Dear Mr. President,
I am writing to you to because I believe if you took time to hear from a little boy who wanted to mow the White House lawn, that you’ll find the subject of alcohol, opiates, mental health, and parenting even more important; I’d like to give you a perspective that I don’t hear anyone talk about regarding the recent school shooting, our broken mental health system and the opiate crisis.
I have a unique 360 degree perspective that few can claim:
- I was raised by an alcoholic mother, and the experience was in many respects, traumatic.
- I am a recovering alcoholic with twenty-eight years of sobriety.
- I am a registered nurse and I see and know what goes on in healthcare that has become one of the biggest enablers of the opiate epidemic and other forms of drug addiction and prescription drug abuse.
I currently work in a mental health hospital with adults and children. When it comes to the children, most of the medical staff, myself included, think that there’s nothing wrong with 90% of the children that come to the hospital—far too often it’s their parent’s substance abuse issues that leads to traumatic childhood experiences, and in turn, these children often seek out illicit substances to numb their pain: kids who are abused, traumatized, neglected and bullied are the ones who later may turn to substance abuse and violence to let out the silent rage that for years, they’ve stuffed.
Most of the doctors have no clue how to deal with addiction; I see their ineptitude every day and it’s because they do not understand the mind of an addict, and they’ve swathed themselves in hubris because of their education; their go-to solution is always to throw more pills at the problem, which clearly, doesn’t work. In twenty-four years I have yet to see one doctor do something helpful for the addicts and alcoholics. I have yet to hear even one doctor say, “You have a substance abuse problem and I will not medicate you with antidepressants and antipsychotics until you’re sober and we have a baseline.”
I have talked with physicians who are now in recovery and they all admit, they knew nothing about addiction until it happened to them.
The powerful alcohol and pharmaceutical lobbies are taking down the millennial’s in frightening numbers because of the ubiquitous alcohol and prescription drug problem we have in this country. Too many people use a prescription as a way to cope. I am deeply concerned that companies will continue to struggle to find workers who are not medicated—on something. What most people don’t realize is that even some legal prescriptions and antidepressants can scramble a person’s mind. I’ve seen too many lives ruined by the indiscriminate prescribing habits of doctors who respond to the public’s hunger to find the magic pill that will relieve them of a hundred forms of mental anguish—real or perceived.
I have rubbed elbows and have been in the trenches for twenty-eight years with people suffering with addiction. I’ve worked successfully for decades with women in recovery. I intimately understand that nuances of the disease that most people miss because like a tea bag, I have been steeped in it in one way or another my entire life. People talk to me because they don’t know I’m paying attention. These are addicts and alcoholics that tell me the truth, and I also see it myself at the hospital: The way addicts lie and scam the doctors, the doctors who don’t get it and don’t care to learn about addiction; other people scam the system searching for disability checks—it’s disturbing to hear people in their twenties tell me they’re disabled when really they’re addicts who can be helped. Many doctors and psychiatrists would rather have a lifelong patient and give a person what they want than to confront them about their substance abuse and point them in the direction of where they could thrive—in recovery. We need a brutally honest social conversation.
Furthermore, alcohol is still the most widely abused drug. What most people do not what to hear is that 80% of alcoholics have full time jobs. Most people start their addictions with alcohol and studies have shown that people will often use two other substances first, before they escalate to opiates.
Alcohol and drug abuse have created millions of forgotten children.
I know you care deeply for children, and I can tell you that the foster care system is a joke. Many of the foster parent’s sign up to supplement their retirement incomes. They don’t have the energy or the inclination to parent. How many more kids do I need to send home from the hospital with someone who doesn’t care about them? How many more fourteen and fifteen year old kids do I need to encounter in the hospital who can’t read? What other futures can these kids know than to become drug dealers or welfare moms?
I blog and speak out about the #winetime culture because this is often where many of the problems start. I have yet to see medical staff appropriately address all the drunk people who come to the hospital. The doctor’s go-to diagnosis is some form of depression, and people are started on any number of pills. There is a lot of money to be made on all this alcohol abuse and misfortune. Many kids are impacted; they flounder in the aftermath of all the drunk drama while the parent’s are at the hospital, stuck in their substance abuse while doctors try to medicate them into wellness. Not once, have I ever seen that practice work.
As for the school shooting: I know you understand that unstable people are released from psychiatric wards every day and many of them have no business living at large in the community. Former OH governor, Ted Strickland, was behind the closing of the one mental health hospital in Dayton, OH, and it was a horrible mistake. More and more the hospitals are saddled with patients who are aggressive, and many make homicidal threats. The medical staff does their best to stabilize these people, and then they are sent home. Dangerous!
You know better than anyone that the people who are supposed to know what they’re doing often don’t. Many doctors make a lot of money doing speeches for the pharmaceutical companies, and most of the medication studies are paid for by the pharmaceutical companies. No bias there.
We keep listening to the professionals, but the professionals are the ones who helped get us into this mess with their liberal prescribing habits. We can’t expect the people who got us into these terrible messes to then help us get out of them. I attended an opiate discussion in our community, “Your Voice Ohio,” and overwhelmingly most people said that the medical community is lacking in knowledge regarding addiction. Many doctors think that medical assisted therapy (MAT) such as suboxone is the panacea for addiction—but it only addresses the physical craving. It does nothing to treat the emotional baggage that drives using in the first place. Many addicts tell me that they sell their suboxone and go right back to heroin.
- My twenty-four year nursing career has been spent in emergency rooms and psych wards. I look at it as twenty-four years of undocumented research, and I can tell you with certainty what isn’t working.
- The stigma keeps medical professionals, some who have addiction issues of their own, from recognizing addiction in the many patients who pour through hospital doors.
I have a huge heart for children and know that you do too. Again as I mentioned, children from all demographics are neglected and traumatized by living with substance abuse. Drunk-hags wearing designer suits and trotting off to six figure jobs have kids who are often emotionally as neglected as kids living in drug infested areas. Here is an example: I took one such child into my home and kept her for two years. Her mother was a lawyer and her father a college professor. Addiction impacts every demographic. Many children suffer, yet the drinking culture is celebrated.
According to one article in USA Today, millennials drink 42% of all wine, more than any other generation. This sad fact does not bode well for the children. Our culture constantly pushes alcohol and women are jumping on board in record numbers, but what about the children on the back side of all that drinking?
During this past year, I wrote Mrs.Trump two letters. She is a gorgeous, elegant woman and we need someone with her stature, and her voice, to call attention to the desperate need to dial back the drinking culture—particularly among affluent women. Most all of the social ills start with alcohol.
I am tired of seeing all the wine o’ clock jokes; too many children suffer. What happens is that some of the children of these boozy parents land in the hospital because they’re depressed and suicidal, and instead of looking at the whole picture of why these children are depressed, the kids are medicated “to help them cope.” There’s not a pill in the world that can fix bad parenting. What we’re doing is creating the next generation of addicts. Because I have been entrenched in the world of addiction I’ve become an expert at recognizing the early warning signs, and understanding why kids especially, turn to addiction. I understand it because I lived it.
I would like to see some of that 13 billion that you allocated for the opioid epidemic go to help kids in a real way. They don’t need medication. They need safety, love, and an education. It is shameful that I have run into too many fourteen and fifteen year old kids who are caught up in the system who can’t read and can’t tell time on an analog clock. What future other than drug dealer will these kids have?
So this is where we are. I wonder how many professionals have the necessary letters behind their names, but how many of them understand what’s really going on? How many of them rub elbows with and listen to addicts and alcoholics and truly understand the nature of the disease? It’s like reading about being a builder, but never building a building. I tried to be as brief as possible and hope that you can understand my concerns, and will bring to light some of these issues.
Respectfully,
Lisa Boucher
*revised from the original version.