What I know:

Throughout the last 20 years, I've known some pretty shady characters. I will write about my life epiphany later, but for now I share the experiences I know. Unfortunately I have had the displeasure of meeting some people that I will never admit to knowing, in the future. I will now share some of the situations I have witnessed over the years, pertaining to prescription drug use and abuse.

In the beginning stages of my own drug use, around the age of 15 or 16, I was extremely naive, as many teenagers are. I was lost in my own little world and didn't have a clue as to what was going on around me. I was raised to listen to people and take them at their word. I was taught not to ask questions, just listen to the answers and move on. I was to be satisfied with the answers I had gotten to any question, and that I shouldn't question the motives of others. As you may have realized by now, my mother and other elders in my childhood, taught me these lessons so that I would not as them any questions because they had things to hide. Little did I know, you can't believe every word you hear. I was very sheltered as a child and I did tend to believe what people would tell me. I've been burned by that many times.

Back to the story. In the last two decades I've heard more and more conversation about the epidemic of prescription drug addicts. Each year of the last 20, has produced more and more prescription drug addicts of drugs like Adderall, Vicodin, and Oxycodone. These are also the three drugs most used by adults and adolescents. Yet doctors insist on giving it away like aspirin.

I've heard story after story, time and time again, how known drug addicts will go visit the doctor and get whatever drug they want. Literally. I've overheard dozens of conversations about prescription drugs and the world surrounding them. The consensus among drug abusers is that nearly any doctor you visit, will prescribe you Adderall if you pretend to have ADHD symptoms, and pain pills like Vicodin if you simply tell them you have pain.

There are laws in place to "supposedly" protect human beings from prescription drug abuse, but they are few and far between. The doctors always have a typed statement that they send home with each prescription, naming side effects and symptoms. For many of these drugs, they will state that you shouldn't take these drugs unless adviced by a medical doctor, etc. etc. But how could this ever be enough to stop an epidemic of abuse of these drugs? There is so much more that needs to be done about this, I plan to share this article with Minnesota Congress. For now, here are a few sick and twisted stories I'd like to share with you, about the depths of this epidemic.

Sick and Twisted stories of prescription drug addicts:

I recently became the neighbors of some extremely addicted prescription drug users. I had no idea that the world was so addicted. I mean, I've done some drugs myself and I've seen many drugs done by other people and I've talked with these people, tried to hear their stories, and I cannot believe what I've heard and seen.

I will call the neighbors Carrie, Rich, and Lenny. Carrie is the wife, she is approximately 24 years old. She is married to Rich, they've been together for around 10 years, married for 8. Lenny is Carries brother, who lives with them at this time. My husband knew Carrie and Lenny when they were kids. H (my husband) hung out with Lenny for a little while when they were teenagers. Carrie and Lenny's home was nothing to brag about. H said that every time he went to Lenny's house, their mother was sitting in her chair and didn't move a muscle. In fact, she was addicted to prescription pills, but also had her son Lenny buying marijuana for her. Their father was an alcoholic and didn't spend much time at home. But H said that the house was so dirty that you could barely walk around a room without tripping on something. There were clothes and dirty dishes stacked feet high and the same items would be in the exact same locations, weeks later.

Now that Lenny, Carrie, and Rich are the neighbors, we've gotten to know them as adults, even though we wish we hadn't.

Over the last several months H and I have heard these stories time and time again: All three of them will take any prescription drug you will give them. Carrie is addicted to pain pills and Lenny is addicted to anything under the sun. They've offered us pills that I've never heard of, pills for pain, ADD/ADHD, sleep depravation, energy, and anything else you can think of. Lenny was recently released from jail for stabbing Rich (his brother-in-law) and immediately that same day, came knocking on my door and was totally innebriated. I could barely understand a word he said. Since he's been home, we've watched the drug traffic moving constantly in and out of our parking lot. All three of the neighbors come to our house nearly every day, wanting something. They want to borrow this and that, they need a cigarette, etc. etc. and everytime they owe us something, they try to repay us with prescription pills that "someone" sold them.

A couple of weeks ago, Rich was telling us that Lenny was in need of pills, he's an addict and was running out and needed something. He doesn't have insurance, none of them do, but Lenny knew he needed some kind of drug to avoid withdrawal...this is what they came up with: Lenny wanted drugs so bad that he handed Rich a wooden baseball bat and asked him to hit him with it. Rich didn't think long about it really. Lenny had stabbed him in the leg, he wanted some payback. He grabbed the bat from Lenny's hand, drew back and proceeded to break Lenny's nose from the single thwack with the bat. In mid-swing Rich uttered, "This is for stabbing me, bitch." Can you believe Lenny's reply...."Geez, you didn't have to hit me that hard."

Unbelievable.

About a month ago, Rich wanted to get his wife Carrie some pain pills. Carrie is extremely addicted to Vicodin and Oxycontin. Although Rich does try to keep her calmed down by doling out the pills to her himself, he's obviously enabling her. But this time Rich couldn't think of any other way to get pain pills for her, so he let a car fall onto his ribcage while changing oil in a vehicle. He had the car set up just perfectly on the blocks, so that it would fall on him and hurt him, but not kill him. It actually worked. He had cracked ribs, but got the Vicodin for his wife.

H recently started a drug treatment program. The first day he was there, the medical staff there offered to give him Adderall or any other drug he thought he might need for energy, pain, or sleep. They simply asked him what he wanted, they made no suggestion whatsoever about a doctors prescription or past use. I was dumbfounded by this fact. Is it really that easy, you may ask? Yes.

H is a recovering meth addict, why in the world would they offer him Adderall? It has the same exact affects as meth does, for people with ADHD, except it's a much cleaner drug, it doesn't have the nasty after-effects that meth does. But it's essentially the same thing, why would he want that? I don't get it! The laws need to change drastically. People are dying left and right and I think it's simply due to the pharmaceutical and medical world using us as gineau pigs and trying to ween out the weak of the world. This is Hitler stuff undercover, in my opinion.

Money, Money, Money

The last bit of this story that I want to share with you, is that people like Lenny and Carrie are able to go back to doctors and get these prescriptions filled time and time again, and as soon as these druggies get home with their "treasures", they're selling them for hundreds of dollars. These are otherwise people that are on welfare or assistance and are absolutely taking advantage of "the system's" loopholes.

H and I have watched the last few months go by and we've seen it happend time and time again. The first of the month when their Adderalls and Vicodins are refilled, they miraculously have money to spend, but of course not on their bills or their children, but on more drugs. And as I said, the system is failing the citizens in this way. How can these patients keep getting typically addictive drugs, over and over again? It's a shame.

The End:

Tragedy has struck so many wonderful people due to prescription drug abuse. The deaths of Heath Ledger and Michael Jackson haunt me today.

I did not know until recently that many of these drugs stay in your system for a period of up to 3 days. So even if someone was to take a Vicodin or two one day and then took a sleep aid the next day or even two days later, those drugs could react with each other wrongly, and ultimately cause death. This happens every day and I want to help stop it. Laws need to be changed, doctors need to have their credentials checked periodically, and patients need to be screened as well. I am not a scientist or doctor so I do not have these answers, but maybe if we all stand up and spread the word, some lives may be saved.

Click here to read Part 1 of this article