The Impact of Opioid Dependence on Behaviors and Lifestyle

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DEBORAH TAYLOR: The progression of addiction and the behavior that comes with it is pretty standard regardless of where you're born, how much money you have, how old you are, what your race is, what your nationality is. You can be the smartest person in the world. The minute that chemical hits your bloodstream, you lose control of what it does in your body. You can't control it. Nobody can control. It I don't care who you are. It's not controllable.

WOMAN: I lived in crack houses, and that's almost like something you see on TV—an abandoned building with drug paraphernalia everywhere. Might be a piss-stained mattress, and God knows what else is on it. There was actually a place in the city that we were at, and a lady had overdosed in the bathtub. She had died. She was still in the bathtub. We'll just find another room in the house. And that's what my day consisted of. It became my full-time job. The needle was my boss—a very demanding boss.

WOMAN 2: Your whole day revolves around it. You go to sleep doing it, and you wake up doing it. You know what I mean? It's like some people smoke after every meal they have. No, you're doing a [BLEEP] shot.

WOMAN 3: It's a never-ending vicious cycle. It's the same thing over and over and over. You wake up, all you want to do is find out how you're going to get something. How are you going to get it?

MAN: It's stupid if you think about it, because I'm wasting all this money. Stealing from my family and my friends just to do a drug and fall asleep. And I wake up sick, so I'm like, oh, crap. Now I got to do it all over again.

You're still chasing that first high. So in order to be high, you got to at least be normal. And to get there, you got to at least do enough to where you're not sick anymore, so.

MAN 2: Well, usually, if I had stuff the day before, I'd always save a bag for the morning time so when I wake up, I could get well. And I call it that because, in the end, I wasn't using to get high anymore. I was using to stay well, so I wasn't sick. I'm not even getting high. I'm just trying to be able to get up out of bed. My head was always in my lap. I feel like I've missed a couple years of my life because there's a lot that is just a

1: It's just a fog, black fog because I really wasn't where.

WOMAN 1: My addiction level was so bad that I couldn't even function without 40 pills a day. I was ill. Like literally every four hours the chills started setting in. And I would I wake up and I would be—I woke up sick. And that's the way it went all day long.

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MAN 2: How do you know you're an addict? It's when you're doing something that you know is not good for you, that's harming you, but you can't help yourself. When your relationships are starting to fall apart around you, and you don't care, and the only thing that's on your mind is about how to get the substance and how to get to the next high, you're an addict. You can't maintain an opiate addiction and a normal life for very long.

MAN 1: I felt like after my first year of using it, I actually got physically addicted to where I actually needed it to even to wake up and get out of bed, start moving around, take a shower. And that's when I started stealing from my family, friends. Whatever money I had in my pocket was all going to it. If I got a $500 paycheck, $500 is going to dope.

WOMAN 2: Because you always tell yourself whenever you're using drugs and especially it's a super addictive one, oh, I'm not addicted. [REDACTED], you're addicted. You know what I mean? You're [REDACTED] addicted. You're in denial.

You might not be addicted at that point in time. But you're going to keep [REDACTED] using. And a month later or two months later you're [REDACTED] addicted.

WOMAN 3: At one point my husband said he would stop giving me, putting gas in the van so I could drive the distance to the city to get my drugs. And I said, well, I'll show you. I'm going to move to the city. I said, I don't need my van.

And I don't need gas money because the dope dealers are going to be living right here with me. And that's what I did. I ran away from home.

WOMAN 4: You will be high and put yourself in situations that you will get hurt. Someone will take advantage of you. You'd be knocked out. It's going to happen. You're going to get hurt.

MAN 3: Some people who have money and they don't have to steal for it. And then you meet other people who just pawn their family's TV and is coming and get and then deal with the consequences later.

WOMAN 5: She stole checks from her grandmother and signed them. She stole my debit card. If it wasn't nailed down, it was in the pawn shop.

She spent $800 a week. My daughter, who had everything handed to her, could have gone anywhere in the world, very book smart, very motivated, worked at a strip club. My little girl degraded herself just to get that.

WOMAN 6: Women turn to prostitution, which I've done myself. Guys will steal. They'll rob you right in front of you. I've seen guys take guns out on dealers and steal on them and rob everything from them, not even worrying about if they get shot or end up in jail.

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