Pain Med addiction--His Story

“I was born in Louisville, KY., to loving parents. I have one older brother. We lived in KY for the first then years of our life. We then moved to West Virginia, where I continued to enjoy family life and the great outdoors, at age twelve we moved to Reuna, (The Pocono Mountains). This was a resort area and there was a lot of fun things to do including drinking. I liked alcohol the first time I tried it, and along with two friends we drank almost every weekend, at least one night there was drinking parties periodically until I turned eighteen.

At eighteen I now had to join the Coast Guard in order to not be drafted. My drinking was both legal and social in the military.

I met my wife before I was discharged and again drank normally. We were married ten months later while I attended college. Again I drank socially and graduated with two B.S. degrees in 1977 just before my son was born. I worked as a medical technologist for the next twenty eight years and also worked as a chemist in R & D.

In 1990 I had been working as a chemist when the company was bought out and the job evaporated. Now I started drinking alcoholically as a functional alcoholic. I did this until 1993 where I drank almost 24 hours a day. I went into rehab and have been in recovery for sixteen years.

Four months ago the morphine that I took for severe pain due to an injury in the military and a car accident, began to be more than for pain relief. I used too much and isolated myself by staying in bed. I realized I needed help or I wouldn’t have my wife of thirty eight years nor my life. So I called Synergy Group Services, Inc, and started the program, I have been in the program for two weeks now. Through the grace of God I will stay clean.

P.S. I realized my father drank alcoholically when I was about thirteen years old. Since this was the early sixties no one knew what to do for him. He died at age fifty nine in 1973.