Painkiller That Nearly Killed A Life

My friend Susan met a car accident two years ago. Although she survived the accident, the impact of the car crash had caused fractures in her lumbar vertebrae. Since then she had suffered from low back pain frequently. To ease her pain, her physician had prescribed some opiates.

After 6 months of therapy and rest, Susan had finally recovered from her injuries and back to work. However, another problem arose without her awareness. During her resting period, Susan had become pretty dependent on her pain medication. She took painkiller whenever she felt discomfort and eventually the painkiller was taken at an even higher dosage than the initial prescription.

She became addicted to the opiate (painkiller) effects that she could not help to withdraw the pain medication even though her initial back injury had healed. The excessive opiate intake had adversely affected her daily life that she became easily depressed and could hardly concentrate in her work. She also suffered from insomnia often and lost weight badly. Struggling with those unhealthy symptoms for about a year, Susan realized she needed to do something before her painkiller addiction could ruin her life thoroughly.

Susan sought treatment for her painkiller addiction at a drug treatment centre called Meditox after doing some online researches and went through a 6-week outpatient opiate rehab program. The drug withdrawal was a successful one. Now Susan is back to a cheerful person as she used to be and has somehow become more motivated and socially active than ever.

I chatted with her online some days ago and she told me about her future plans. Well, looks like she has got great influence from her treatment counselor that she is considering to enroll in counseling services program! Happy ending isn’t it? I wish her the best of luck.