Make It Make Sense

I made the mistake of watching Painkiller on Netflix. As was the case when I watched Hulu’s Dopesick, I was enraged at the truths revealed through these Hollywood dramatizations of Purdue Pharma, the Sackler family, and the opioid epidemic that has plagued this country for decades. Few families have not been directly impacted by the crisis. The ones who haven’t know someone who has.

While my family was directly spared, I remain haunted by the loss of a former student who in the Spring of 2004 arrived to school early on a Monday morning. I found her sitting on the stairs waiting for me.

“I need to talk to you,” she said.

I was 31 years old, single. When I started teaching at the high school her freshman year, Aimee’s bubbly personality drew me to her even though she wasn’t a student of mine that year. I had her in class as a sophomore, and she regularly sought me out throughout her junior year. We talked about literature and history, and I bonded with her as if she were my little sister. She was as bright as she was fresh—a little smart ass who struggled with boundaries because by 17, she had experience more chaos and drama in her life than she deserved.

Often we talked about her family, sometimes we talked about her boyfriend. Always we talked about her life.

“I tried Oxy this weekend, and I don’t know what to do,” she said.

“Ok,” I responded. I didn’t really understand the gravity of what she was telling me, nor did I consider the likelihood that this was not her first experience with the drug. I knew that Aimee was no stranger to partying. Her freshman year I learned that she and her boyfriend were smoking pot outside of the school, and I reported it to the principal. She knew I was a mandatory reporter. Her admission was a cry for help. I just didn’t understand how big the problem was at the time.

We talked through the different scenarios of what I could do—I could talk to the school nurse, the school psychologist, the principal. I could talk to her mother. I hugged her and told her I loved her and that we would get through this.

Then I called her mom and tried to delicately share the deeply concerning truth that her daughter had at least once tried a highly addictive drug that was destroying American families. According to the National Institute of Health, “Lifetime nonmedical use of OxyContin increased from 1.9 million to 3.1 million people between 2002 and 2004, and in 2004 there were 615 000 new nonmedical users of OxyContin.” Aimee had become one of them.

“She’s scared and she wants help,” I told her mother, then I reported everything to my principal.

For the ensuing four years, Aimee battled the demons of her addiction. Desperate for hope, then drowning in despair. She moved to Florida where she spent months in rehab, fighting to free herself from the destructive powers of drug addiction. Then she’d relapsed again.

She called me in early May of 2008, and her smile and pride were almost visible through the phone.

“I just got home from three months in rehab, and I’m going to go back to school,” she said. “This is the last time. I feel so good, and I don’t ever want to go through this again.” We talked for nearly an hour about all the plans she had to turn her life around.

Then in the early morning hours of May 23, I was awoken by a call from another former student who—if I’m being honest—was probably high at the time. So many of my students from the early 2000s danced with the opioid devil.

“Aimee’s dead,” I heard him say.

“What? How?” I asked.

“She overdosed,” he said.

“No, I just talked to her. She just got home from rehab. This is just a rumor,” I said.

“No, her brother found her in her room tonight,” he said crying.

I wept so loudly that I woke my roommate. Never before had the news of someone passing cut so deeply.

As much as I loved Aimee, she was not my daughter. I can’t imagine the suffering that comes from losing a child or the horror that never leaves you after finding your sister dead. But Aimee’s was not a singular story. The NIH report also noted, “Nationally, the increasing availability of OxyContin was associated with higher rates of abuse, and it became the most prevalent abused prescription opioid by 2004.”

The Sackler Family earned billions of dollars. Their cost of doing business was hundreds of thousands of human lives not to mention the ripple effects of those who were impacted by the opioid crisis, which puts the number of lives ruined in the millions. What’s worse is that the FDA and elected officials were culpable, and when it was clear that the drug was indeed addictive, Richard Sackler attacked the victims. It was the addicts fault for becoming addicted to the drug.

I don’t think I’m alone when I say, “please, just make it make sense.”

I left teaching a decade ago, and I’m glad that I don’t have to stand in front of a group of impressionable teenagers and ‘teach’ them about that rules matter, that there are consequences for their actions, that ‘when you get a job, you’ll have to…” Because, increasingly, less and less about ‘the real world’ makes any sense.