A recovering addict’s story a cautionary tale about insidious nature of opioids
TORONTO — At 13, Christie was smoking pot daily. In time, she began dabbling in cocaine. But it wasn’t until she was prescribed Percocet by her dentist following wisdom teeth removal in her early 20s that she began the long spiral downwards into a full-fledged opioid addiction that took over her life.
“I really liked that — the way it made me feel,” says Christie, who asked that her last name not be used for privacy reasons.
She subsequently received another Percocet prescription to treat abdominal cramps and “kept going back to my doctor for refills.”
“And then I wasn’t getting enough for how much I wanted to do,” she says of the pills. “So what I did is I stole the prescription pad … I took the script that she gave me and just copied it.”