“Mental Health and Opioids”
By: Lailah Hoover
“Opioids get addicting because of the dependence,” says Matthew Jarvis in the Dr. Peg interview. My Uncle Ray died at age 44 because of an overdose of Fentanyl combined with cocaine. “He was alone, he was isolated.” says my mother, Lorraine Hoover. Which was very true my uncle was alone and didn’t have anybody there to help him do better. He also didn’t have the money to wait and heal his injuries in the right way, which resulted in him continuing to take Fentanyl because he had to go back to work, but he was still in pain.
“My brother started doing drugs at a very young age,” says Lorraine Hoover. There were signs that my uncle needed help, he had signs of addiction problems and he never got help earlier so it resulted in it getting worse. In the Dr. Peg interview, they talked about how when young people start having addiction problems their parents don’t have the right resources or the right mindset to help their children. We need to start reaching these types of things at the first signs because it will help them in the long run. If my uncle would’ve got help at a younger age when the first signs showed he would still be alive right now.
“Some sprinkles of Fentanyl could kill you, and a teaspoon of heroine could kill you the same way,” says Dr. Peg talking about an image she saw comparing Fentanyl to the heroine. Fentanyl is a very dangerous drug that doesn’t take much to do bad things to you. My uncle was prescribed this opioid even though he had a history of addiction signs, which shows that our doctors need to be more cautious about who they give certain drugs too. Opioids are very deadly but very easy to get. Sometimes Fentanyl is even mixed with street drugs and sold to people.
Addiction can slowly mess up your clear thinking and the choices you make until you are killed. These types of drugs are in our stores and can kill you with no problem. This isn’t just happening to my uncle either, it is getting popular all over the United States that certain types of opioids are killing people because they are getting addicted to it and overdosing. All these deaths could’ve been solved if someone stepped up and helped them and if we weren’t able to get these deadly drugs so easily.
Depression is a great example of opioids because they use it as a coping method. People look past depression every day, some people even think it doesn’t exist. So when someone seems depressed they look past it and tell them to “Deal with it”, instead of helping them from the jump which would help them from going further into other things like these type of drugs.
“It’s important to be educated and open to helping,” says Lorraine Hoover. People can’t recover these type of things alone, someone always needs somebody to be open to understanding and helping. My uncle did not have any of that which opened the door to his habits of addiction to grow more and more. They also talked about how people need to stop thinking “old school” and realize that some people really do have problems and you can’t just tell someone to get over it because they physically and mentally can’t.
“Be educated and be aware, also be humble enough to ask for help,” says my mother, Lorraine Hoover. Speaking upon how it’s okay to NOT be okay! Sometimes you really can’t do it on your own, and you need to take extra steps and go outside of the box to take care of yourself and make sure that you are okay. Everyone always needs someone, no matter who you are. It’s okay to ask for help. Maybe my Uncle Ray felt like he couldn’t ask for help because he had to hold his own, he had to take care of himself on his own, he couldn’t let people know he needed help.
What I took from this was that you should always check on people and make sure they are okay because even if someone looks like they are okay, they might not be. Sometimes someone just needs someone open to help. Someone open to understanding and look at what they are going through. Your life is not always guaranteed to you, and your loved ones lives are not guaranteed to them. So if something seems off about you or someone else, then it’s okay to not take care of it all on your own. Pay attention to the people around you and don’t push something off until later because anything could be taken from you at any time.