherwise, self-medicate.

I always think of chain-smoking schizophrenics.

What's up with that?

If automobiles were not essential to so much of our society, part of being a so-called responsible adult, maybe this world would be a better place.

In college I once had a bad reaction to prescribed medicines. I hadn't touched anything else.

Of course the first thing they thought when I was brought to the student health clinic was that I'd taken hallucinogenic street drugs.

Not unreasonable, but wrong.

In any case, addiction is another kind of health problem, like people who eat too much unhealthy food or have unsafe sex. That doesn't mean they "deserve" less than adequate medical care.

[LuvNewcastle]

3. Yes, a lot of people self-medicate either

because they don't seek care or because they aren't able to get adequate care. And some people, like schizophrenics, have urges for certain drugs that science can't really explain.

A lot of time has been wasted over the years, telling people to just say no and giving them no information about what to do when they or others say yes. Drugs are a fact of life in our society, and I see some of them becoming more prevalent. We should arm our kids and others with the information they need about how to deal with common drugs and common ailments. I think it would save a lot of lives and would certainly be better than telling scary stories.

I'm hoping that the experiments that scientists are doing now with cannabis find a lot of ways the drug can help people in pain. Cannabis already helps a lot of people with pain, such as myself, but I'm sure there are many more ways that they can find to give people relief with it. I've been on opiates before, and they only work for rather short periods and, as the OP notes, opiates are very addictive and can cause accidents involving others.

I'm hoping that more insured people will equal more people finding proper treatment for their pain and psychological problems, but it's going to take a long time before we're going to see most people getting the proper treatment. All we can do in the meantime is educate ourselves and offer our help where it's needed.

[Liberal_in_LA]

4. my story.. years ago a young women passed out on the bus, fell face forward to the floor

Totally unconscious. Lots of speculation by the bus riders - drugs, etc.

Paramedics opened her purse and found her insulin.. she was diabetic.