By Amanda Warren

Opiate addiction has become so widespread in the U.S. that President Trump declared it a national emergency in August 2017.  It has been covered extensively by many media sources including CBS 60 Minutes.  It is now commonly referred to as “The Opioid Crisis.”

Elected officials in many states have filed lawsuits against drug companies because of high rates of heroin addiction.

Some only become addicted after doctors have prescribed them with opiates because of sickness or injury.  It may be impossible to understand the severity of withdrawal symptoms until you experience it firsthand.

In January 2015, there was a respiratory virus going around and I seemed to have caught it.  However, I’d never experienced anything like this before.  I didn’t have asthma but it felt like someone was sitting on my chest.  I couldn’t believe how hard it was for me to breathe.  Everything I’d experienced before then was above the neck or “upper respiratory.”

I developed a rumbly wet cough from all the phlegm.  It took a few days before I realized there must be fluid in my lungs and chest.  My husband bought me the most expensive medicine at the drugstore.  Money wasted.

I didn’t want to take prescription cough medicine because I knew it would make me terribly depressed.  Three years earlier, I had to take it for a week when drugstore cough syrup wouldn’t work.  I still had some of it left.  I started taking it and it helped.

I went to my doctor a few days later.  She told me to take Mucinex and she wrote me a prescription for more cough medicine.  I was surprised when she couldn’t just call it in.  She had to print out a piece of paper with large official bold lettering and some kind of registration code.  I mentioned to my husband that it seemed like a big production just to get cough medicine.  He said it was because there was codeine in it.  My cough medicine was big money on the street.