This opioid and alcohol addiction recovery Story of Hope follows Denese, now an Ideal Option patient in recovery, who fell into addiction when she began drinking and using pills in her teens.
For years, Denese kept a jumbo, rainbow-colored, 7-day pill organizer on her bedside table. Each day’s box contained 22 pills, including morphine and oxycodone.
“I kept the organizer where I could keep an eye on it,” says Denese, 69, an Ideal Option patient who was addicted to alcohol and opioid pills for decades. “My pills were my lifeline. At least that’s what I thought.”
Whenever she’d leave the house, Denese would bring along her pills in a gallon-sized Ziploc bag. “I was always thinking, Where’s my bag? Where’s my bag? I was petrified of going through withdrawal.”
A self-described “child of the sixties — the pill-popping generation,” Denese began drinking vodka at age 12 and using pills in her teens. Her parents would share their supply with her. “It was always, ‘Here, take this pill.’ Pills were magic.”
Denese experienced back pain at a young age and pursued a lifestyle that was hard on her spine. “Camping, hunting, scuba diving, sailing, riding motorcycles — I did it all,” she says. “The choppers I rode back in the day didn’t have shock absorbers, so when my back hurt, I would just have another drink and another pill.”
On a weekend away, she’d grab a bottle of 100 Vicodin and take them all.
Two pregnancies worsened her back pain, and she says her spine began to degenerate after her then-husband threw her against a shelf. While recovering from a fractured neck and collar bone, she began using even more pills.
Compounding her back problems, Denese worked as a teaching assistant for disabled children, pushing around kids in wheelchairs.
She says doctors were always happy to prescribe more pills. By the time she retired on disability, at age 50, Denese was riding the “opioid merry-go-round.”
“The doctors were handing me pain pills like candy,” she remembers.
Eventually, she underwent major spinal surgery, involving numerous screws and metal plates. By then, the medical profession had reversed course and was enforcing strict limits on opioid prescriptions.
“First the doctors got me addicted,” Denese says, “And then they told me, ‘No more.’”
That was when Denese’s daughter stepped in and told her: “Mom, you’re done with all that. You don’t need it.”
Denese didn’t believe her. “I felt like: I’m going to die without this stuff.”
With her daughter’s encouragement and a prescription from a primary care physician, Denese started on Suboxone. She was shocked to find that her cravings for opioids vanished. She didn’t experience withdrawal symptoms, either.
“Today, I wake up in the morning and my first thought is: I want a cup of coffee. That’s all. I don’t need to roll over and grab my bottle of pills. My ball and chain is gone. I’ve proven to myself, to my body, that I just don’t need pills.”
Though Denese still experiences back pain, she says, “If it hurts, I’ll just go soak in the bathtub. I don’t want to put a pill in my mouth.”
Denese says she appreciates Suboxone “because you don’t get a buzz, and you don’t need more and more and more.”
After several chaotic years living with family members, Denese recently moved to a quiet place of her own near the ocean. She plans to pick up the novel she’s been trying to finish for decades.
“I can think more clearly about everything,” she says. “If I was still on opioids, I’d still be circling the drain. I love my life now. I’m grateful for every day.”
Specializing in addiction medicine since 2012, Ideal Option has helped tens of thousands of people just like Denese get started in recovery. Click here to make an appointment at Ideal Option today!
Next up: “I feel like the cuffs are off, like I’m not in jail anymore” — Dustin’s Story of Hope