Days had passed since Mom was last home, but one morning I woke up next to her. I snuggled up while her sleep allowed me; she’d be gone again soon.

Mom started the day heading down to the kitchen, opened prescription bottles and poured a small pile in her hand. Dad was furious but held it together. He picked me up to her eye level. She looked different than I remembered: skinnier, tired, spacey.

“Mommy, just stay home today,” I said. “Don’t go out.”

She swallowed the pile.

“I’m sorry, baby. I have to go; I have to go,”

She left before Dad could launch into an argument.

This was the first time Mom directly chose pills over me – a turning point from Vicodin patient to full-on addict.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is Part 2 of a series exploring the early wave of the opioid epidemic from Logan Day’s perspective watching his mother’s battle with addictive painkillers.

Mom, Mary Loveless-Day, and thousands like her, were molded into their addicts through a series of uneducated prescriptions. Prescription drugs can be just as dangerous as illegal ones. A single misstep, intentional or not, can send well-meaning people down addiction’s steep slope – like it did Mom’s.

Mom’s turning point

The first time I noticed Mom’s sharp change was a Sunday morning, playing with my Imaginext Batman toy set. Mom cut her friend’s hair in the kitchen across from me – being a hairstylist made in-house appointments a norm. Their conversation started normally, Mom’s scissors hovered over her friend’s hair, but hair stayed intact. Then, Mom’s eyes rolled in different directions and her head nodded back. Her words turned to mumbles.

That scared me, and I retreated upstairs with my toys for the rest of that day.

Years later, I learned her descent was thanks to another prescribed poison: Xanax

Our family doctor prescribed Mom a monthly 90-count bottle of 500 milligram Vicodin — a synthetic opioid — for moderate hand pain alone. These drugs neurologically rewire users to physically depend on them.

Opioids derive from opium poppies, used medicinally for centuries. Over-the-counter painkillers force the body to release its own numbing chemicals, but opioid painkillers directly attach to brain receptors, blocking pain and releasing dopamine. The overflow of dopamine warps the brain to be mentally and physically dependent. Neither Mom nor us knew Vicodin’s dangers, and when she returned to that same doctor complaining of brain fog, he prescribed Xanax.

Xanax relieves most unwanted opioid side effects such as insomnia, anxiety and cognitive decline. According to a study from UC Davis School of Medicine, about 25% of long-term opioid users are co-prescribed both – and that’s the worst outcome.  Xanax is a benzodiazepine, and when taken with Vicodin, a hydrocodone opioid, increases overdose rates by 10 times according to a 2016 research paper published in Pain Medicine. Both are depressants that weaken the prefrontal cortex – the area of the brain that fights temptation – slow breathing and heart rates, and boosts each drug’s sedative effects.

While the Xanax initially cured Mom’s brain fog, her tolerance for opioids accelerated while each high she got slowed her heart.

Downplayed

Mom’s addiction worsened.

Dad and Grandma did their best to distract me with every sport possible. Mom’s reappearances were hard to ignore though. When she’d walk through the front door, I’d beam a smile and run to her arms – but with each visit, her hugs grew weaker. Dad felt it, too.

While Dad thought Mom’s addiction was a freak accident, prescription opioids clearly dominated addiction rates. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, in 2010, hospital visits involving the misuse or abuse of prescription drugs outnumbered illegal.

Users develop a tolerance to prescription opioids within five days of the first dose, and Xanax accelerates that. While only a Schedule IV drug, Xanax can permanently alter the brain after just 12 weeks of use. Multiple studies, including a 2025 paper published in the Public Library of Science, demonstrate how Xanax causes long-term cognitive decline, but fail to identify how reversible the damage is.

Inadequate studies are one major problem. The FDA only approved OxyContin – the pioneer synthetic opioid –  based on a 12-week-long study without long-term addiction follow up. OxyContin’s manufacturer, Purdue Pharma, knew how addictive OxyContin was and secretly met with their FDA assessment officer Curtis Wright IV, to alter Wright’s reports on OxyContin. Wright resigned from the FDA to work for Purdue.

Following the shady approval, OxyContin led opioid overdose rates to quadruple from 1999 to 2007, surpassing cocaine and heroin overdoses combined. With profit-driven companies downplaying their drug risks, patients like Mom are blind to potential or worsening addictions. When we saw hers, it was too late.

Diversion

Just as companies abandon Mom, she abandoned us.

The back porch where Mom and I used to play superheroes was now quiet, except for the clatter and crunch from me, dumping a pill bottle I swiped from the counter onto the concrete. I stomped and stomped and stomped on them as hard as my stubby 4-year-old legs could. In my mind, I was destroying the pills destroying Mom – in reality, they were just ibuprofen.

Years later, Dad revealed that when Mom was missing, she was either cheating on him or partying. Why she chose partying over us? OxyContin.

At some point during day-long drug trips in the club, Mom met the opioid poster boy most call Oxy. A New York Times investigation revealed a 1999 phone call to a pharmacy where Purdue Pharma described “OxyContin as the hottest thing on the street — forget Vicodin.” For Mom, OxyContin made Vicodin useless.

Less media attention and regulation allowed Vicodin to silently become the most diverted drug on the market. About 38% of all opioid abusers start with prescription Vicodin. Because Mom’s tolerance grew so rapidly, she turned to OxyContin for its higher potency. Even then, Mom needed small piles of OxyContin to get high. Even Mom’s dealers told her through text that they were hesitant to give her that much OxyContin. Without the dose, her withdrawals were crippling, so Mom popped more pills, as most as she could.

Stigma

Mom knew her drug dependency consumed her. She lost control and she was scared. Mom watched an addict-friend unravel, eyes heavy and face skinny.

Mom asked Grandma, “Do I look like them?” She looked exactly like them.

“Baby, that’s what happens when you do drugs,” Grandma replied.

When addicts reach a level where their abuse is physically evident, people tend to treat them as “bad-characters.” In truth, every addict has an origin story and thousands from the opioid epidemic ,like mine, have families desperate to claw them out. Addiction stereotypes paint a false, dangerous unpredictability image of dependent-users looking to escape their drug. These add barriers to detoxing paired with existing neurological barriers the drugs build.

Even when communities address addiction alongside mental health, about 60% of people still stigmatize the former addicts, according to a 2015 PubMed study. Over a 15-year span, less than 5% of U.S. news stories mentioned medication-assisted treatments while over 60% discussed law enforcement as a solution. Jail, not treatment.

The U.S. government now recognizes addiction as a chronic brain disease, opioid use disorder, opposed to purely a crime. Opioids have a unique receptor-binding addiction that rewrites neural paths to physically depend on the drug. Government funded research proved addiction is a disease anyone can develop. Victims like Mom are just people: lost, scared and hooked by a drug they have no defense against.

Still human too

Purdue Pharma’s legal defenses, used stories like Mom’s to blame druggies for misusing pills. Purdue lost and must pay $7.4 billion in reparations. The court distributed that cash to state and local opioid abatement programs. Families like mine saw nothing.

Addicts are trapped, internally bullied by a drug twice as strong as morphine. They are still people; drug-corporations are the real monsters.

The FDA uses its Post-Market Drug Safety Monitoring protocol to catch manipulative drugs harming patients for profit but relies on reports from doctors and lacks any proactive, hands-on steps to prevent their problem.

This lazy approach to preventing addiction has already led to loopholes because profiting clinics simply don’t report the addiction. The FDA’s recent abuse-deterant drug formulas, which prevent opioid release from crushing or injecting, fails to stop addicts from simply taking more pills.

FDA prevention should go beyond only flagging suspicious clinics by actually preventing malpractice when alerted. Doctor’s failure to report calls for reliable third-party data researchers to publicly collect addiction statistics, reducing chances for any further schemes.

Why did Mom have to wait until she’s already falling down the slope to get help?

Mary deserved a fighting chance.

This story was originally published on Creek Compass on November 7, 2025.