Episode Summary

In part 2 of my conversation with retired FBI Special Agent Aaron Weeter, we learn more about life as an FBI agent. Aaron explains how he got started, what it was like to work on high-profile cases like 9/11, the DC Sniper, and January 6th, and how he ultimately specialized in drug-related crimes for most of his career. It was fascinating to learn about how Aaron and his colleagues used informants and undercover officers to take down doctors in the opioid epidemic.

Be sure to listen to the previous episode with Aaron to learn how the opioid epidemic of the 90s spread to become the fentanyl epidemic we have today: Retired FBI Agent Reflects On Opioid Crisis

For the visually-minded who prefer to listen and read or for those who need closed captioning, watch the transcript video here: https://youtu.be/sDVbaz9FHbM

Related Episodes

Retired FBI Agent Reflects On Opioid Crisis

Overdose Awareness: A Sister’s Tribute

Addiction to Sobriety: A Mother’s Journey

Anonymous Sister

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The Wisdom Shared Team

• Audio Engineering by Steve Heatherington of Good Podcasting Works
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Transcript

[00:00:00] Carole Blueweiss: Welcome to Wisdom Shared, where parents, kids, and people on the front lines are the experts and where connection inspires change. I am your host, Carole Blueweiss. And today we have as my special guest retired Special Agent Aaron Weeter on the show for a second time. On the last episode, Aaron explained from his perspective how the fentanyl epidemic today was born out of the prescription opioid crisis in the 90s. He will share with us what motivated him to become an FBI special agent, along with some inside stories that you won’t want to miss. Let’s get right to it.

How does it work in the FBI that you’re getting the people that become double agents to spy for you? 

[00:00:47] Aaron Weeter: We refer to them as informants or cooperating witnesses. The way that worked is if we heard about a particular doctor because local law enforcement had arrested somebody on a deal and figured out that they were a patient of that doctor, then the local law enforcement officers would be in touch with us.

And we would approach that person. If it was somebody that was passed out in a car or if it was a smaller quantity drug deal, they weren’t held. They would be arrested and released. And then we would approach them and basically talk to them to understand from them what was their actual relationship with that physician?

Did they fall off of scaffolding and have spinal fusion surgery and have excruciating pain? Did they have cancer? And that’s an important distinction to make. Palliative care, where you’re talking about caring for people, you know, have terminal type illnesses, but whatever medications they need to make them comfortable as best they can, they should have full access to.

These were folks that were otherwise healthy that we were interested in. If they were a significant dealer right off the bat, I would tell them, look, history is history. You can’t undo what is already done. And we are aware that you have sold huge quantities of these pills over the last few years. But there’s always a reason for that, and we want to give you the opportunity to help yourself as best you can, but you’re going to have to be truthful. You’re going to have to be reliable when we call and you’re going to have to certainly stop selling the pills because we’re going to be taking the pills at this point from you.

[00:02:26] Carole Blueweiss: You were trained as a CPA, a certified public accountant. How did you end up becoming an FBI agent? 

[00:02:32] Aaron Weeter: Well, for me, it started up, you know, at a young age. I grew up just one exit north of Quantico, Virginia, which is a big Marine Corps base. But on that Marine Corps base is the FBI training academy. And I grew up with a lot of kids in school who were sons or daughters of FBI agents stationed either at Quantico or at FBI headquarters in D.C. So I got a window into it there, and then I also had a very close family friend, and he was an FBI agent up in New York, and I remembered the stories that he told. One of my favorites that probably made the light go on in my head that that’s something I wanted to do in the future was we went on a ski trip and stayed overnight with them in New Jersey before we took off the next morning for New Hampshire.

And how he wasn’t home. He was working, of course, so I was asleep on the couch in the living room and about 2 o’clock in the morning, I saw the door open and I saw a man coming through the door with a briefcase in one hand and a shotgun in the other. And I thought, wow. Well, after the initial shock and concern wore off in my 12-year-old mind, I thought, you know, this would be a great job to have, to apply your schooling and upbringing to a noble cause and something that would be exciting and invigorating to work.

[00:03:53] Carole Blueweiss: Do all FBI agents carry guns? 

[00:03:56] Aaron Weeter: Yes. 

[00:03:57] Carole Blueweiss: They do? 

[00:03:58] Aaron Weeter: They do. 

[00:03:59] Carole Blueweiss: How do you become certified to become an agent? 

[00:04:02] Aaron Weeter: I went through college and got a degree in business accounting and specifically with a focus to try to, you know, get myself into the FBI as quickly as possible. So the FBI recruits in a wide variety of fields and backgrounds. And accounting, I knew, was one that was a very quick route in.

I also knew that it would be a great degree to have if I needed a job otherwise, and so got my accounting degree, got my CPA. And applied to the FBI in 1997. It was about a one-year process to get through all of the background investigation, the polygraph, the interviews, the testing. In 1998, I was offered an appointment as a special agent with the FBI, and I showed up at the academy, or I was told to show up at the academy. And it was a 23-and-a-half-year career thereafter. And I retired at the age of 50, having accomplished just what I had wanted to do in those two decades.

[00:05:03] Carole Blueweiss: What did your parents think when you told them you wanted to be an FBI agent? 

[00:05:08] Aaron Weeter: Oh, I think my parents were very supportive of it. They knew a number of FBI agents growing up, when I grew up. Again, living in that community surrounded by agents who are coming and going from different assignments. Public service was important and my mom certainly supported it very much as well. Though they worried. 

[00:05:29] Carole Blueweiss: They worried. Yeah, that was my wonder. And when you say special agent, are all FBI agents special? 

[00:05:36] Aaron Weeter: Oh, that’s a great question. I think they are, but that is just a name. And often I would get the question, what makes you special? And I said, it’s just, that’s just the title. I couldn’t choose to just be an agent. That’s a title. There are no agents, there are only special agents. 

[00:05:53] Carole Blueweiss: I like that. They should be also special employees, you know? 

[00:05:57] Aaron Weeter: Absolutely. 

[00:05:58] Carole Blueweiss: How was it for you to manage such an intense career and then come home to your family?

[00:06:06] Aaron Weeter: Well, certainly there were times where it was extremely challenging. My wife not knowing when I was going to be home or what I was doing. She knew back in college when we started dating that that’s something that I wanted to do. But, you know, at 26, when I came in, you’re still pretty young. We didn’t have any children and life was still fluid enough to adapt, but it was certainly a sacrifice. We had to move from Atlanta to Washington. D.C., which was not our choice. That was where I was assigned.

[00:06:35] Carole Blueweiss: And you could tell her I’ll be home late or not. 

[00:06:37] Aaron Weeter: I could. 

[00:06:39] Carole Blueweiss: Yeah, no, I just mean about like the worry factor.

[00:06:41] Aaron Weeter: Sure. Sure, yeah. There were times I think where she was concerned. Are you okay? Where are you? But they were more, you know, major events in the area like the DC sniper or, you know, September 11th type things, or even on January 6th. You know, being at the Capitol on that day and, you know, what’s going on down there is just, you know, watching the news, right? You know, it can make you worry.

[00:07:08] Carole Blueweiss: Clearly, you didn’t choose what you were put on, but it just seems such a variety of cases. How does that work? Do you, they just assign you? 

[00:07:17] Aaron Weeter: Yeah, so coming out of the academy, you are assigned to an office and within that office, you’re assigned to a squad. So within the FBI, there are 56 field offices. So you rank your field offices, you know, 1 to 56 in order of where you’d like to go. And I believe it was in week seven that we were informed of our office assignment. So in week seven, I opened up an envelope and found out I was going to Washington D.C. That was my first choice because I knew probability wise, I would likely get it. It was a big office.

My roommate, on the other hand, got his 48th choice. And he was at the bottom of the class as far as choices. He went to Newark. No offense to the northeast there. A, I was a CPA and I was assigned to a white collar crime squad. That didn’t necessarily apply to the other accountants or CPAs in my class, and they were assigned to a variety of different squads, drug squads, fugitive squads, counterintelligence squads, counterterrorism, there are a multitude of places to work within the FBI, and that’s why I think it’s the most interesting, opportunity filled law enforcement career that you can have because you can really, I stayed in the same area for my time in the FBI, but I could have moved to within each of those areas if I had wanted to. 

[00:08:40] Carole Blueweiss: So you were assigned to the white collar, what do you say, white collar? 

[00:08:44] Aaron Weeter: White collar crime squad or the financial crimes area. 

[00:08:48] Carole Blueweiss: But yet you worked for 9/11 and you worked in the D.C. sniper case and then January 6th. So how does that fit in? 

[00:08:56] Aaron Weeter: Well, my office, which is the Washington Field Office of the FBI, is a large office. When major events like 9/11, the DC sniper or January 6 take place, it’s pretty much all all hands on deck situation and everyone responds and is assigned.

So, basically a squad, which I was part of a squad, my squad was one of about seven in the white collar crime section that focused on different areas of white collar crime. And within my squad, I typically had 10 to 12 agents. After September 11th, we were almost immediately assigned to Dulles Airport, which is where one of the planes took off that morning.

And we were running all sorts of leads to try to figure out who the hijackers were. Reviewing video, seeing if there were folks that were on the inside that helped them get in or get onto the planes, etc. So DC sniper, we were fanned out over, you know, the entire northern Virginia area, DC, Maryland. Looking for, you know, particular vehicles and following up on leads. And, you know, January 6th, we responded as a squad to, you know, the Capitol in the early evening, late afternoon. So basically, whenever anything, you know, large scale happens, everyone kind of is pulled in to respond and assist and that can go on for weeks and months and, you know, it could go on for just a period of days if it’s a smaller event that resolves.

[00:10:36] Carole Blueweiss: So there’s certain events that take over whatever you were doing before, like any of the investigation of stuff that could wait, you were pulled. 

[00:10:45] Aaron Weeter: September 11th, 2001 was kind of right at the height of when we were doing these pill investigations, the initial pill investigations, and we had to put all of that on the shelf. We couldn’t operate our informants. We couldn’t meet with the prosecutors. We couldn’t prepare for indictments. We couldn’t do anything. And that went on for several months, at least probably two to three. 

[00:11:09] Carole Blueweiss: Of all of these cases, you witnessed live, January 6th episode, or what do you say? January 6th…? 

[00:11:18] Aaron Weeter: Yeah, January 6th event, whatever. It was a response to help to secure the building at that point, which, you know, by the time we got there, it was mostly well in hand. It was, you know, going back to your point on, you know, the dangers of the job, what I would say is, the fellow law enforcement officers that I work with, the state and locals. Primarily the locals, as we call them, as they call themselves within the counties and the cities and areas that we worked, are the ones that are really on the front line all the time. 

An FBI operation is typically planned out well in advance. So as far as the dangers of the job, I certainly want to highlight that being a local law enforcement officer was far more dangerous than what I did. My job certainly had its share of potential, but we kind of, for the most part, knew when it was coming and could prepare for it.

[00:12:13] Carole Blueweiss: So what case was your favorite or the most intriguing for you or that sticks out in your mind? 

[00:12:20] Aaron Weeter: Sure, probably the biggest case that I worked on is in that prescription drug area, the pill world. It was a case that I opened and worked with the DEA, Fairfax County Police, Prince William County Police, the Virginia State Police. It was a task force case.

So we had a couple of doctors in Northern Virginia and a pharmacist in Northern Virginia, a couple of pharmacies, who were supplying, providing prescriptions for, and filling prescriptions for absolutely enormous quantities of opioid medications. Oxycodone primarily and at the time it was OxyContin and those doctors were prescribing the medications to hundreds of patients and in volumes that allowed the patients not only to use, and when I say patients, there were different types of patients within each practice, there were the folks that were there for the right reasons, trying to get help to treat chronic pain, which I’m sure I know from what they have told me over the years, is absolutely agonizing and life changing when you have it.

So there were folks that were there for the right reasons, but there were also folks that were there because they had either become addicted and couldn’t control their intake of these medications any longer to the point they began abusing them. Typically, those folks evolved into, many of them evolved into selling the drugs, which is what brought us.

So as far as, you know, the most intriguing case, I would say it was kind of the combination of those three subjects who were related, but unrelated as physicians and pharmacists and the distribution networks that they fuel. We had about 40 subjects total in that case who pled guilty in US District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia with sentences ranging from 20 plus years to months of incarceration or probation. But it kind of ran the gamut. 

[00:14:25] Carole Blueweiss: Do you remember that feeling of like, I can’t believe this? Or what did you feel when you were doing that case? 

[00:14:34] Aaron Weeter: Well, I opened my first pill case in 1999. I had just started with the FBI in the Washington field office after my training in October of 1998. I want to say it was January of ’99 I opened my first pill case and I didn’t have any background in opioids before that.

I didn’t really frankly know what they were, but I began working with the locals, the local law enforcement officers, and began hearing about this issue that they were having with prescription drugs and the issue with prescription drugs for the local law enforcement officers is typically, you know, many of these folks, if they were a patient, they had a prescription bottle, had a doctor’s name on it, had a pharmacy label on it, and they were legally allowed to have it.

The only difference is, you know, it was very unlike cocaine or methamphetamine or any other type of illicit drug, heroin. If you have quantities of that on you, there is no doctor behind that. Right? So the local law enforcement officers were and the local courts were having difficulties prosecuting these cases. And in typical drug cases, often you work your way up from the bottom.

And so with a cocaine case, for example, if they arrested somebody with cocaine on them, they could take that person on up to their dealer and they could then arrest that person and take that person up to the next dealer. At every step of that way, there’s, you know, blatantly illegal conduct. These are illicit drugs. They’re not allowed to exist. But with the pills, the local law enforcement officers didn’t really know how to effectively address that. Not that they hadn’t done it on certain occasions in the past, but these doctors could have hundreds of patients and trying to put together a case that made that prescription illegal was the challenge.

[00:16:28] Carole Blueweiss: And how did it become apparent that there’s a problem here? 

[00:16:32] Aaron Weeter: I would say it came from a variety of sources. Like I said, the medical board investigators might mention it to us on one day. A local law enforcement officer who’s on a drug task force who we worked with would mention it the next. We worked with insurance companies. Insurance companies would note that certain providers or physicians would be prescribing medications that were larger in quantity or stronger in dosage than they typically saw.

So really it came from a variety of different sources. Pharmacists were also a great source of information. And we developed actual informant type sources within pharmacies who would provide information to us. You know, within the parameters of what they were allowed to do, but they’d say hey, this looks really sketchy. I’m not sure what’s going on here. I’ve got a van load of people from Maryville, Tennessee, you know, which is outside of Knoxville. And they just pulled up in front of the pharmacy and they’re seeing a doctor in Maryland. And they’re all in their early twenties when they’re all filling virtually the same types of prescriptions for oxycodone, Xanax, morphine and other medications. So pharmacists were also a great source of information for us. And then the question, how do we figure out whether this is a criminal conspiracy or conduct or whether this is just the practice of medicine? 

[00:18:03] Carole Blueweiss: I watched Chasing the Dragon. That was a great documentary that showed what can happen and from the point of view of people that, people think of drug addicts as a certain kind of type, but in actuality, especially with this opioid epidemic, it wasn’t that at all. It was regular people having regular lives, being brought up in a very comfortable situation, getting well educated. 

[00:18:30] Aaron Weeter: Right, right. The demographic, there is no, you know, bias or prejudice toward who you are, what demographic you come from. It affects everyone from the young teenager to, you know, the 60 and 80 year old grandmother who’s financing her trips to, you know, on cruises with the pills that she gets because she doesn’t use them. She passed them on to her family members who are running a pill operation and she gets to enjoy, you know, trips out of it. 

[00:19:02] Carole Blueweiss: Woah, woah, woah, that was a case? 

[00:19:05] Aaron Weeter: Yeah, that was a case. Yeah. 

[00:19:06] Carole Blueweiss: Tell me more. 

[00:19:07] Aaron Weeter: So, that was a case. It started with some doctors and then we started to look at some of the patients as well to see if we could identify some folks who were dealers, patient dealers who we might be able to, you know, motivate. And I say motivate, when you’re addicted to these medications and you’re selling them and you get arrested, the last thing you want to do is stay in jail. Because, you know, if you stay in jail, you’re going to go through withdrawals and withdrawals are terrible. 

In that case, we had two brothers and at least one neph, one of their sons, that were involved in distributing these pills. And they had doctors, some doctors that they were getting them from, and they were also getting them off the street in DC at lower prices and reselling them in Virginia at higher prices.

The mother was literally, I think she was certainly in her late seventies, but probably in her early eighties, she was taking cruises and she would get her pills every month and she would pass them on to the kids and they would sell them. These, when I say kids, these guys were in their fifties. But yeah, that’s how she was kind of enjoying her lifestyle.

[00:20:12] Carole Blueweiss: It’s just mind boggling of a grandmother selling drugs to the family members to make money to go on trips. Just like my brain can’t even compute that. 

[00:20:23] Aaron Weeter: Yeah, yeah. Well, she was a tough nut to crack too. Because we talked to her a number of times and everybody, you know, in the family kind of told us that she was a supplier of some of the pills, but she would never, she would never give it up. She’s like, oh, no, I take my pills. You know, I said, well, would you mind if I counted them? You have them here? Oh, well, you know, I’m running a little short. I took a few extra, you know, so, you know, what are you gonna do? 

There’s a certain type of person that probably doesn’t meet the description of somebody who’s going to be, you know, punished for these activities. And even if they’re, you know, if they’re 80 years old, they have to face the judge, but we also have to face the judge and bring in the right cases. And in this case, it wasn’t huge quantities every month, but she was definitely giving her pills. 

[00:21:11] Carole Blueweiss: Was she arrested? 

[00:21:13] Aaron Weeter: No. Our witnesses would have been looked at as not the most credible folks. And she would have been looked at as a very pitiful subject. So she was not arrested. We didn’t have any hand to hands with her. We did try. We did try to send some folks in to get pills off of her, but I think maybe she was out at that time or something. 

[00:21:36] Carole Blueweiss: So I assume she wasn’t using them?

[00:21:39] Aaron Weeter: She wasn’t. Now, she might have been using a few, but yeah, to your point, I mean, it spans a wide demographic as far as the folks that become addicted to prescription drugs and other drugs.

[00:21:52] Carole Blueweiss: And who sell them, too. 

[00:21:53] Aaron Weeter: Correct. 

[00:21:54] Carole Blueweiss: Now, these people that you had described that you would wire them, and they’d speak to the doctors, what was the arrangement? Did they, were they paid by the FBI? Was it volunteer? Was it in exchange for less of a sentence? But they sound like they’ve already been over, they’ve already served their sentence from what you said. Am I wrong? 

[00:22:17] Aaron Weeter: Well, yeah, so the way it works is, you know, there’s the initial arrest and then there’s, you have a charge and then you’re basically either going to plead guilty or not guilty. Most people plead not guilty initially. And then they are, you know, set for trial. So it’s somewhere in between that stage of being charged, arrested and charged. And when they’re set for trial, basically, they would, in a lot of cases, they would have an attorney and the attorney would say, hey, go work with the FBI. Go work with the DEA, work with the locals. Try to work these charges off, per se. You don’t work the charges off completely, but it goes to their benefit if they cooperate reliably. And I guess, you know, effectively with an investigation. So it’s more on their anticipating benefit on the back end of their charges. So they weren’t paid. 

Now, typically my informants, I had informants that I paid for other reasons. But if you were facing charges, you wouldn’t be paid because that would be, you kind of don’t do both. 

[00:23:24] Carole Blueweiss: Yeah, conflict of interest. So I guess I misunderstood because it sounded like when you were first talking about it, that these were criminals that served their time. And then they left. And then you then interviewed them to see if they would be good informants. So am I missing something? 

[00:23:40] Aaron Weeter: Yeah, no, maybe I misspoke or it was a misunderstanding there. But, no, these would be folks that would, they would get arrested by the locals on a, let’s say a Thursday night. And I get a call from a detective say, hey, we just arrested so and so. He’s a patient of this doctor. He said he wants to cooperate. I run out the next morning and talk to the guy. Usually at that point, he’s probably still in jail. But soon thereafter, he bails out. The police talk to his attorney. Say, hey, look, if this guy wants to cooperate, we can work with him and that gets relayed to the judge ,that the government has no opposition to release in this case, because if they’re incarcerated, there’s really no cooperation they can have as far as recording anything.

So they need to be out. So, yeah, so that would be worked out sometime in that span between when they’re arrested and when they eventually adjudicated on their charges. Which could be months, many months, half a year, easy. So it gives you a good long window to work with them. 

[00:24:39] Carole Blueweiss: And is that how you caught most of, is that, was that the strategy used? To get your evidence? 

[00:24:45] Aaron Weeter: Yes. For the most part. We did send patients in. Well, we typically wouldn’t try to send somebody that was an informant or a cooperating witness in cold if they weren’t an existing patient. The majority of folks that we use to record their interactions with the physicians were existing patients.

We did, however, use undercover officers as well, and these would be just cold initial appointment. They would walk in and say, this is my issue. This is what I’m looking for. She went in there. It was Adderall, basically controlled substance speed. Basically, she went in there and said, hey, look, I’m a fitness model. I use this stuff. I got it from a friend. It helps me keep my weight off. And I also, you know, sometimes share it with my some of my clients. They think it works really well. And we did that over a period of like a couple visits. But we had three or four visits with it. The doctor had no issue. He would get, he would give extra prescriptions to her for her clients, you know, or increase.

He wouldn’t say, well, I’m not going to give you an extra prescription. And then we would have the undercover say, well, can you just bump mine up by like 50 and then I’d have more to give to her? Yeah, I can do that. So yeah, there were different scenarios where we would use undercovers, but undercovers were more difficult to get in than an existing patient for obvious reasons.

[00:26:01] Carole Blueweiss: Do you laugh when you watch FBI shows like how they show everything like this? 

[00:26:06] Aaron Weeter: You know, what I would say is, you know, don’t believe everything you read or hear on the news or in the papers about what’s going on, you know, within the FBI or within our cases. And also certainly don’t believe everything that you see on TV shows. Some of the work is absolutely amazing and incredible, and probably not far from what you see on TV. But much of it is made to seem much more either glamorous or exciting, or perhaps have more infighting and conflict than it often does. 

[00:26:40] Carole Blueweiss: Do you have a favorite? 

[00:26:42] Aaron Weeter: As far as a show? 

[00:26:43] Carole Blueweiss: Or a movie, or a TV show?

[00:26:46] Aaron Weeter: For me, I think Silence of the Lambs was the movie, right? That was in the 90s. They actually had actual instructors at Quantico that cameoed in that and who were there when I later went through the academy. And so the ropes that they climbed, the trails that they ran, the mats that they were thrown down on as they worked on their defensive tactics were all the same mats and ropes and trails that I was on, you know, just a few years later. So, who could not love Clarice Starling, right? 

[00:27:16] Carole Blueweiss: Mm hmm. So they did their research, too. 

[00:27:19] Aaron Weeter: They did, and I think it probably inspired a lot of people to join the FBI. It was a movie that, you know, people still talk about today. 

[00:27:28] Hannibal Lecter: I do wish we could chat longer, but I’m having an old friend for dinner. Bye. 

[00:27:43] Carole Blueweiss: Thank you so much for listening to Wisdom Shared. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to check out all the other episodes. Go to caroleblueweiss.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like what you’re hearing on Wisdom Shared, please spread the word and share this podcast with your friends. Leave a review and subscribe so you can receive wisdom every month. Thanks for listening.

Episode Summary

Since 1999, more than one million people have died from a drug overdose in the United States. On International Overdose Awareness Day, we reflect on these senseless preventable deaths. Today, we hear from previous Wisdom Shared guest Anne Pratt on the loss of her brother Daniel from an accidental overdose. May this powerful personal story help spread awareness and compassion for all those affected by the devastating impact of today’s out of control epidemic.

Resources

How to use Narcan training video: https://www.anonymoussister.com/resources

Find Naloxone near you

Fentanyl Test Strips

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance use disorder, SAMHSA’s (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) National Helpline, 1-800-662-HELP (4357), (also known as the Treatment Referral Routing Service) or TTY: 1-800-487-4889 is a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service, in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members facing mental and/or substance use disorders. This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups, and community-based organizations. Callers can also order free publications and other information. You can also visit https://www.samhsa.gov. 

Related Episodes

Addiction to Sobriety: A Mother’s Journey

Anonymous Sister

Retired FBI Agent Reflects On Opioid Crisis

Anne’s previous episode: A Mother Shares Her Journey of the Joys and Challenges of Raising a Child with Cerebral Palsy

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Transcript

Episode Summary

Our last episode explored addiction from the perspective of loved ones. In this episode, we are looking at the opioid crisis from the point of view of a retired FBI agent, Aaron Weeter, who spent 25 years specializing in drug-related crimes. From his frontline perspective, we learn how the opioid epidemic of the 90s spread to become the fentanyl epidemic we have today. 

For the visually-minded who prefer to listen and read or for those who need closed captioning, watch the transcript video here: https://youtu.be/oXq6XJ_z-HI

About Aaron Weeter

Beginning in 1998, Aaron served for over 23 years as a Special Agent in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Washington, D.C. Field Office.  He served for twenty years as a case agent and three years as a supervisor investigating matters primarily involving white-collar/financial crimes in the areas of healthcare fraud and prescription drug diversion and distribution.  During this time, Aaron also worked on a variety of national/office-wide cases including the 9-11, D.C. Sniper and January 6th investigations among others.  Aaron is a licensed Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and a Certified Fraud Examiner.  He retired from the FBI in late 2021 and recently started a fraud consulting business.  Much of Aaron’s FBI investigative work focused on the illegal distribution of pharmaceutical narcotics and other controlled substances by physicians, pharmacists and street-level dealers.  He opened his first “pill case” in early 1999 in the early stages of what would become the pill epidemic and through dozens of cases thereafter, had a window into the evolution of the pill epidemic and its influence on the current fentanyl epidemic gripping the U.S.  

More to Watch and Read

Chasing the Dragon: The Life of an Opiate Addict – a documentary made by the FBI & DEA

Dr. Feelgood: Dealer or Healer? – a documentary about Dr. William Hurwitz, a Virginia physician who served nearly five years in prison for drug trafficking

Anonymous Sister – a documentary where director Jamie Boyle explores her family’s collision with the opioid epidemic

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed – a documentary about artist and activist Nan Goldin and her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the opioid overdose crisis

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver – a novel that shows the devastating impact of the opioid epidemic on a young boy in Appalachia

Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy – the definitive account of America’s opioid epidemic

Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis by Beth Macy – a sequel to Dopesick

Dopesick – Hulu limited series remake of Beth Macy’s book 

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe – a book that describes the Sackler family and their role in the opioid epidemic

The Family That Built an Empire of Pain – article by Patrick Radden Keefe that led to the book

What Can Be Done?

Words Matter – Terms to Use and Avoid When Talking About Addiction

https://www.cdc.gov/opioids/basics/fentanyl.html: 

https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/prevention/index.html

Fentanyl Test Strips

Find Narcan Near You

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance use disorder, SAMHSA’s (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) National Helpline, 1-800-662-HELP (4357), (also known as the Treatment Referral Routing Service) or TTY: 1-800-487-4889 is a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service, in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members facing mental and/or substance use disorders. This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups, and community-based organizations. Callers can also order free publications and other information. You can also visit https://www.samhsa.gov. 

How opioid addiction occurs – Mayo Clinic

List of Treatment Facilities and Support Groups

Drug Takeback Programs

Safe Drug Disposal

Related Episodes

Addiction to Sobriety: A Mother’s Journey

Anonymous Sister

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The Wisdom Shared Team

• Audio Engineering by Steve Heatherington of Good Podcasting Works
• Social Media and Marketing Coordinator: Kayla Nelson

Transcript

[00:00:00] Aaron Weeter: The majority of what I learned wasn’t learned in a book. You know, it was learned by talking to the people that actually used initially these medications and later fentanyl on the street, and that taught me more about drugs than I ever learned at the FBI Academy.

[00:00:23] Carole Blueweiss: Welcome to Wisdom Shared, where parents, children, and others on the front lines are the experts and where connection inspires change. I am your host, Carole Blueweiss. 

What do I do when I’m sitting in a van for five hours while on a family trip and next to me sits a former FBI agent? You guessed it. I ask a lot of questions. His name is Aaron Weeter, and the answers resonated with me. So I invited him to be my guest and share his frontline perspective.

I see it this way. In this day and age of AI and social media, misinformation is all over our computers. Eyewitness stories told by the people on the front lines are needed now more than ever. 

[00:01:06] Aaron Weeter: This pill epidemic is, they say, I think it’s sometimes referred to drug abuse, you know, victimless crime. It’s not a victimless crime. There are so many victims that you can hardly count all of them. 

[00:01:20] Carole Blueweiss: Aaron Weeter spent 23 years as an FBI agent at the Washington DC field office, working as a case agent for 20 years, and then three years as a supervisor overseeing investigations. Aaron focused on healthcare fraud and prescription drug diversion and distribution.

Most of his FBI work revolved around the illegal distribution of pharmaceutical narcotics and other controlled substances. He investigated the parties that were involved in the illegal activity, including physicians, pharmacists, and street level dealers. Retired FBI Special Agent Weeter is this episode’s frontline expert. Can you explain what was this pill case? 

[00:02:06] Aaron Weeter: I worked healthcare fraud and prescription drugs fall under that healthcare net. And your prescription benefit plan through your insurance company covers the cost of those medications, and some of those medications are very expensive, both narcotic and non-narcotic.

What led us to become interested in it was the spike in distribution on the street of drugs like OxyContin and Dilaudid, particularly OxyContin. In the late 1990s, it was a very expensive drug from the standpoint of the pharmacy benefits that were being paid by the insurance companies, and we were seeing larger and larger quantities of this drug being prescribed, and then also larger quantities of this drug being distributed on the street.

In my assessment at the time, I hadn’t had that much exposure in the late 1990s, which is when I also started as an agent. But it was different than what I had always thought drug investigations were all about. I always thought that drugs were in the city. It was just kind of stereotypes and things you grew up watching, maybe on tv.

The crime shows were always in the city, and what we were seeing was these drug cases were taking place all over the countryside now, into the counties and the suburbs, et cetera, and that the difference seemed to be that where people used to have to go to the city to buy drugs, they didn’t have to go to the city anymore. They went to their doctor, they got a prescription. They went to their pharmacy, which is a mile or two away, picked up that prescription, and then the drug deal happened right there in the suburban parking lot.

[00:03:47] Carole Blueweiss: How does it come to you go to your doctor, you go to the pharmacy, get your medication. And then you go to the parking lot and make a drug deal. What’s the link there? 

[00:03:54] Aaron Weeter: There were a couple types of patients. There were folks that were going there just purely to get the pills because they were addicted to other drugs. They were addicted to heroin. They were using heroin. They were using other people’s pills, and they were routed to these physicians as places that they could go get their own supply, that they wouldn’t have to buy off the street. Then there were also patients who had a legitimate injury who went there and needed help with their pain. And they were prescribed quantities of these medications and types of medications and combinations that quickly led to them becoming physically dependent. 

[00:04:31] Carole Blueweiss: Physical dependence on opioids happens when the body gets so used to the presence of these medications that the body needs them to feel normal. If someone is physically dependent, they might need more and more of the medication to get the same effect. And that is related to building tolerance.

[00:04:49] Aaron Weeter: As things went on, and obviously I’m not medically trained, but you know, I’ll give you my nuts and bolts definition on physical dependence and addiction. To me, physical dependence is if you don’t have the medications, you go through withdrawals, you feel terrible.

[00:05:05] Carole Blueweiss: They’ll likely experience restlessness, trouble sleeping, depression, irritability, very significant anxiety, sweating, or even physical discomforts like muscle pain. I mention these, it gives a sense of how horrible withdrawal is and how important it is for someone going through it to have as much support as possible.

[00:05:26] Aaron Weeter: Where that crosses over for me to what I felt like somebody was addicted, those withdrawals and those urges were so strong that they did things that otherwise they would not have done, i.e. committed other crimes. Bought and sold other drugs. Those drugs or other drugs stole from friends and family or complete strangers and crossed the line that the drug had taken control of their lives.

Patients who went there initially with legitimate pain issues and became physically dependent and then crossed over kind of into an addictive state where they really just couldn’t live without it and would do anything to get it. And those folks went from having pain to having another medical diagnosis, addiction, because of the quantities and combinations of drugs.

Then you had folks, like I said, that were just there to get the pills because they were addicted to, you know, pills and other drugs before they got there, and they were just there to get more supply. 

[00:06:26] Carole Blueweiss: You had recommended the movie Dopesick. Do you believe that that’s realistic? Is that a good way for people to understand how something like this could happen and become an epidemic?

[00:06:36] Aaron Weeter: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Dopesick is based on a real case. That was the case down in Southwest Virginia. The prosecutors who were featured in that case, and their real names, those are real people that worked those cases, Rick Mountcastle and Randy Ramseyer. And we interacted with them on our case on a limited basis because we were working in Northern Virginia on some of the doctors that were prescribing large quantities.

And a lot of those pills in Northern Virginia would sell for, an OxyContin 80 might sell for $40 a pill, but if you took it down to Southwest Virginia, you could sell it for $80. So a lot of our drugs that were originating in Northern Virginia were ending up in that area of Southwest Virginia. 

And in my assessment is they began to address the doctors down there that were responsible for the distribution in their area, the problem was still there because there was still flood of pills coming from other areas into their area ’cause the demand was there. They had developed a consumer base in Southwest Virginia that had a demand for the pills and was willing to pay more money than people would in other places. I did have doctors that I investigated and prosecuted in Northern Virginia that did have their own drug addictions to medications. So yeah, that definitely does happen. 

[00:07:52] Carole Blueweiss: Yeah, I thought that really elucidated to me the connection, how one thing led to the other. That brings me to the role of pharmaceutical companies. I wonder from that movie, let’s just start there and then you can give us your inside scoop on that. What they depicted was a marketing campaign to doctors and that, not all doctors were doing this maliciously, because they believed that these medications would help people who had pain. 

Yet we see in Dopesick the behind-the-scenes marketing campaign. And what struck me was that they created these marketing papers and they actually called it research. They presented to the doctors and they just made a case for how this is a great drug. Tell us how something like that could happen. Doctors who are super intelligent, go through medical school, just didn’t understand marketing, or maybe they did. So could you tell us your side, how you interpret all that? 

[00:08:49] Aaron Weeter: I feel like it was almost like a tidal movement, like a swell in the ocean that builds. In this case, Purdue Pharma, this drug, OxyContin, which otherwise had not been available. That opened up a whole new world.

And because these pills were supposed to be time release, in other words, you took an 80-milligram tablet, but you didn’t get 80 milligrams of oxycodone all at once. But you could give one or two pills a day and you could take ’em every, you know, 12 hours instead of every four hours. 

[00:09:22] Carole Blueweiss: Theoretically, a time releasing pill for pain sounds great. And for many people, it was, especially in a controlled hospital setting. But the problem was that when the doctors were now handing out prescriptions with no assurance that the patient would adhere to the recommendations, and since these were highly addictive opioids, people were at risk for overdosing.

You get a time release over 24 hours of a heavy duty pain-relieving medication. But what if you take the 80 or 160-milligram pill and crush it and snort it or chew it? You are getting a super high amount of opioid into your system dangerously quickly. Because people who were addicted needed that drug.

[00:10:10] Aaron Weeter: There was a very different dynamic between a controlled environment and an uncontrolled environment, and as these drugs continued to be marketed to physicians and pharmacists as safe alternatives to treat pain in larger dosages, it just basically, you know, became a tidal wave of opioids into a market that had not been available to that market before, wasn’t familiar with it. It created this massive population of people who became physically dependent and some crossed over to becoming addicted to these drugs. Then thereafter had a continuing need to have that medication or that chemical in their system. Which then logically, as things began to clamp down and physicians began to realize we can’t just keep doing this.

[00:11:05] Carole Blueweiss: And at the same time, these pill mills were being investigated.

[00:11:09] Aaron Weeter: And the FDA took measures and the FBI and the DEA and Health and Human Services agents began addressing criminally the physicians, the pharmacists, and the pharmaceutical companies responsible for this, all of a sudden that supply starts to dwindle of prescription opioids, which just, I think then opens the gates to what’s the alternative? 

The patients at that point who have become addicted, they still need that drug. And they’re gonna get it, and that’s where fentanyl starts to come in and there’s no better way to tie that back to the pill epidemic than to look at where fentanyl is now.

Fentanyl is being distributed, in large part, in pill form. The fentanyl that people are taking is made to look exactly like prescription medications. In my mind, there’s a direct tie between this pill epidemic that started in late 1990s and built through the early 2000s and mid 2000s.

And then pills became more difficult to get, and physicians stopped prescribing in the quantities and in perhaps in the manners that they were doing before. Fentanyl comes on in powder form, initially mixed into heroin, and then later with pill presses made to look exactly like that OxyContin that you used to use, or oxycodone.

[00:12:36] Carole Blueweiss: Am I right to say that there’s no difference between taking it in pill form versus shooting it into your arm except for the maybe speed in which you get high? 

[00:12:45] Aaron Weeter: Well, it’s interesting because the people that, and I’ve interviewed hundreds of people addicted to prescription drugs and fentanyl through my career, primarily prescription drugs, because fentanyl came on towards the latter part of my career.

But most of those folks draw a very strong line between taking the pills by mouth or crushing and snorting them or crushing, dissolving and injecting them. And they will be quick to tell you, oh, I don’t shoot. I don’t shoot my dope, I only snort. Or I only take ’em by mouth. Yeah, as far as mechanism to get it into your system, the direct injection is the quickest way, and then snorting and then perhaps chewing them and then just taking them by mouth orally, just swallowing them whole. That’s kind of the hierarchy of things, the reverse hierarchy. Basically shooting is the quickest way to get it into your system. 

[00:13:39] Carole Blueweiss: So I still can’t wrap my head around how the doctors, according to the Dopesick story, were being led by the marketing techniques of the pharmaceutical companies, that they didn’t do their own research in their own medical journals to really understand what they were doing. They made it sound like they just believed this very sophisticated marketing campaign from people that weren’t necessarily thinking of the patients in their best interests. They were more thinking about profits. Is that true or was it not that simple? 

[00:14:11] Aaron Weeter: Being a physician, not unlike being a police officer in today’s world, has become a lot harder. But I feel like they’re always very booked. At least when I make an appointment with a physician, they’re always very booked. They have a 15-minute increment to see a patient, assess what’s going on and make some medical decision-making to help that patient. 

They’re required to assess pain as one of the things that they go through in that appointment, and as folks come in and the physicians are exposed to patients who have experience with narcotics, perhaps have experience going to a variety of different doctors to get narcotics. Patients become very adept to dupe the doctors, to tell them what they want to hear or need to hear in order to prescribe.

And the physician has a limited amount of time to make that assessment and make a determination. And so I think it is very hard for doctors to do that effectively. But I think in the case, what I’ve seen in a lot of internal medicine doctors, they just won’t prescribe those types of medications and certainly not on a chronic basis.

What they have now added a prescription monitoring program. They can log in and if they were seeing me that day, they can actually put my information in there and see what prescriptions I have received for controlled substances within the last year, certainly, easily and quickly. It’s real-time, and they can have that in front of them before they make a decision on what to do. But it’s put just yet another thing on a physician within that 15-minute timeframe that they need to do to make sure that they’re prescribing appropriately. 

I know some of them saw this as an opportunity to, you know, either transform their mediocre practice as far as from a financial performance standpoint into something that could boom almost overnight. There are also doctors who, as I was saying, are just so busy and they have such a heavy practice that they just didn’t have time to independently research that, or didn’t take the time to independently research that. 

In the days when there were yellow pages, I went through the pain management physicians and let’s say there were 40 that were listed in the yellow pages, there were only three or four that I had ever heard of. There were practices and there were physicians always, even during that time of that heavy marketing by the pharmaceutical companies that did things the right way, because I never heard of them. And I did it for 20 years, and when I would hear about them, I would hear about them in a positive context. Oh yeah, we went to that guy. He wouldn’t prescribe what we wanted. 

[00:16:51] Carole Blueweiss: So when you say you hadn’t heard about them, meaning in the criminal justice system or?

[00:16:55] Aaron Weeter: Correct. I hadn’t heard about them from state and local police officers who were interacting with their patients who, you know, on DUIs or distribution cases, I hadn’t heard about them from insurance companies who said, hey, this doctor’s all of a sudden prescribing huge quantities of medications and his practice has, you know, kind of blown up. I didn’t hear about them in a criminal context. 

[00:17:17] Carole Blueweiss: You’re saying like the majority of doctors were not falling into this trap of over-prescribing. However, just agree with me or disagree with me, goes to show how just a few bad apples can create a tsunami. 

[00:17:33] Aaron Weeter: Absolutely. When a single physician can prescribe millions of dosages of opioids per year with his or her pen, there’s nothing that keeps them from adding another zero or adding a few more digits to the left of that comma.

And when they do that, they can absolutely flood the market. It was definitely a minority of the physicians who were responsible for the epidemic in my assessment, for sure. When we would take off some of these physicians and do search warrants of their offices, which would typically shut their practice down as far as the prescribing, all of a sudden, what you would hear within, you know, days and weeks from the streets was that pill prices had gone up because the bottom had dropped out of the supply market. 

There was a physician that saw over a hundred patients Monday after July 4th weekend. The average patient there was walking out with probably 200 pills of opioids, and all of a sudden, if you take those pills off the street for that day, imagine what the demand is still there.

The people that are consuming those pills and need those pills to avoid withdrawals are still going to want them. And if you take that quantity of pills off the streets, it has a real impact on price. 

[00:18:51] Carole Blueweiss: Could this have been handled differently? You talked about all of a sudden it was hard to get these medications. The price went up, and now you still had a problem of people that were addicted.

[00:19:01] Aaron Weeter: That’s a huge question. That could be multiple podcasts, I’m sure. In hindsight, of course. It could have been done, what should have been done and when. This movement to treat pain was a legitimate movement, right? People should not have to suffer needlessly with pain. But the way the pharmaceutical companies, some of them looked at it, I think was this is an opportunity now for us to put medications out there that will purportedly address this movement or this need to treat pain, but not in a way that was necessarily sustainable or helpful or valid. 

And so was there a way that they should have caught this beforehand? I think you look at institutions and agencies like the FDA, DEA, who have some purview. And primarily I think that’s at the FDA level as far as approving medications. DEA has within its purview, they have basically drug enforcement for illicit drugs and they also have DEA diversion, which handles pharmaceutical type medications and the control of those and the licensing, like I said, of physicians with DEA numbers. God, that’s a tough question for me to answer. In hindsight, everybody should have seen this coming, but it built so quickly. 

[00:20:19] Carole Blueweiss: We didn’t talk much about the pharmaceutical company. When you do look at the story of the opioid epidemic, there’s one family that comes up and one company that comes up predominantly. Are there others that were involved, or was it truly the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma that was really responsible in many people’s eyes? Is that a reality or is that a exaggeration? 

[00:20:44] Aaron Weeter: In a view from a thousand feet above it, it certainly seems that way. That this fire really started with the advent and the marketing of OxyContin. From there, what actually always puzzled me was OxyContin is a brand name drug. If you were paying cash for it at the pharmacy, you might be paying $15-18 for a pill. There was generic oxycodone available. And that was a generic drug, there were no trademarks or anything on that. Generic pills were available for less than a dollar a pill in a 30-milligram variety.

And so what we saw, as an accountant before I became an agent, kind of boggled my mind that people would pay $18 for a pill at the pharmacy when they could pay a dollar for a pill and get about half the dosage for the dollar. So why don’t you just double, triple, quadruple your money on that and get the generic?

And what happened is once the abuse deterrent features were put into OxyContin, which happened later on, all of a sudden the market for OxyContin dropped off because people could no longer really effectively crush and snort them or crush, dissolve, and inject them. It was no longer abusable in the way it had been.

All of a sudden, people switched over to oxycodone 30s, the generics, which in my mind always made complete sense anyways. Why are you gonna pay 20 bucks or 18 bucks for a pill when you could pay a dollar and get just about as much? 

[00:22:13] Carole Blueweiss: First of all, if you could just clarify real quick the difference.

[00:22:16] Aaron Weeter: Sure. So oxycodone is the chemical name for the drug, the opioid that is in OxyContin. So OxyContin is a brand name that has layers within the pill that allow the narcotic contents to be dosed into the system over time. Oxycodone is the the chemical name for the drug, and it’s available in generic as oxycodone.

[00:22:38] Carole Blueweiss: So which one was the one that was like $13 a pill?

[00:22:43] Aaron Weeter: OxyContin, the brand name. 

[00:22:46] Carole Blueweiss: So why did people not take the less expensive version? 

[00:22:50] Aaron Weeter: That’s a great question. And it’s like anything else, right? Just became like fashion. People wanted the green OC 80s. And that’s what everyone wanted and felt was the best thing out there. It’s the new brand that everybody wants to wear on the streets, and so people were drawn to what they knew to be the real deal, just like, you know, anything else in society. Fashion, cars. 

[00:23:18] Carole Blueweiss: Driven by marketing. 

[00:23:19] Aaron Weeter: Correct. Driven by marketing, right. So if you knew you were getting green OC 80s, that was the top of the top. That was the best of the best. And so demand for that was high and people were willing to pay more for that.

[00:23:33] Carole Blueweiss: So, it’s complicated. ’cause first of all, the names are similar, and second, it’s hard to wrap your head around buying a more expensive pill when you can get it for less. I wanna make sure that we get to the part of how this became an international situation.

[00:23:48] Aaron Weeter: The precursor chemicals that are used to create the drug fentanyl primarily originate in China. And those precursor chemicals are then brought into Mexico at this point in time. And the cartels are involved in the laboratories in which those drugs are created. Those pressed Fentanyl tablets are created and made to look like OxyContin 30s, the blues, basically they’re a little blue tablet, or a little pale blue tablet depending on the manufacturer of the formulation. They can put the etching, the marks on ’em and make ’em look exactly what you’d pick up at the CVS after having a surgery. 

But yeah, the cartels basically in Mexico are taking those precursor chemicals, turning them into fentanyl and then pressing them into tablets, which they then through time tested means of tunnels, airplanes, mules, drug mules, in other words, people bring those across the border from Mexico and then distribute throughout the US. 

[00:24:53] Carole Blueweiss: How did they do that so easily? 

[00:24:55] Aaron Weeter: I don’t know if it’s easy. It’s certainly dangerous and it’s certainly arduous, painstaking to get the precursor chemicals, to manufacture them in the laboratory, to compete with the other cartels to protect their product, to get their product from point A to point B.

The United States has a long border with Mexico, and this is not something new to our country or theirs. A means of, you know, tunneling underneath, going over top, or transporting through our border crossings. There are a lot of ways that they can, you know, get those across the border. And typically they’re not transporting, it’s, it is not a tractor trailer full of these medications. 

I’ve seen fentanyl coming in basically cast figurines where crack the figurine open and they’re all, you know, stuffed into baggies there, shrink wrapped, you know, they tried to eliminate the scent for drug sniffing dogs. Vehicles coming across the border are very frequently used and they have compartments, hidden compartments in them and places where the border guards have to be trained and understand and figure out.

But if you think about the volume of traffic that’s transmitting between Mexico and the US legitimately, and you think about what it takes to bring a thousand pills, you can fit a thousand pills into a very small container. It doesn’t take a lot of space to get that over, and they’ll certainly recruit people to do that work.

You know, one of the methods was they would have people, drug mules. Those are people that literally would take drugs and they would be put inside of either condoms or other kind of latex packaging, and they would swallow these drugs and they would swallow dozens and dozens of packages into their system and they would basically come across the border.

How are you gonna find that short of an x-ray? Right? And short of intel that person is carrying those drugs on them. And literally those drugs work their way through the person’s GI system, come out the other end, and then are distributed from there. So there’s no lack of rudimentary or sophisticated techniques to get the drugs across.

[00:27:09] Carole Blueweiss: China is the country where it starts. 

[00:27:13] Aaron Weeter: Correct. From what I have read and understand, China is basically the primary source for the precursor chemicals. And the US has taken steps. There was a recent article, I think, where they took steps and, and put sanctions against individuals and companies that the US had identified in China who, you know, manufacture and import these precursor chemicals.

But again, you’re trying to control something that’s really outside of our country and work with a country like China where it, it’s not like working with Canada to our North or even Mexico to our South. It’s a different, whole different type of relationship. 

[00:27:49] Carole Blueweiss: And this, is this specific to this opioid crisis, these pill cases, that it’s a China connection?

[00:27:55] Aaron Weeter: These drugs, when you talk about opioids, many of them originate from the poppy plant. And poppy plants have been grown through the centuries throughout I think Southeast Asia, the Middle East. Afghanistan, at one point, was a major supplier of those plants. Those opium poppies do have a legitimate basis for growing them and turning them into pharmaceutical grade, you know, medications that help people who need treatment for their pain. But they can also be turned into heroin. And so there has always been a network, you know, in Southeast Asia and also, you know, the Middle East.

[00:28:35] Carole Blueweiss: Because fentanyl isn’t coming from the opioid plant. 

[00:28:38] Aaron Weeter: It’s created synthetically with chemicals, yes. Not with a natural substance to start with. So you have synthetic opioids and then you have natural kind of opioids. And I think the basic difference there is one is coming from the opium poppy and the other is coming from some mixture and formulation of chemicals.

[00:28:56] Carole Blueweiss: And oxycodone and OxyContin were which one?

[00:29:00] Aaron Weeter: I believe they consider oxycodone to be a semi-synthetic opioid. 

[00:29:07] Carole Blueweiss: And then Percocet. Where does that fit into this vocabulary? 

[00:29:11] Aaron Weeter: Percocet is something that is available in, you know, much smaller dosages of oxycodone. So 5 milligrams, 7.5 milligrams. I believe there might be a 10-milligram version of Percocet as well. But Percocet is mixed with, the formulation it’s oxycodone and it has acetaminophen in it as well. So Tylenol. Yeah, so it’s a combination drug. 

[00:29:34] Carole Blueweiss: That was abused as well.

[00:29:36] Aaron Weeter: It was, but it wasn’t as popular because number one, it was a much bigger tablet than an OxyContin 80, even though it had a one-sixteenth quantity of narcotic in it. It had all of the acetaminophen in the Percocet tablet, so it was a larger pill. And people don’t wanna snort acetaminophen, and they didn’t want to inject acetaminophen. And then the other issue with taking it in quantity by mouth is acetaminophen has liver toxicity. You really start to damage your liver if you take too much of it. 

So in order to get as much oxycodone as one 80-milligram OxyContin, you’d have to take 16 Percocet. And doing that on a chronic basis, number one, they were huge tablets comparatively. And number two, you’re taking in all the acetaminophen and creating all these other issues for yourself. 

[00:30:30] Carole Blueweiss: Which, but I think of people that abuse drugs, they don’t think about their livers right? 

[00:30:33] Aaron Weeter: Probably not over the short term, but it probably would create issues for, you think about taking 16 of these giant pills.

[00:30:41] Carole Blueweiss: Yeah, now that the visual helps. 

[00:30:43] Aaron Weeter: Versus taking one. You have folks that are younger and newer to maybe the party and drug scene, Percocet might be something that people are familiar with by name that their mom took or their dad took after a foot surgery. And so I think there’s certainly a risk that a Percocet that’s distributed at a party is actually a Fentanyl tablet because it’s thought of as a lower level drug as far as levels of abuse. 

So it’s not sought after by folks that want to crush and snort. It’s sought after by people legitimately who have pain and are getting a Percocet by prescription as prescribed by their doctor. And/or maybe at parties. Oh, it’s just a Percocet. It doesn’t have that much, you know, stuff in it. It’s weak relative to the other stuff. And so I could see where it might have an appeal as something to distribute at a party. 

And the problem with that, of course, is that maybe that one quote unquote Percocet with fentanyl that he got made him feel great. The next one that he gets comes from a completely different source and manufacturing process through, again, China, Mexico, across the border, and it has five times as much fentanyl as the first one, and they’re overdosing and dead at that point. There’s no control over what’s in that pill.

Also you had mentioned, what should you do with medications that you have in the house that are left over, perhaps from a surgery that you had to ensure that those aren’t taken by anybody else? I definitely recommend getting rid of those. I recommend keeping them locked up when you do have ’em, even when you are taking them. It’s just a good idea to keep those things locked up. And I know that’s inconvenient, but it may be very important depending on your situation. 

And then if you do not finish using all the medications, look for ways to return those. Again, the DEA Diversion site should point you in directions. Health and Human Services website, if you did a search on there for drug take-back programs within your own community. Take what you don’t need anymore and make sure it gets disposed of properly. The days of flushing things down the toilet, nah, that’s probably not the best idea.

[00:33:03] Carole Blueweiss: The Adderall and the Ritalin, how does that fit in? Similar to the opioid issue or is it completely different? It’s a stimulant. It’s not an opioid. 

[00:33:12] Aaron Weeter: Right. It’s a stimulant. It has a different impact on the body and the mind. But is it distributed in similar ways? Yes and no. I mean, certainly at parties, I think you’ll run across Xanax for sure. Adderall is another one that you’ll often run across. And oxycodone, just depends on who shows up to the party and what they have. 

[00:33:32] Carole Blueweiss: Those could be laced with fentanyl as well. 

[00:33:34] Aaron Weeter: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think nowadays if you are being offered them at a party, you have just as much reason to believe that they do have fentanyl in them than you do to to think they don’t. I just recently talked to a colleague of mine who’s still doing this type of work, and he said it’s just pretty much all of what’s being seen out there is illicit, as far as what’s on the streets in the form of pills. We’re not seeing the real oxycodone 30s or the real OxyContin 80s or the real Adderall tablets or Valium tablets, as much as we’re seeing pills and tablets that are made to look exactly like it but don’t have the actual pharmaceutical ingredient in it. They actually have fentanyl instead.

It’s talking to the people on the street who are struggling with the addiction that teaches you the most about every aspect from enforcement and what works, what doesn’t. People write me. I, you know, got Christmas cards from people who thanked me and would say, hey, you know, the only reason I’m alive is because you arrested me.

And it was a woman who spit on me as I took her to jail. And she absolutely hated me. And, you know, after she ended up serving her time and got out, I got a Christmas card from her later. I saved that. I can assure you there are many others who would’ve never sent me a Christmas card and who despised me.

I got one that was a, I think a handwritten letter from another family member whose wife had overdosed and died, who thanked me for working that case. And it’s not as surprising to get a letter from a victim. It was definitely surprising to get a letter or a card from someone who I had arrested. A lot of those folks did kick their habit at least for a time after getting dried out. It certainly wasn’t fun. 

[00:35:30] Carole Blueweiss: Thank you for bringing light to something that you hear about in pieces, and it’s hard to get the whole story, the deeper look into what happened, what is happening, and hopefully this information can help people one way or another. Is there anything you wanna say that I haven’t asked you?

[00:35:45] Aaron Weeter: This is just my perspective. I’m retired from the FBI I’m not giving any opinion on behalf of the FBI. But I think anybody that has worked opioids, pill cases, fentanyl for a period of time, will agree that it is a huge issue in our country. It is an epidemic and it is terribly sad to see, you know, all the impact it has had on our country. And deaths just continue to escalate and I wish I had the solution. 

I wish I knew exactly how to fix this problem, but I certainly don’t think only enforcement of our laws in this country that’s going to help this issue. But I do think it’s an important part of it. We have to stem to some degree this constant flow of drugs out onto the streets and into the hands of those who really don’t have the capacity to assess what it’s gonna do to them or where it’s gonna take them. And from our children to our parents, doesn’t matter. They’re all impacted by the opioid epidemic. I hope we continue to work on it on multiple fronts.

[00:36:52] Carole Blueweiss: In this episode, we heard about how the opioid epidemic of the 90s spread to become the fentanyl epidemic we have today. Fentanyl overdose death rates have tripled from 2016 to now. More than a hundred thousand reported fatal overdoses related to illicit fentanyl in a one year period. 

Addiction and overdose can happen to anybody. If you buy pills from any source other than an accredited pharmacist or licensed doctor, chances are they will contain fentanyl. These street pills look exactly like the real Percocet, Xanax, Adderall, and others, but they aren’t the same at all, and it takes just a little fentanyl to cause a potentially deadly overdose.

There is good news here. There’s a product that is now available at most pharmacies, and it’s available to anyone without a prescription. It’s safe and it can actually reverse an overdose if given in a certain window of time. That life-saving product is called Naloxone, which comes in an easy-to-use nasal spray called Narcan.

Narcan fits into a pocket or a purse, and it’s designed to be easy to use even by people without medical training. And if you use Narcan on someone who you think has overdosed on opioids, but that person has no opioid in their system, no harm is done. Having Narcan in your pocket can save a life. It’s been hailed a miracle drug, but this is the thing. The miracle isn’t just in the saving. It’s in the simple act of caring enough to be prepared. So go out to your pharmacy and keep Narcan close just in case. 

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance use, you are not alone. The Substance Use and Mental Health Service Administration national helpline is 1-800-662-HELP, and it’s available for support. This and other resources can be found in the show notes. 

The next episode of Wisdom Shared, we will hear how Aaron used undercover agents, how he found his informants, and much, much more. 

[00:39:16] Aaron Weeter: The majority of folks that we used to record their interactions with the physicians were existing patients. We did, however, use undercover officers as well.

[00:39:25] Carole Blueweiss: You don’t want to miss this. Thank you so much for listening to Wisdom Shared. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to check out all the other episodes. Go to caroleblueweiss.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like what you’re hearing on Wisdom Shared, please spread the word and share this podcast with your friends. Leave a review and subscribe so you can receive wisdom every month. Thanks for listening.

Episode Summary

In this episode, I’m joined by two special guests, harm reduction activist Julie Stampler and award-winning documentary filmmaker Jamie Boyle.  We discuss the opioid epidemic through the frame of the incredible documentary Anonymous Sister, directed by Jamie Boyle, produced by Marilyn Ness, and executive produced by Julie Stampler. This is the story of one American family, but what happened to them could happen to any family.  We learn about Julie’s brother, Jonathan,  who died from a heroin overdose, and how his death led Julie into her life of activism and harm reduction work. We see two different paths to managing addiction and substance abuse disorder. This is a story told by two women who watched their siblings suffer.  This show is dedicated to all the siblings out there who are anonymous witnesses.

For the visually-minded who prefer to listen and read or for those who need closed captioning, watch the transcript video here: https://youtu.be/oD0vVqw-w6w

About Anonymous Sister

When a young woman turns to the camera for refuge, she ends up with a firsthand account of what will become the deadliest man-made epidemic in United States history. From the producers of Dick Johnson Is Dead and Summer of Soul, Anonymous Sister is two-time Emmy Award winner Jamie Boyle’s chronicle of her family’s collision with the opioid epidemic.

Anonymous Sister will be playing at IFC Center in New York June 2nd – 8th and Laemmle Theater in Los Angeles June 16th – 22nd, with more cities to follow.  

Select screenings will be accompanied by special events and panels. For details and info about upcoming events: 

• anonymoussister.com
• https://www.facebook.com/AnonymousSisterFilm
• https://www.instagram.com/anonymoussisterfilm/
• https://twitter.com/AnonSisterFilm

About Jamie Boyle

Jamie Boyle is a two-time Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker. Her work has played at Sundance, Tribeca, and SXSW. In 2019, she was part of the inaugural Sundance Talent Forum & Catalyst Lab and on DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40 list. She is the writer and editor of BREAKING THE NEWS, premiering Tribeca Film Festival in June 2023. She is the director and editor of ANONYMOUS SISTER, a personal feature documentary coming to theaters in summer 2023 and produced by Big Mouth Productions (DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD, CAMERAPERSON) and Vulcan Productions (SUMMER OF SOUL, THE REASON I JUMP). She was the editor, producer, and cinematographer of JACKSON (Showtime), winner of the 2018 Emmy® Award. She was the editor of TRANS IN AMERICA: TEXAS STRONG, winner of the 2019 Emmy® for Outstanding Short Documentary and two Webby Awards. TEXAS STRONG premiered at SXSW and launched on them. She was the associate editor and production manager of E-­TEAM (Netflix), which won the 2014 Sundance Cinematography Award and was nominated for two News & Documentary Emmys®, including Best Documentary. She was the director, cinematographer, and editor of the short documentary TAKE A VOTE, which premiered at DOC NYC in 2020. She was the in-house editor for The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch. She taught at the Bronx Documentary Center, as a guest lecturer at Columbia University, and served as a judge for the News & Documentary Emmy Awards.

https://www.jamielboyle.com/

About Julie Stampler

Julie Stampler is a voiceover actress and harm reduction activist who is a National Harm Reduction Coalition Board Member. Julie’s harm reduction advocacy work aims to help people who use drugs stay alive rather than pushing for abstinence-only approaches. She advocates for the importance of overdose prevention programs, training people on when and how to use and distribute naloxone/Narcan, and advocating for overdose prevention centers that focus on keeping people alive with access to social service resources. Julie’s life-saving work stems from her brother Jonathan’s untimely death from a heroin overdose 20 years ago. In a twist of irony, her stepfather Jack Fishman was the scientist credited with inventing naloxone which can reverse an overdose from heroin, fentanyl, and prescription opioid medications—when given in time. 

https://juliestampler.com/

From This Episode

• How to use Narcan training video: https://www.anonymoussister.com/resources
• Find Naloxone near you
• Julie’s stepfather Jack Fishman
• The Drug That Saves Lives Even if It’s Never Used
• https://dancesafe.org/ – site Julie mentions where you can order fentanyl test strips and drug testing kits
• Marilyn Ness
• 5 myths about using Suboxone to treat opiate addiction
• DEA takes aggressive stance toward pharmacies trying to dispense addiction medicine
• About Xylazine

Find and Follow Carole and Wisdom Shared:

• https://www.caroleblueweiss.com/
• Subscribe to my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@WisdomSharedCaroleBlueweiss
• Follow me and send me a message on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/caroleblueweiss
• Follow me and send me a message on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carole-blueweiss-pt-dpt-23970279/
• Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carole_blueweiss/

The Wisdom Shared Team

• Audio Engineering by Steve Heatherington of Good Podcasting Works
• Social Media and Marketing Coordinator: Kayla Nelson

Transcript

[00:00:00] Julie Stampler: Our stories are so different, but so interconnected. And when I say this work, it’s the harm reduction community work. It’s the overdose prevention work. It’s the trials and tribulations of addiction and substance use disorder. I would be hard pressed to find anyone that hasn’t been impacted in some way or another, whether it’s by a direct connection or an indirect connection.

And for me, it’s a direct connection from multiple angles. I had an older brother who lost his battle with substance use disorder in 2003, who ultimately overdosed and died. And that motivates my work in this area. And the irony of the story is that my stepfather, Jack Fishman, is credited with inventing naloxone, which is the opioid reversal drug that we’re hearing talked about a lot now in the form of Narcan.

So, in the work that I do, which a lot of the time focuses on training people how to reverse an overdose, for me, it’s honoring the legacy of my stepfather and the memory of my brother.

[00:01:17] Carole Blueweiss: Welcome to Season 3 of Wisdom Shared, where parents, their children, and siblings are the experts, and where connection inspires change. I am your host, Carole Blueweiss. You just heard the voice of Julie Stampler, a friend of mine, and she’s one of my special guests on this show. Julie is the mother of three children, a voiceover actress, a harm reduction activist, and executive producer of the documentary film Anonymous Sister, a story about one family told from the viewpoint of not only the entire family, but also experts and a Purdue Pharma executive who shares disturbing stories about how she was trained to sell and market opioids.

I am so grateful to have Jamie Boyle join us on this episode as well. She is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and the director and editor of Anonymous Sister. Jamie opens up a window for us and invites us inside to see her family’s space.

We’ve all heard of the opioid epidemic by now, but we might not appreciate yet the complexity of what actually happened. And how and why people became dependent on these pills and how Purdue Pharma played a huge role in misleading the American people. This is a unique story of one family, and yet the people can be anyone we know.

Jamie helps us see so much of what is usually invisible to the public eye. It’s like seeing what lies beyond the Facebook smiles. You know what I mean. Let’s listen.

Welcome to Wisdom Shared. 

[00:02:59] Julie Stampler: Thank you Carole. And thank you for the opportunity to be here. We came together basically singing kirtans, which was magical and still holds a dear place in my life. So grateful that we were connected so many years ago. And then here you are bringing your wealth of knowledge to people and giving people like Jamie and I an opportunity to share our stories.

Jamie and I have a mutual dear friend who has become that for both of us. Marilyn Ness is an incredible producer, director, documentary filmmaker, and playwright. Been an honor to have been connected and to help Jamie share her story because as I know, I think I can speak for Jamie, as we do tell our stories, there’s healing in every moment. 

[00:03:42] Carole Blueweiss: Let’s let Jamie describe, well, tell us about herself and about the documentary, even the name of the documentary and how that even became the name of the documentary. 

[00:03:52] Jamie Boyle: Sure. Yes. I’ve tried to think about how to parse this down into a few sentences because the documentary does follow my entire life. But to make a very long story short, I started filming my mom and my sister about 15 years ago now when I was still in college. And I had just taken an intro to film course. I started filming them because they were both becoming increasingly dependent on the opioids they were being prescribed. I didn’t know that that’s what was happening at the time.

Of course, I had an inkling, but there it was wrapped up with so many other potential illnesses and pain and side effects that it was really, we didn’t know what to untangle. I just knew they were very sick, and we were worried about both of them and then worried about each other. So, I started filming just as a student kind of project, and about a month after I finished, my sister went to rehab, and then about six months after that, my mom was able to get sober with the help of medication-assisted treatment and did it at home by herself with my dad’s support.

But anyway, I graduated college and moved on, you know, tried to embark on a documentary career. By this point I really believed in the form, and it had provided so much to me in a moment of real distress and not knowing where else to turn. So, I started telling other stories for a living. Moved to New York from Colorado and met Marilyn, Julie’s friend who she mentioned, and actually was her intern to start out back in 2011 or 12.

And yeah, I came to her with the idea for a feature film using that footage and combined with present day footage and my family’s home movies and old archival and expert testimonial, and wanted to interweave our whole story with the larger picture of the epidemic with other stories, if that made sense, with kind of the macro view.

And she was completely on board and very supportive. Julie said everybody’s been touched in some way by this, and she was really interested in this issue from a lot of different angles, from the medical malpractice to the failure of, you know, governing bodies to the lack of support and resources for treatment.

So, she was really interested in it and, and a very accomplished documentarian. So having her come on as producer was phenomenal. And from there, we just gained support. Julie being a huge, huge component of that. And we’ve had various different versions of the rollout of this film, so it went to festivals all of last year. That’s a little bit of who I am. And yeah, I have done other documentaries that I’m incredibly proud of. They’re all in the social justice sphere. 

[00:06:34] Carole Blueweiss: I did see a few Emmys in there. You’re very modest. 

[00:06:37] Jamie Boyle: Yes. Thank you. 

[00:06:38] Carole Blueweiss: You said nothing about us, without us, which we all know is a slogan that’s used in the disability community. And this podcast started off as interviewing parents of children with disability because I did feel that nobody was asking the parents. And then I started to interview the kids too, when it’s appropriate. And anytime I can, I will. And this slogan has come up and I think it’s a very important one.

And here we are talking about a story about the opioid epidemic as it’s come to be called. And yet we’re still coming back to why did this happen and whose story are we listening to? It’s very complicated. And yet a lot of the film was done when you were a child. Was your father like a professional photographer or videographer? Or he just was like a passionate amateur?

[00:07:32] Jamie Boyle: He would be so flattered by that suggestion. I always like to say of all my family members, like I’m the least artistic of all of them, although none of them made a living doing that. My sister’s a phenomenal singer. My dad is a writer and my mom’s a painter. And owned a feed store.

I come from a very working class family background and he actually got the top salesman prize, which happened to be a camera, or I think his feed store did. And he got the camera because it was only like three employees. So he ended up with that camera, which is a big question for people because apparently in the 90s you didn’t really have one of those unless you had certain amount of money.

So, people who were adults at that time are, how does he have this camera? And he loved it. I credited him with a cinematography credit because he’s a great shooter. And now that I know that world, I really recognize his talent, the way he followed my sister and I. So that, or the bulk of what makes this film so great, are those home movies.

Really that’s why we say 30 years in the making. So, it sat around for a long time, that footage, just not doing anything with it. And as the epidemic got worse and more and more stories came out, and I got more and more comfortable behind the camera and telling these bigger stories, I circled back to it and tried to figure out a way to use it all.

What I was gonna say to Julie was that I was feeling especially about, you know, five years ago, around 2016, that all of the media portrayals, or the bulk of them that we saw, all looked the same and felt the same. And it often would be people at their worst and sadly, their least recognizable. The hardest part of the hell of addiction is that, you know, when people are in the most need, all the things are working against them. Everything from behavior to hygiene to how they present themselves to everything, distancing people and society from them. And I kept feeling like all of the media portrayals really focus on that, just that part of their life.

And only the people, their family and their loved ones, knew their whole person, who they were before this, how they got into it, who they were after, if they survived, you know? And it was that whole picture that I really felt like was missing. So as painful as it was to offer my family’s intimate home movies, which now is pretty normal, but from the 90s, not so much.

Offer those up for the world felt like a big sacrifice and asking them for a big sacrifice. But it felt worth it because it didn’t feel like we ever got to see the whole person behind this issue and these stories in a way that, that yeah, everybody could connect with and see. 

[00:10:08] Carole Blueweiss: I can say as a viewer, I was able to see the latest version of the film, and I feel like I read a 1000-page novel where I got every character in the story. And I could even see myself seeing this family in their Christmases, in July 4th, and in the living room and in between things and good times and bad times because you always had the camera also, or someone in your family always had the camera.

And if I didn’t know the understory, it seemed like the American family that everything is fine. Everybody’s happy family that does everything together and sings karaoke together and supportive and the sisters get along and the mother’s beautiful. And so, it almost played with my head because I’m seeing so much good and then so much tragedy.

[00:11:02] Julie Stampler: And I think that’s the magic of, one of the words that’s continued to come up during this process is courage. The courage of Jamie and her family to share their story. And I think that’s so much value. So yes, we get to see their, the family home movies, but we’re watching the spiral at the same time. And while we can hear all the news stories about the opioid crisis, coupled with the Covid pandemic, coupled with fentanyl on the streets, all of it. It doesn’t become human, right? 

We can push it away, we can dissociate from it. But what Jamie has been able to do, and so wonderfully willing to do, is basically open up her family and her family agreed, thankfully, to share their story. And now all of a sudden, it becomes real. It’s like, wait, those people look like me or that looks like my family. And those are the kinds of things that we did. And holy crap, this could happen to us. 

And I think that’s part of the hope for putting this film out there is that it does help. And we already know it’s helped. You know, one of the things that I don’t actually know that we’ve even given the name of the documentary of the film yet, but that was the seal of the deal for me, because the film is called Anonymous Sister.

[00:12:33] Carole Blueweiss: Yeah, I mentioned that in the beginning in one of my questions, so I’m glad you’re bringing that back, Julie. Perfect. I’m curious. I can make up reasons, but I, they would all be guesses why you decided to name it Anonymous Sister? 

[00:12:43] Julie Stampler: And I think the answer could be different for everybody. For me, it is so deeply layered because through my brother’s substance use disorder, I was invisible or anonymous. So that’s like when we were talking about the film already and it was like, oh, this sounds interesting. I might be willing to get involved. And then I was told the name and that was it. That’s when I was like, oh, so this is a film for me. I understand. Right? And I had a different understanding of Jamie and a different, even getting to know Jamie’s mom and hearing more about Jamie’s sister and understanding, you know, there’s the 12-step program, which is Alcoholics Anonymous. Narcotics Anonymous. 

So, there’s lots of different layers. But for me it was the sister component of the anonymity that pulled me in. So, Jamie, I don’t know if you want to share the story about how you landed on Anonymous Sister. I think that’s vital. 

[00:13:41] Jamie Boyle: Oh, thank you. Yeah, I never knew that Julie, so I’m so glad to hear that. And I knew you loved the title, but you never told me that story. So that means a lot, especially feels fated because I wrestled with that title so much and I felt like it wasn’t clear enough and that I needed to come up with something better. And it really made, makes me feel like it was for a reason that it stayed.

So that means so much to me and, yeah, you’re exactly right. It’s open for interpretation and that’s why I loved it. There are probably like 10 different reasons why I settled on that title, and I’ll tell you the top few. The first one was, I was thinking of Jordan, my older sister who’s in a 12-step program that obviously has anonymous in the name. And I always wanted to do something with that. I just was fascinated by the program. 

And then there was, there’s al-anon obviously for friends and family. But then my mom and people who use medication-assisted treatment were at least, you know, 15 years ago, a little ostracized from that community. And those are gaps that people are starting to bridge and I’m so grateful for that and working to bridge. I don’t have a direct experience, so I can’t speak so much to that as well as my family members could.

But the title really started to evolve to be more about me after that. And I think somebody said, oh, I figured the anonymous sister was you. And I was like, oh, maybe it is. Because I realized that I was playing with this theme of, people would ask me, why were you behind the camera and what made you film?

And then I think another filmmaker asked me like, were you hiding back there? Or I think you were hiding behind the camera. Even when she saw the videos of me little was that I just wanted to be behind this device. And I think as things started to get really bad in my household with my family members, I was so exasperated at times wanting to force them into getting help and nothing was budging.

And I felt so helpless in so many ways that it was like I had to be there, but I couldn’t fully be there. I needed something in between me and what was happening. Like I needed a barrier, and I needed a level of anonymity. And so, it gave me all of those things. 

And then, you know, I really did not want to put myself in the film. I felt like I wanted people to see kind of as me instead of see me as part of it. And what I learned quickly through, you know, great test screenings and feedback was, it was actually more distracting to not have me there. And they were just wondering who is this person and wanting to connect. So, I did add touches of myself throughout to grab onto, but that feeling of wanting to be anonymous and also finding some release in that anonymity really carried the day.

And then what compounded it as well was feeling like I could be anyone. My mom could be anyone, my sister could be anyone, my dad could be anyone. And this feeling of you could be any sister, any family member, any loved one that felt like it should kind of define this film and wrap its arms around everybody, even tangentially connected to this issue. That was the goal.

[00:16:56] Carole Blueweiss: Yeah, well now it’s like, well, yeah, duh. Like, you know? 

[00:16:59] Jamie Boyle: What did you think? 

[00:17:01] Carole Blueweiss: Like I haven’t had enough time to really even think too much about it, but my first just response, anonymous sister was, it was your sister who was not understood and she was struggling in anonymity. 

[00:17:12] Jamie Boyle: That’s definitely a component of it, I think. Yeah. Jordan and I are twisting mirror images of each other, as all siblings and especially sisters are, and she definitely struggles with feeling misunderstood and out of place and the kind of the loss of her in varying degrees, whether it be to substance use or just other life things has contributed, I think, to her feeling that way too.

[00:17:37] Carole Blueweiss: I thought it was really powerful to be with you behind that camera. Somehow you were able to show the feeling of not being able to help your family. Do you want to say anything about that, Julie, and you’ve experienced it in your family and what kind of reactions you get when you mention that you had a brother who had passed away from a heroin overdose?

[00:17:58] Julie Stampler: Everybody is always very, oh, I’m so sorry. You know. The prescription pain pill epidemic is a little different from someone who advances their substance use in a different path, which was ultimately the way my brother started. So, what we’re learning today, and especially, you know, the story in Anonymous Sister, is someone will go through an experience, whether it’s wisdom teeth, a broken ankle, surgery, whatever it might be, and they’re given a prescription for pain pills. Or they just have chronic pain.

And so, they begin a prescription for Oxycontin, for Percocet, whatever it might be, and then become dependent upon it and then get cut off. And when that happens, now you’re dealing with someone who’s physically ill and needing to fix that. And, you know, when people talk about getting their fix, it drives people to the street to get heroin, which is super-duper easy to get.

And unfortunately, the drug supply now is essentially poisoned with fentanyl. And if you don’t have any tolerance to fentanyl and you end up getting some heroin that has a little bit in it, you’re gonna overdose. So, the CDC came out with new rates yesterday and in the last, I think it was two years, the rate of overdose deaths that are related to fentanyl went up 279%.

So, there’s a lot that needs to be done. You know, one of the things that we were doing last year when we were on the festival run with the film is that we would do Narcan trainings at as many screenings as we could, and people would walk out with an overdose prevention kit. So, it’s, while the film illuminates the pain of this disease of addiction, we also don’t want people to walk out of there feeling completely hopeless. Right? We wanna give people power to save a life if they have to, to find resources for help if they need to. And that’s what’s really been an incredible part of the journey is, you know, we talk about, a lot of the time, we talk about the stigma and shame associated with substance use disorder.

So, someone to share their story, and that’s what’s so interesting is, again, it’s called Anonymous Sister, but the last thing you’re doing in this film is being anonymous. If anything, you are fully broadcasting your family. And I thank you repeatedly. And I think anybody who sees the film walks away going, wow, that was so brave.

And as you said, Jamie, in the beginning and, and as you say in the film, it could be me or it could be my sister, or, and so combating the stigma and the shame associated with substance use is tremendous. And so, we try to do that a lot with our language and how we talk about substance use disorder and people who use drugs. And it’s just a great arena for this to happen.

[00:20:58] Carole Blueweiss: I want to add to what Julie’s saying, Jamie, in that what you did so well in this film is show, not tell, you know? And the lines, I don’t know if there was very few or a lot, but the message from me hearing how your mom and sister were fighting this addiction, let’s say, and in the film you really feel that, I hate to use the word victim and I don’t know if you would agree with me or not, but the people that ended up addicted to prescription medications, whether they’re in a wealthy town or not a wealthy town, they were targeted and they were told that they don’t have a problem over and over again. And so, what are your thoughts on that, on the tragedy and the frustration? Like the people that you look up to, the doctors and the government, they just failed.

[00:21:51] Jamie Boyle: Yeah, I mean, it’s a really, that’s a really great question and it’s my favorite one to kind of untangle, although I could talk for way too long about it. Because I mean, first off, I really, I see, and I think we’re moving as a society to a place where I see everybody who has substance use disorder as a victim of a variety of social and economic circumstances.

It depends on the individual, but my family members’ path happens to be through their doctors. And, of course, that was enormously frustrating. I think that people who maybe have family members or loved ones who initially start with, you know, illicit drugs, the frustration is probably with their peer groups or their poverty level or their social circumstances. And that’s no less frustrating or hard to combat, I’d say. 

But I think that this is, I think the sad, unfortunate silver lining of this affecting the population that it has, is that it’s forced people to look at substance use disorder in the correct light, which is as a disease that people suffer from for a number of reasons.

So, you know, that is, that’s the good of it affecting everybody, you know, primarily an upper-class white population, is that finally you have lawmakers and society as a whole paying attention. Now, whether they will treat any other drug epidemic similarly is, you know, up for debate. But I can say that the added component of having the entire healthcare system playing a role in this was enough to drive me nearly crazy from a, you know, high-functioning, almost straight-A cheerleader to you know, a very cynical, very depressed, very anxiety-ridden, panic-ridden, 21-year-old.

And it did certainly feel like no matter where you turned, I mean, this was, granted, this was 2009, but it was every doctor, it was every hospital, it was every hotline you called. There was no information, no resources, no help. To the point where, you know, finally when you make some headway and convince them to try to just taper down.

And I think my mom says it in the film, we don’t go into it very deep, but their doctors would drop them as patients. They would stop taking their calls and say, I legally can’t keep you on as a patient anymore because a family member called, or somebody expressed concern and it’s just too much of a liability. Really sadly, like nobody still knows how to treat people with opioid use disorder.

My sister, who was in the hospital giving birth, her and her friend were offered Vicodin and, you know, came to find out finally six nurses later that IV Tylenol works just as well, if not better. And you know, Jordan ended up with one nurse who said that, and she got IV Tylenol and her friend who’s in NA had a nurse who did not tell her that.

And she had to take Vicodin for a couple days. Thankfully it didn’t lead to relapse. She was okay and, you know, had her support group around her. But just mind numbingly frustrating. My mom was told before a knee surgery a few weeks ago that she had to go off her Subutex cold turkey or she would not be able to go into surgery.

And yeah, I mean, I could go on and on with the stories of how ill-equipped and, you know, it’s no one doctor’s fault, but it is important for people to know that this is the modus operandi at the healthcare system at large. They are just not equipped. So please inform yourself, inform your loved ones. The DEA did just come out with requirements that any DEA registrant, so any prescriber, now has to take an 8-hour training in substance use disorder, thank God, finally. By June 23rd, I think. So that’s a huge start. I actually signed up for the course, so I’m like about an hour in and seeing, because I really need to know what’s in that course and if it’s sufficient. 

[00:25:56] Julie Stampler: I was just gonna say hopefully it’s not filled with misinformation, which happens all the time from government agencies. It’s just, I wanted to add that we are trained from a very young age to listen to your doctor. So, a lot of times we don’t advocate for ourselves because I’m not a doctor, so I’m gonna trust that what you’re doing for me, what you’re prescribing to me is the best course of action. And we forget that we just saw the well-manicured, high-heeled pharmaceutical agent walk out with her little wheely suitcase. And basically, what they were doing was enticing doctors to prescribe more and more and more.

And that’s what is an added bonus, I guess, in the film that there is a whistleblower who comes forward. That was her job, regardless of what she was potentially hearing. And that’s why you need to see the film to really understand the magnitude of what was happening with Purdue Pharma, that they were basically pushing their sales reps to push the doctors. And when somebody would say, 10 milligrams, they’re still in pain, oh, they need 20, then. No. Maybe we need to actually understand what’s causing the pain. 

And when you do a little bit more research into the effects of prescription pills over an extended period of time. Now, it’s not to say there aren’t chronic pain patients who need a steady dose of pain pills, but there’s a way to do that safely, and there’s a way to make sure that people aren’t overdosing while they’re doing or using whatever they need to get through the day. You know, there are plenty of people who say, if I don’t have my fentanyl patch, I can’t actually walk the dog.

And it doesn’t mean that they’re in chaotic use. It means their pain is controlled. And that’s the interesting thing when you consider if somebody is in pain, a lot of the time the pain pill is doing what it’s supposed to be doing and they’re not altered. It’s when it becomes out of control and they’re increasing doses. And increasing doses just to get that effect is when people get into trouble. 

[00:28:12] Jamie Boyle: Well, the other thing to add that’s really important, that’s so hard to understand, and it is absolutely individual, but, and I just have to say, because Julie hit on this perfectly. So, my mom, and you’ll see in the film, and sister were people who needed a fentanyl patch to get out of bed.

She says in the film, if I didn’t have my patch and I didn’t have the morphine, I would not be able to get out of bed in the morning. Now the thing about opioids that people are finally starting to understand, but the CDC hasn’t quite caught up. As Julie said, pharma has not only sent sales reps, the bribing that we all know about, but they have infiltrated all of our oversight committees.

This is just one example, but the man who approved Oxy in the first year in 1996, Curtis Wright, went to work for Purdue Pharma just a few years later. That story, time and time again with so many individuals and they, you know, the pain scale that is used in hospitals, it was implemented and funded by Purdue Pharma.

It’s still something that’s used all the time. But the point I want to make about chronic pain is that opioids are really interesting and really complicated, and I’m not a doctor. There are ways in which they can be used long term, but daily around the clock use is, the evidence is resounding that it makes pain worse, specifically because your tolerance is going up.

There’s no world in which your tolerance isn’t increasing. Even if you’re suffering from fibromyalgia or an autoimmune disease. That’s just how drugs work. Your tolerance is going up, so you will need more to get out of pain. Now, the problem people in chronic pain have is that they’re in pain without them and they’re in pain with them and they’re just barely functioning with them.

So, we have a real problem to combat in terms of how we treat it. People are looking into cannabis and physical therapy and acupuncture. Now it takes a long time. Both my sister and my mom had residual pain. My sister, for a year or two because she didn’t take medication-assisted treatment. And my mom for about six months.

Just random pains, back pain, pelvic pain. Now both are completely pain free and have no chronic issues. Getting past that first year, that is difficult. And trying to figure out what the opioids were causing versus what they were helping, I mean, my heart goes out to anybody embarking on that. I hope that our healthcare system rises to the occasion to help these people in the way they need it. Because yeah, Julie’s absolutely right. There are people suffering with pain that they need help managing. 

[00:30:50] Carole Blueweiss: Tell a little bit of the story of, obviously people haven’t seen the film yet, but they can in June if they’re in New York. 

[00:30:57] Jamie Boyle: So, she was a prodigious figure skater, nationally ranked, and yeah, the star of the family, the focus of our attention for a lot of reasons. And she got nerve damage in her foot, her landing foot. So, at first it started out just, you know, she can take a handful of Tylenol, handful of Advil she needs to compete. And then as she started developing pelvic pain around the same time. And it gets convoluted, but she was prescribed Vicodin. Actually, the first time she was prescribed, it was for UTI and pelvic pain that kind of went hand in hand. 

And she was prescribed 30 days for that. And then between that and the nerve pain in her foot, there were a couple different isolated pain instances going on. And then that Vicodin prescription was re-upped. Or I think they start you on Percocet and then you move to Vicodin or Vicodin and then Percocet.

And, like before you know it, we were like three months or six months in and she needs it every day. And her pelvic pain is getting worse. She’s getting migraines and now she’s getting side effects from the pain medication. So now she’s often tired. So, she’s prescribed Adderall to wake up and go to class when she needs energy.

Now she can’t sleep at night, so now she’s prescribed something to sleep at night. Usually in combination with something like a benzo. So, then she’s prescribed Xanax because her anxiety is skyrocketing and now, she’s on this like cocktail. And that was just the beginning. That’s like the first six months.

Then we get down to the road of does she have Crohn’s disease, does she have fibromyalgia? Does she have, because she was just deteriorating physically and mentally, just spiraling and in horrible pain. I mean, couldn’t go over bumps in the car with her. She’d scream out. It was so obvious. Endometriosis, she was diagnosed with, she had laparoscopies all the time.

Just this continuous circle of trying to figure out what’s wrong, diagnosing things that aren’t testable. Anyway, by the end, she was on OxyContin just around the clock. Morphine for breakthrough pain or something to go to bed, something, a shot for when she got migraines. Just a constant cocktail to just, and the pain was all we talked about. All we talked about, and my mom was similar. 

But it just very quickly, I think it’s helpful for people to know that what starts as an acute injury or acute pain very quickly becomes something chronic that is undiagnoseable that you can’t figure out the source of. And if they can’t figure out the source of it, which is very often the case, you know, a lot of those people I think would benefit from seeing how they do with medication-assisted treatment or something. But again, with the care and support that they should have. 

[00:33:35] Carole Blueweiss: So, I just wanna bring you back. You had said that medication that your mother was taking, she was told to stop taking that in order to have her surgery. Can you just briefly explain what that medication was and why it was important that she not stop?

[00:33:50] Jamie Boyle: Sorry. I throw these terms around like just so easily now. She’s on Subutex. It’s a form of what’s considered medication-assisted treatment and in that class is buprenorphine. Methadone was the original kind of medication-assisted treatment where people have to go to methadone clinics. And around when my mom and sister got off opioids, they were starting to be prescribed at home because we saw this uptick in people with substance use disorder. Julie, you actually might be able to describe it better. You give it a shot. 

[00:34:22] Julie Stampler: It is a maintenance drug, essentially, like a diabetic’s gonna always need insulin. Someone with substance use disorder could likely always need something like methadone or suboxone. And essentially, it helps with cravings. And a lot of times, that’s at the nerve center.

And so, it could ultimately help remove the pain because the pain is what’s telling you to call for the Oxy or the heroin or the meth, whatever it is you’re searching for, but you, you’re looking for anything to get rid of the pain. And the Suboxone and the methadone, the Subutex, helps remove the cravings essentially.

[00:35:01] Carole Blueweiss: So how do we know that we’re not getting addicted to that? 

[00:35:05] Julie Stampler: Who cares is the answer. Really, who cares? If you’re functioning, if you’re not, you know, in chaotic use. If it’s not problematic in any way, who cares? Right? If I know for me, like right now, I need a spoonful of honey. And if I’m gonna need a spoonful of honey every day, for me to be able to have a conversation with you and me taking that spoon full of honey doesn’t affect anybody else around me, I’m gonna take that honey.

And if me not taking the honey ends up impacting other people because I’m coughing everywhere, I can’t get through a conversation, that’s what is called harm reduction. So, the honey for me in that scenario is harm reduction. The Suboxone, the methadone, the access to an alternative to substance use disorder is the goal, right? Do we want people to be dependent? If it helps them stay alive and helps them function in their lives? Who cares is my answer. That’s just me. 

[00:36:09] Jamie Boyle: And they’re getting a lot more sophisticated all the time, so you can’t get high or euphoria off of them. Now granted, when you’re deep into opioid use, you’re not really getting high anyways. You’re staving off withdrawal. But they’re pretty sophisticated in that there are some side effects, but they’re pretty minimal and you can’t really get that euphoric effect. It’s a lifesaver for millions of people. 

[00:36:32] Carole Blueweiss: So, you mentioned in the film that 2019 was the last time you were all together, and I just wonder if you feel comfortable explaining that?

[00:36:41] Jamie Boyle: Yeah, it’s similar to the title. There is, as in any family, there’s so much to untangle. There’s so many factors that have caused rifts in our family. My sister, I don’t think she’d mind me sharing, pulled away a little bit from the rest of the family during Covid. And the reason I include it in the film, which is what I find most helpful to talk about, is that I had so many people come up to me at screenings and in conversations saying that they were estranged from a family member, either because of substance use or totally unrelated, but they were so grateful that I put that in the film because they, again, it just, they felt like they weren’t alone. 

Somebody saw them, and yet again, I was making this film about basically a love letter to her and my family, and that felt like an important component that like, if I could give people the opportunity to, again, say whatever your family looks like right now, it could happen to anybody. It’s okay. It does happen to everybody. We’re all there because I feel so alone in that estrangement, and these things happen in families, you know, but it’s horribly isolating and sad. But to know I’m not in it alone is everything. 

You know, we’ve been through a lot as a foursome. And then Covid hitting, I don’t think it was a coincidence that another giant public health crisis hit, and those rifts started to creep back in. We already live spread out. My sister’s in Colorado, my parents are in Florida, I’m in New York. So that’s always been the case. And then all of a sudden, we can’t travel. Jordan can’t go to meetings, everything’s moved online. That is her entire support network. 

And so, you start to see how, you know, these giant global failings and crises really start to tear at those very vulnerable things. We finally figured out how to sew back up and that, you know, it’s nobody’s fault. The systems are broken, but I just wanted to give people that reassurance that it we’re all in this kind of boat. Again. 

[00:38:49] Carole Blueweiss: Thank you for sharing that because the story in a way could have been a happily ever after story, which stories never really are. So, putting that in there made me so curious about that you seem to have ended all on a good note, but clearly, it’s not the end of the story, is it? It never really is the end of the story and it’s very, very complicated.

And then just the idea that there was a Covid that ripped many people’s lives apart and, we know right, the more vulnerable people were the ones that suffered the most. It ripped through families. 

[00:39:25] Julie Stampler: Well, and the accounts of overdose went through the roof during Covid because people were alone and using alone and that’s never a good idea.

[00:39:34] Carole Blueweiss: And people started again too. 

[00:39:36] Julie Stampler: Yeah. 

[00:39:37] Jamie Boyle: And people with Covid pain were being prescribed opioids. Again, I had a nurse in Florida saying, I’m giving Covid patients fentanyl. And you know, I was horribly worried about my family members if they had to come into contact with the healthcare system again that was just not prepared.

And you hit on something really important, which is what I was trying to say. And that is in so many ways, we are a happily ever after. They’re alive, they’re with us, and they’re sober. That’s unheard of. So it is, but, and I almost felt bad not ending the film that way, because that is true. And we’re so unbelievably, unimaginably lucky and so in the rare minority in that regard. But you know, it’s never that simple. And I think that was the point I wanted people to leave with. And so, I’m glad that that resonated.

[00:40:29] Carole Blueweiss: And we don’t see scars and yet they’re there and if they’re not exposed. So, what it almost feels like what you’ve done is you’ve told a story. And I think people will appreciate that it’s not a typical story where at the end there’s a certain type of tragedy. Well, there’s many kinds of tragedies. The visuals you used to describe the anonymous one, let’s say, becoming less anonymous in that little particular segment where your dad mentions some of the hardships that he noticed you were going through, that was very strong. How can you just watch all this happening? It’s got to have affected you. 

[00:41:03] Jamie Boyle: I almost didn’t put that in the film, and that’s why Julie, you saying that and you feeling that my presence and my anonymity and, and that feeling of being a sibling or I know caretakers often feel this way, that level of just always putting yourself second, you have to, you just do.

And that’s just what happens. So, it doesn’t take like an exceptional person. That’s just the dynamic that develops and, but you do become the second tier. So, it was hard to put, it’s still hard to think about my own stuff in all of this. I think that’s hard for all of the siblings. Like people say take care of yourself. Take care of yourself. And you’re like, what does that even look like? Am I doing it now? I don’t know. 

But yeah, after they both got well, I actually think this relates to a lot of what society is dealing with in the aftermath of Covid or aftermath, are we in that? I guess so. Is that, you know, my grandpa used to say like, you can shove it all in the closet or in a box, but like eventually there’s gonna be one little thing that pops that box open. It’s all gonna come flying out. 

Yeah. About a year after my family members got off opioids, I had, I guess, what can only really be described as a nervous breakdown. And it looked a lot of different ways. It was like depression and panic when I never had those things. Anxiety and all of the things that I had felt during their using, but they were well now, and I had graduated college and I was supposed to be starting my life and I felt, what is wrong with me? Because I got them back. You know, my greatest dream came true. I literally felt like ghosts had gotten up out of the graveyard and come back into my life.

I mean, I had said goodbye to my sister. I had wrapped my head around that loss. And then she came back to me, and she was laughing again. When someone’s in the throes of substance use, like you don’t see them. I hadn’t seen her in years. Like I missed her so much. And so, I felt like, how could this be happening?

And now I’m so depressed and so just a wreck. And then I went to therapy and saw some great psychiatrists and they let me know, no, that’s exactly what happens. And that’s exactly why we tell caretakers and loved ones and siblings to give all of that care to yourself because that’s exactly how it functions.

It builds and builds and builds and, in some way, it’s gonna come out and it doesn’t make sense. The time, the place, the circumstances don’t always make sense. They usually don’t. It’s usually quite a bit after the fact. And the form is not always what you’d expect and not in line with your personality or, you know, however you perceive yourself.

And that’s part of it. And I haven’t dealt with a loss like Julie has, but I’d be interested, Julie, if you’re comfortable sharing how that looked for you when losing a loved one. Were you similar? 

[00:43:49] Julie Stampler: It’s incredibly challenging to consider all of the things that might have been. It’s hard. I look at my kids and it’s, ah, if only your uncle was here. My brother Jonathan was an incredible musician, and I could see that they could all, they would all be sitting there jamming together and singing together. So that, it’s devastating to think about, but I think what a lot of people don’t talk about, because it sounds horrible, there was a sense of relief when he passed because I didn’t have to worry every time the phone rang.

I didn’t have to worry every time I took that turn and passed that corner where I might have seen him once panhandling or begging for money, right? So that relief feels so counterintuitive because I just lost my brother, but I also now know he’s no longer in pain, no longer struggling, no longer suffering.

And so, so there’s a strangeness that comes, you know, and I say this all the time when I talk about him, he’s saved the lives of countless people with his passing. And people have told me that, you know, years later, I’ll run into somebody who knew him, who will say, by the way, it was Jonathan dying that made me find help and get sober.

You know, I talked to my, when I talk to my kids and I talk to other kids about substance use and harm reduction and overdose prevention, what I handed my children, which is a gift from my brother, you’re in a situation where someone’s offering you something and peer pressure exists, it’s a thing. And you don’t wanna look like a loser. You don’t wanna look like a square, you don’t want. So, giving children language around a situation like that. Yeah, no man. My uncle died from that stuff. I’m not going near it. Thanks, though. No one’s gonna question you, right? No one’s going to point fingers and laugh at you and tell you that’s BS or whatever.

It gives kids an opportunity to get out of an unsafe situation. For sure. And I know giving a script essentially has been really helpful to them. You know, knock wood, everybody’s okay before they walk out the door, whatever it is that they’re doing. I always say make good choices. So, I repeatedly talk about how I’m devastated that my brother’s not here, but he continues to save people every day as a result of him not being here. 

[00:46:37] Jamie Boyle: That reminds me of a story, a quick story I have to tell involving Julie. Julie’s at the center. Because his presence is so much a part of this film and its release through Julie. And Julie’s presence is beyond enough on her own, but I feel his spirit and the loss of him in all your work.

Because I had a friend who, I don’t think she’d mind me saying, was at our Denver premiere, which is where I’m from, and Julie was there with me. And this friend hadn’t shared anything with me. I hadn’t seen her in a while. She didn’t know my family had dealt with this, even though we were very close at the time it happened.

But that’s part of the stigma and shame. I didn’t share it with anybody. So, she found out through watching this film when she came to the screening and Julie shared briefly her story of her loss when she did our Narcan training after the screening. And this friend of mine came up to her and shared with her that her husband was having a problem with opioids that he’d been prescribed. And then, not prescribed. 

Then after that, he’d ended up taking some of hers. But anyways, he was deep in the throes of a problem, and she was worried about him and confided in Julie and Julie for over a long time, gave her Narcan. And a week later, actually, like the night after Thanksgiving, she called me and said, I just used the Narcan on him and he is in treatment now.

If it weren’t for Julie sharing her story with the kind of love and passion that she has and Jonathan’s spirit, like it wouldn’t have happened. And I know this friend, she’s a fairly private person and she hadn’t shared that with me. She did after she shared with Julie. But it was absolutely her courage that led to that. And it was incredible to witness. And that’s one of, I’m sure, hundreds of stories about the work Julie does. 

[00:48:29] Carole Blueweiss: Wow. And then, I don’t know if this is full circle or not, so Julie, your stepfather, he invented naloxone.

[00:48:36] Julie Stampler: Yes.

[00:48:38] Carole Blueweiss: I was under the impression after talking to you about that, that in part that was also inspired by Jonathan. Is that, no, that was a coincidence? 

[00:48:48] Julie Stampler: No, not at all. No, no, no. That was totally coincidence. My stepfather was a brilliant, brilliant chemist, researcher, worked in a lab, and this is the story that has circulated in our family arena. And no one has corrected me yet. But from what I understood was that he was doing research on constipation caused by opioids and trying to figure out a way to combat that, and found that this little molecule kept blocking the opioid receptor, and while it didn’t do anything for constipation, it stopped somebody from experiencing the effects of an opiate.

And so, this was in the 1960s and essentially it came to be called naloxone and is basically in every ambulance, in every hospital. It’s remarkable what it has done in terms of just the world of medicine. My brother’s been gone almost 20 years, which is hard for me to even fathom. And my stepdad has been gone for almost 10, so it’s wild.

I’ve been doing this harm reduction work for about a little over 10 years and training people on how to reverse overdoses. It was October of ’21, I actually used Narcan on the New York City subway platform and it was the most surreal experience because this 19-year-old kid was gone. He was just splayed out, gone, eyes rolled back in his head. There was a nurse, thank goodness, who was starting CPR.

Thankfully, I was there, and I had Narcan on me, but when I watched this kid get up and walk away, I swear my stepfather and my brother were standing there with me. Makes me cry. It’s a testament to the work that we do because just that one kid, because this is the point, right? We share our pain with other people because we hope we prevent other people from experiencing the same. So, see the film, get some Narcan, save a Life. 

[00:51:10] Carole Blueweiss: How do we get Narcan? I want to carry it with me. 

[00:51:13] Julie Stampler: You could come to a screening at the IFC, the week of June 2nd in New York City, and we will be doing trainings after the screenings. You know, we just heard a big announcement that Narcan, the nasal spray version of naloxone, is going to be made available over the counter. But most syringe exchange programs, and you can Google and look for any in your area, will offer Narcan usually for free.

But make a donation if you can afford it. Generally, at least in the New York City area and most metropolitan areas, you can go into any pharmacy and go up to the pharmacist and ask for it. It will cost you. Some insurances will cover it. Some people don’t want it necessarily to be attached to your insurance, but if you want access to it right now, just go to CVS and say, hey, I need some Narcan.

And they don’t get to ask you why or what for, but you know, just say I have a relative with, you know, substance use disorder, or a kid who was prescribed an opioid, and I want to just have it in the house and you should be able to get it, no problem. 

[00:52:17] Carole Blueweiss: One day, hopefully it’ll be available for a very low cost or.

[00:52:21] Jamie Boyle: Ideally, yes, free. Yeah, I know there are also a lot of states that have passed laws saying that you can’t get an opioid prescription without a Narcan prescription as well. I don’t know if that’s everywhere. That’s a step in the right direction. And then I also wanted to say fentanyl test strips are becoming more readily available and I actually just told a construction worker near my building who lost one of his young kids to a fentanyl overdose that he thought he was taking Xanax.

So I told him about, and he had no idea those existed. So, I just want to say, on the airwaves, so to speak, that those do exist. And there are groups that Julie is in touch with and works with that hand them out at bars and restaurants, put them in bathrooms. You can probably say more about how to get those, but they’re around.

[00:53:07] Julie Stampler: Dancesafe.org. You can actually go on their website, and you can order fentanyl test kits and you can order drug testing kits. That’s a component of overdose prevention trainings that I always talk about is know what you’re getting, know what’s in what you’re getting. Hearing that story about your construction worker’s kid, that’s what’s happening today.

Kids, young people, are buying street pressed pills, looks exactly like a Xanax, and unfortunately, it’s gonna have fentanyl in it. And part of that is honestly just lazy drug dealers who aren’t cleaning their equipment in between. So, it will get in there. But again, zero tolerance to fentanyl and you pop a pill, see ya.

And so, this is why it’s vital to have access to drug testing kits and fentanyl test strips. And we’ve been hearing a lot about xylazine, which is making its way into the drug supply as well. And there’s actually now xylazine test strips. 

[00:54:08] Carole Blueweiss: Can you tell us about what xylazine is for those that don’t know?

[00:54:11] Julie Stampler: It’s actually a veterinary drug that is used for animals who are going under surgery. It’s an anesthetic, but unfortunately what it does in humans is it suppresses your breathing and knocks you out. You know, we have, in New York City, we have two sanctioned overdose prevention sites and it’s remarkable because a lot of times people are in these overdose prevention sites, they’re overdosing.

They don’t actually need to give them Narcan, they just give them oxygen and let them be. Because ultimately, it’s a supply of oxygen that ends up getting, the receptors get blocked, and you stop breathing. And so just usually it’s just oxygen in a corner is all they need. 

[00:54:53] Jamie Boyle: Just to chime in for people using opioids for chronic pain or otherwise. My sister started noticing signs of oxygen deprivation that we didn’t understand was that till years later. For my sister, you know, when she would wake up, I remember her calf muscle, it was just rock hard. Signs we later found out were oxygen deprivation. You know, we knew that respiratory failure is how you die of an overdose. But, you know, adding up all those things, you know, we were in a mess. 

[00:55:21] Julie Stampler: And one of the telltale signs of an overdose where fentanyl is involved is actually the chest wall becomes rigid. And the scary part about that is CPR becomes incredibly difficult. We always, we say, if you know how to do rescue breathing, add rescue breathing in.

But a lot of the times, Narcan can and should be enough depending on at what point you’ve arrived on the scene. People think when we talk about the overdose prevention centers, oh, well, you’re just giving people an opportunity to use drugs and no, actually what it’s doing is helping people stay alive.

It’s getting all of the paraphernalia, the syringes, et cetera, off the street, and it’s giving a person who uses drugs an opportunity to experience dignity and some compassion, and as a result, when they’re in this overdose prevention center because it becomes now a safe hub for them. There’s somebody there who can offer them resources for treatment, for housing, for work, right?

So as soon as we start treating people who use drugs as people, as a sister, as a mother, as a brother, giving them back their identities and taking away the horrible judgment of junkie, crackhead, dope fiend, all of that. We actually are giving people an opportunity to live. Isn’t that the point? 

[00:56:49] Jamie Boyle: One thing I wanted to, I keep chiming in, sorry. Julie’s so inspiring. 

[00:56:55] Julie Stampler: It’s good. It’s perfect. It’s perfect. 

[00:56:57] Jamie Boyle: She’s so inspiring. Okay. No, it’s something I thought of this morning as I’ve thought of as I was, so I haven’t talked about this before, but you know, when I think about harm reduction and hear Julie talk about it, and I think about my family members, you know, our privilege, our race, our socioeconomic status. That was our harm reduction. Those reduced the harms associated with drug use for my mom and sister. 

My parents were able to keep her housed. My mom was able to stay housed that kept them off the street, which means they weren’t assaulted. They didn’t get injection drug related illnesses, which can lead to a plethora of a million other harms that compound it, that make it impossible to get better.

Also, they had drugs that they knew what were in them because they were getting them from their doctors. My mom was controlling my sister’s supply and making sure she kept her drugs and doled them out. Now we were still in like very dangerous territory, but they’re alive because of those protection safeguard mechanisms they had around them that were in place until they were at a place where they felt like they could possibly combat or had the support to try to come off. 

So just in thinking about that as a society, we were so lucky and so privileged in so many regards. And they’re here because of it and their own, of course, strength and resilience. 

[00:58:25] Carole Blueweiss: Which is a testament to how a social community can also be so effective, which is often missing. Okay. So, the overdose prevention centers, you explained to me how that makes so much sense on all the levels that you already described and economically for the city. Can you talk about that? 

[00:58:44] Julie Stampler: Here in New York City, anytime there is an overdose situation where 911 is called, not only does an ambulance show up, the police have to show up and when the police show up, there’s paperwork involved.

When an ambulance shows up, there’s paperwork involved. When the, an overdose happens at the overdose prevention center, guess what? You don’t have to call any of those people. In the year plus that they’ve been open, and they’ve saved, they’ve reversed, I want, I think it was now it’s gotta be probably close to a thousand overdoses.

I think EMS has only been called a handful of times. And those were for people who had other issues going on. But so, in the year, they opened in November of ’21, so since then, New York City has saved millions and millions of dollars in taxpayer money. 4 million bucks. That’s it. And if they’re open 24/7, imagine how much more money would be saved.

And it costs the city a lot of money. Someone dies on the street and/or if someone gets sick on the street and they’re unhoused. And they don’t have health insurance and they don’t have access to care. There are doctors in the overdose prevention center who will do wound care, who will do give you prescriptions, who, if you’ve got Hepatitis C because you’re an IV drug user, they’re gonna help put you on the regimen to cure your Hepatitis C. So ultimately, it’s a lifesaver and it’s an economic benefit to any city that they’re open in. 

[01:00:22] Carole Blueweiss: That’s quite striking. Since you’ve both experienced, I want to use the word trauma, but is that a bad word to use? 

[01:00:27] Julie Stampler: It’s a fair word for a lot of people, I think, and a lot of times when I talk about substance use disorder, you can usually trace it back to a trauma, whatever that trauma might be, whether it was a wisdom tooth extraction or a car accident or more sinister things. So, it is a trauma involved world. There were many instances of my brother’s substance use that absolutely were traumatic. 

[01:00:57] Carole Blueweiss: For you, though. 

[01:00:58] Julie Stampler: For me. For me and experiencing and having my mother call me and tell me that I, she’s about to go into one of the deepest, darkest, scariest neighborhoods in Florida to score some drugs for my brother. And I’m thinking, no, I guess I have to go with you. Terrifying! So yes, traumatic. Yeah. It’s a fair word. 

[01:01:21] Carole Blueweiss: What would you like to say to people that need some help finding that? Like how did you guys actually eventually find that for yourselves? 

[01:01:30] Julie Stampler: Honestly, it’s ever evolving, right? You have to allow yourself to explore what the experiences have left in you. We talked about scars earlier, right? And so sometimes I find a new one. Oh, didn’t know that experience left that mark on me. Let me look into that. So, therapy, huge proponent of therapy and I have found myself engaged in different modalities of therapy. EMDR and brain spotting of late, which has been incredibly helpful for me.

You know, dealing with post-traumatic stress related to different aspects of my childhood, but a lot of it related to my brother’s substance use disorder and, and what for a long time I considered my part in it, because that’s hard. And then there is this aspect, especially you know, for me, it’s survivor’s guilt. So, it’s trying to understand my place in the story and my place in the journey of healing.

And like I said in the beginning for me, sharing my story and being able to bring Jamie’s story, help bring Jamie’s story to light for other people, heals me every time. You know, just a little bit more. Yeah. Self-care is huge. Me carrying Narcan everywhere I go feels powerful. One of the first steps is admitting you’re powerless. I am not that anymore. 

[01:03:14] Jamie Boyle: I couldn’t second everything Julie said more, especially finding your power in it and also being willing to, you know, look at the stuff that’s not so pleasant to look at. And being willing to recognize the ways it still surfaces in your life and in your soul and being, and I’m similar.

I have things I’ve adapted in adulthood that now I’ve realized on a random basis, oh, that, yeah, I wasn’t like that before. Now wait, was that becoming an adult or was that because of those years in which I became an adult? So, yeah, I think just therapy, again. The other thing is I’ve been asked this question a lot lately and I feel like I wish I had a better answer, but the only thing that comes to me is that there are no right answers.

I’ve been talking just at festivals across the country for the past year to people, family members, loved ones, even my own relatives and long-lost friends. And I hear a lot of the same questions again, and most of them are along the lines of, you know, what do I do with this person? What is the right answer? Is it tough love? Is it harm reduction? Where’s the line between enabling what they’re doing and not letting them hit rock bottom? The first thing I say is that something that was told to me and that was really helpful is that, often and sadly with where we’re at in this epidemic, rock bottom is death.

So, I don’t, I’m not a proponent of the old, traditional tough love ways. I think every individual is different though, and I think every relationship is different. So, if telling people there is no right exact way, there is no way to do this right or perfectly. Like that doesn’t exist, and trying to find that will drive you batty and it won’t make sure you are never taking care of yourself, you’re never thinking about your own wellbeing and you are just running yourself into the ground trying to figure out how to save this person or get this person back.

And there are no right answers. There’s a lot of information out there though, and it’s getting so much better, and the other thing is because so many people have dealt with this, if you start talking about it, I just keep saying talk. Talk about it. Talk to your loved ones about it. Talk to your family members, your friends.

If you can’t do that, seek out support groups. They’re everywhere and people love to talk and trade stories and it’s so healing. You never know where, not only the piece of advice that’s gonna get you through the next year is, or possibly save your loved ones, but the next thing that’s gonna buoy you or just give you that piece of healing or encouragement or something that you just need to keep finding your way through it.

But I just, for people who are in the middle of it, I just wanna affirm there’s nothing harder. And I think Julie spoke to this when she said, you know, it was almost a relief when she lost her brother because you lose them when they’re in the throes of substance use also. That is a loss. And so that trauma needs recognized and dealt with.

And also, yeah, so you are in the midst of going through a real traumatic loss while also trying to navigate a way out of it. And I think recognizing all that you’re shouldering as a loved one or a person going through this is just the first step to trying to figure out how to care for yourself. But it is very hard. It’s a very hard situation to be in. 

[01:06:45] Carole Blueweiss: Well, I love that answer because as obvious, maybe as it could sound, like there’s no one right answer. It’s almost like a cliche, but I think to hear that is very soothing. As humans, we have a tendency to assume we’re, you know, especially when it’s difficult and it’s not helping that we’re somehow doing something wrong. But when things are complex, you know, it’s never gonna feel completely right. But just knowing that’s okay is very healing. 

[01:07:11] Jamie Boyle: I mean, I’ll just share one other anecdote. One thing I try to tell people at festivals is, for the longest time I thought that this just constant iron fist of demanding Jordan get help, my sister get help and go to treatment, was what got her to finally go and she actually said in her interview, my mom, who was also using at the time, but insisted on just loving her through it all, on bathing her and getting her dressed and getting her fed and just wrapping her arms around her and saying, I understand, I’m here.

She was like, she was all I had. At my lowest of my low, I had her still. So we don’t know what it was or why it was that she agreed to treatment when she did, but who’s to say that it wasn’t that my mom’s love and, you know, non tough love approach kept her alive just as much, if not more so than me, because I was pushing her away and distancing her.

And that can be deadly. And things that worked for my mom, worked against Jordan, things that worked for Jordan, worked against my mom. It’s a puzzle. And anybody who tells you it’s not is just hasn’t done it. 

[01:08:22] Carole Blueweiss: How forceful were you in your actions to telling your sister if you need help, you need help? Were you like, outright screaming at her to please get help or? 

[01:08:33] Jamie Boyle: I was, but I was still coming around and I was still, you know, she was still housed. You know, a lot of parents will kick their kids out of the house and sometimes it’s for safety reason, a lot of times it’s for safety reasons. And so there, it would explode.

Things would explode at times and there would be a wall put down, but that never lasted, we’d always let her back in. You know, I’m the youngest of the foursome, so nobody takes me that seriously anyway. Jamie’s always mad about something or trying to stir the pot. So, they’re kind of used to it. It’s our dynamic.

And I could be screaming, and they’d all just be laughing at me. So, you know, that was part of it too, is I was adamant that she needed help, that they were addicted, but their doctors and everybody were like, stop listening to this 19-year-old in your family. She is terrified and unfounded. So that was part of it.

Yeah, so I don’t know if it’s not the same as if a parent says you need help and that kind of tough love, but it was certainly a component. I was a drumbeat in their ear, and I was terrified. It was constant. Well, you’re not gonna wake up. You’re gonna die. Like this can’t continue. Yeah, it was pretty constant for the last six months about.

[01:09:46] Carole Blueweiss: Yeah, I have this theory that there’s something about family members when they’re given advice by other family members, it goes into another part of the brain. It doesn’t go into the part where you’re actually listening and considering the advice. 

[01:10:00] Julie Stampler: I concur.

[01:10:05] Jamie Boyle: And I’m sure even more so if it’s a younger sibling, it’s just like in one ear, out the other. Yeah. Which I think is why I screamed all the louder. But yeah, I’m not sure. I’m not sure that’s what did it. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not. But it’s all I, it’s all I knew at the time. Thankfully, now we have people like you both and a lot more information about what works and what doesn’t or what’s more likely, I should say, to work and what’s less likely to work.

[01:10:37] Carole Blueweiss: And if people want to watch the film, tell us how, when, where. 

[01:10:42] Jamie Boyle: Yes. So, it will be starting at IFC Center, June 2nd in New York City. That will be running the 2nd through the 8th. And we will have a bunch of special panels and guests, including Julie and the fantastic array of experts and advocates she brings with her.

There will be resource handouts, like we said, so definitely go to our website, AnonymousSister.com and all, everything will be listed there. We’re also on social media, which can all be found on our website. And it will be in LA starting June 16th for a week, and with a lot more cities to follow. We’re booking those now.

And then in September, it will be available for rent on a variety of platforms. I think iTunes, Amazon, Apple Play, and, but we will keep those updated, but basically available to rent starting this fall. 

[01:11:34] Carole Blueweiss: We will have in the show notes your website for anonymoussister.com and other resources. I want to thank you both so much for coming on and talking about this pretty serious heavy topic, but one that’s important to talk about.

[01:11:50] Jamie Boyle: Yeah, thank you so much, Carole, I so appreciate you talking about it. I was really heartened by the conversations that you’re having and I’m really grateful to be here and to be here with Julie. I think it’s so valuable. I know I second Julie in that regard, but yeah, talking about it in this way, especially, I think we’re talking a lot about the wrongdoing on the part of big Pharma, thankfully. But yeah, just the conversations between friends and family members, we definitely don’t get enough. I’m really happy to be here. You know, it’s the same reasons I made the film and those stories saved me and my family members, so thank you for this podcast.

[01:12:31] Carole Blueweiss: If you are in New York or LA, don’t miss seeing the documentary Anonymous Sister directed by Jamie Boyle, which will be showing at the IFC Center in New York City from June 2nd through June 8th, and then in Los Angeles from June 16th to the 22nd.

Thank you so much for listening to Wisdom Shared. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to check out all the other episodes. Go to caroleblueweiss.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like what you’re hearing on Wisdom Shared, please spread the word and share this podcast with your friends. Leave a review and subscribe so you can receive wisdom every month. Thanks for listening.

Episode Summary

Melissa Conrey shares her story of living with drug and alcohol addiction and now, sobriety. A single mom of two, she worries about her children who have been exposed to so much. She went back to school to earn her degrees and is now a registered dietician. Melissa speaks openly about her challenges and her victories. 

For the visually-minded who prefer to listen and read or for those who need closed captioning, watch the transcript video here: https://youtu.be/yTUuE_L-L8g

From This Episode

• A.A. (Alcoholics Anonymous): https://www.aa.org/
• Al-Anon: https://al-anon.org/
• Melissa’s Roller Derby Team: https://centralcoastrollerderby.squarespace.com/

Find and Follow Melissa:

• Instagram: @simplyme_rd
• email: melissadae2001@yahoo.com

Find and Follow Carole and Wisdom Shared:

• https://www.caroleblueweiss.com/
• Subscribe to my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@WisdomSharedCaroleBlueweiss
• Follow me and send me a message on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/caroleblueweiss
• Follow me and send me a message on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carole-blueweiss-pt-dpt-23970279/
• Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carole_blueweiss/

The Wisdom Shared Team

• Audio Engineering by Steve Heatherington of Good Podcasting Works
• Social Media and Marketing Coordinator: Kayla Nelson

Transcript

[00:00:00] Melissa: The best thing that I can do is to show up for him today as best as I can. Just be a role model. Show him what it looks like to be a sober person and he can choose to go this path or not. He’s gotta do his own journey.

[00:00:22] Carole: Welcome to Wisdom Shared, where parents are the experts and where connection inspires change. My name is Carole Blueweiss, and I am your host. And today, I have as my special guest Melissa Conrey. She is a single mother of two, an anti-diet registered dietician, nutritionist, and a certified intuitive eating coach.

She’s also a proud member of a roller derby team in California. Melissa has struggled most of her life with alcohol and drug addiction, and in this episode, Melissa shares her reflections and memories while she looks back at what it was like to raise a family while managing her own addictions. It was the fear of losing her kids that really prompted her to seek help and to work her way to sobriety. 

I met Noah, Melissa’s son, in Alaska last summer where he was the guide at an ATV company and he said, “wow, you know, my mother has a great story. I had challenges growing up, and she would be a great person to interview.” A couple of months later, I got a text from Noah saying that his mother was interested, and that’s how I met Melissa, Noah’s mom.

I’d like to welcome you to Wisdom Shared, Melissa, thanks for coming on. 

[00:01:46] Melissa: Thank you for having me. 

[00:01:48] Carole: I usually start the interview with a question, and that is what is a childhood memory that sticks with you today? 

[00:01:55] Melissa: I have a really big family and a very close family, so there was a lot of cousins and aunts and family members around. Three brothers that I grew up with, and I have a half-brother that I got later in life, and also a step-brother and a lot of cousins that were always around.

Our family’s very tight. We went to the beach a lot and camping and had picnics and going to the park and all kinds of fun stuff. I think just in general, I had a pretty fun childhood. A lot of people around having a good time. 

[00:02:26] Carole: Do you have big Christmases? 

[00:02:28] Melissa: We do, yeah. We don’t have a lot of small kids anymore for Easter, but Christmas and Thanksgiving are pretty special. My mom really tries to keep us together that way. 

[00:02:38] Carole: How old is your mom? 

[00:02:40] Melissa: I think she’s 70 now. 

[00:02:41] Carole: She’s a young grandma. 

[00:02:43] Melissa: Yes. I was 19 when I had my daughter. Yeah. I call my mom their baby daddy because they would take them for holidays. They love their Nana. 

[00:02:56] Carole: Tell me about your children.

[00:02:57] Melissa: I have the two kids and I had my daughter first. Her name is Jamie, and then I had Noah three years later. Jamie’s 29, Noah’s 26. And I love them very much.

[00:03:14] Carole: I asked Melissa why she said yes to speaking with a complete stranger that her son had met randomly in the mountains of Alaska. 

[00:03:21] Melissa: I said yes because I hope that this experience bonds Noah and I a little bit more and brings us a little closer with a little better understanding of each other. And beyond that, I’m hoping that somebody else will relate to our story.

[00:03:34] Carole: You know, I started off thinking that my audience were people that had challenges, which is most of the population. 

[00:03:41] Melissa: Yeah. 

[00:03:43] Carole: And that people who have gone through challenges, especially with their children, talk more about their children than themselves. A lot of the lessons that you’ve experienced with yourself and then with your son, with Noah, overlap, which makes it a little bit more complex because we’re talking about two people that have had very clear challenges. Tell us a little bit about your challenges. 

[00:04:08] Melissa: So the challenge is addiction, alcoholism, and Noah shows signs of facing those same challenges. There’s so many people in my family who are addicts. Their dad is a drug addict, and he was out of their lives when Noah was a baby. I’ve partied a lot and it’s just so easy to get caught up and to start to spiral.

You think of an alcoholic as somebody who is in the gutters and is like a particular type of person, but we are one of those families that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to, you know, be struggling so much with drugs and alcohol the way that we do. Noah, for a long time, him and my daughter bonded and they took care of each other and didn’t rely on me, and they distanced themselves from me and excluded me from their lives. 

Through it all, I’ve always thought I was prioritizing them, but thankfully with sobriety, I realized that there was a lot of times, obviously, that I wasn’t. When you get sober, you hope that everyone just notices and everyone finally forgives you and they just believe you that you’re gonna be better and it takes a very long time.

But luckily, we have a really great family. My sobriety date is October 1st, 2018. I am very proud to say that now. There was a while when it was very difficult and it makes me even more grateful for that date that Noah had so many nice things to say to you about me, because it wouldn’t have been like that a while ago.

And for me, it didn’t get better right away. We didn’t get closer right away and things didn’t magically get fixed right away or even in a timely manner that I would’ve preferred. It has taken a whole lot more time for my kids to trust me and to start to rely on me again. And to open up. 

[00:05:52] Carole: What was your relationship like before you stopped drinking? What are your memories of being with your kids? 

[00:05:57] Melissa: The strain happened pretty early on, and then as my kids became teenagers, they acted out even more and more. And so there was big fights and there was a lot of disrespect. There was a lot of turmoil in our house and I was able to excuse that away before I wanted to admit that I was an alcoholic to me being a single mom and me going to school and working at the same time, and me having a lot of burden of responsibility to raise these kids and do the best that I can do. 

So I was gone a lot. I just had a lot of pressure and the kids were saying, you drink too much. I want you home. I want you to be, in so many words, they were telling me, I want you to be present as a mom. 

And I really felt like I was doing a good job. And so as they became teenagers and they got even more rebellious and mean, and we fought a whole lot more, I attributed that to them being teenagers. And that’s just the way that it goes. But then Noah moved out when he was 19 and he moved to Hawaii.

So I didn’t see him a whole lot for the next four years. I went and visited him twice and then he went to Washington and then to Alaska. So he’s been doing a lot of moving around, and during that time, some of the healing has happened because of the distance between us. There’s still work to do, I think, because now he’s actually around me a whole lot more.

[00:07:24] Carole: What helped you get through your addiction?

[00:07:27] Melissa: It took a long time for me to even admit that I might have a problem. So looking back, what really helped is that for one thing, people didn’t give up on either being honest with me or being very supportive and loving and trying their best to guide me. I always felt loved.

I always felt important, and I always felt like I could be doing better. And even though I wasn’t living up to that potential, that message was in my head because that’s what I was told. I guess the takeaway message that I would hope to get out there is that, for one thing, addiction, alcoholism, I think that it touches everybody.

It really does. Anybody, anywhere, anytime. And I feel like that’s something that might be accepted and people are like open to really understand that. But the other side of that is that recovery also works. It also happens and it can happen to anyone, anywhere, anytime as well. And so I’m not probably a person you would look at and think, oh, she is an alcoholic or an addict because I don’t have that lifestyle of the people that you see in movies, where they end up in the streets and they end up losing everything in their life. They lose their children and all that stuff. I didn’t have to go through those things, but I definitely did have the -ism. I definitely had the addiction. I had some really serious repercussions in my life because of it.

But my life has changed and I am in recovery and I am recovered in so many ways, and I want that message to be really heard that you don’t give up. My family never gave up on me. My friends never gave up on me. The people who love me never gave up trying to support me and still help out. Once I was able to admit that I had a problem because nobody gave up on me and because people still believed I could make it through, that definitely planted all of those seeds that grow still today.

That’s what helped. Once I was able to admit that I had a problem, those little seeds started to grow and they still do. And that’s something that I would really want to express. As a person who is going through it, I would want people to hear that, but also as a parent, because now I have to watch my son battle the same issue.

And I have faith that the things that I say and do now matter and as much as I can sit around and regret the things that he saw or had to put up with when he was younger, when I was still actively an alcoholic and an addict, now I get to make amends with my actions, and I have over three years of sobriety and those changes in our relationship are happening because he can see me as somebody he can trust now. He sees me as somebody he can look up to. He sees me as somebody that matters in his life, not somebody he wants to keep out of his life. 

[00:10:23] Carole: You used the word addict, is that the same thing as the alcohol or is that a separate addiction?

[00:10:29] Melissa: I think it’s the same thing. I don’t really know anybody who only drinks, so I don’t think alcoholics are exclusively alcoholic or just drinking alcohol or just an alcoholic. For me, I’m both.

And I did a lot of drugs and I tapered those off as my kids got older. And to me, that was a success. That was another justification of how come I shouldn’t give up drinking. I already quit doing meth. Why do I have to give that up too? Everyone else is doing it, but I was able to quit all the drugs. Mostly. Except recreationally. I go to AA now, I’m in the 12-step program. 

[00:11:05] Carole: Do you have memories of what got you started the very first time? 

[00:11:09] Melissa: You know what’s funny is I think about that sometimes, and the first time I got drunk was when I was, the summer that I was gonna turn 13. I was with my aunt and uncle and my cousin and they were partying and we were drinking wine coolers and Coors Light.

And my cousin, who is very close in age to me, she is the closest thing I had to a sister. We got drunk and it was super fun and we ended up throwing up and getting in a fight and it was just being stupid. And what’s funny to me is the year before that her dad was growing weed in their backyard and her and I were out there picking the weed and throwing it over the fence – “drugs are bad!”

I don’t know what changed. The next year we were like, we may as well smoke some weed and then start doing meth. And then start experimenting with drugs. So by the time I was 15, I had already been doing all these things and I don’t remember the first for a lot of other things but I do remember the first time I got drunk

[00:11:58] Carole: And the friends of yours that you did the drugs with, do you keep in touch with them? Are they okay? Did they take the same path that you did? 

[00:12:07] Melissa: Let’s see. I started at such a young age. No, I’m not really friends with a whole lot of people that I can remember from back then. I have actually two friends that were my best friends from that age.

One of them partied like I did. The other one really never did. Everyone thought she did, but she did not. We stayed friends for all those years and the other one just cleaned up her act and she, I don’t think that she was an addict, alcoholic like I am. Not everybody is. Some people just party and eventually grow out of it and some people are, have the -ism. 

[00:12:39] Carole: Just to stay in your childhood for a moment, just to try to understand, cuz it’s an interesting perspective, you being older now and you having had turnaround. For parents out there that might have kids that are experimenting and that are doing some partying at a younger age, it sounds like from what you’ve said, that it can be harmless and it could be harmful. It really depends on the person. It’s not necessarily, oh, you tried something young, you’re gonna become an addict. 

[00:13:04] Melissa: Right. 

[00:13:05] Carole: But you could. So what do you have to say to parents whose children are experimenting and being like the kid that you were? 

[00:13:15] Melissa: That is a tough one because it’s hard to say what’s gonna turn into a full-blown addiction and what’s just the experimenting. I don’t really know if I have a clear answer for that because we were doing so much. I overdosed when I was 16 and ended up in rehab for three months and as soon as I got out, I started drinking and doing drugs as soon as I could get to ’em. I guess that is eyeopening. If your kids go to rehab, like that should be a red flag right there. 

The rest of it, I worried about my kids every single day, and my friends who were still friends with me from that time were like, remember what we were doing at that age? And I’m like, I know, I’m gonna put them on lock and key. They’re not gonna do anything. And of course they do. 

I didn’t have any healthy way of really monitoring that, especially since I was still drinking during that time that my kids were teenagers and starting to experiment on their own. Yeah. I’m not sure if that answers your question, but.

[00:14:11] Carole: Yeah, it does. I’m gonna go with my curious mind here and wonder if you often see on tv or you read books or you hear stories about people who become addicted, who had really hard childhoods or difficulty with their parents. But it doesn’t sound like that was for you something that was taken into consideration. It’s more you, superficially anyway, you were with your friends who were doing it. If they weren’t doing it, maybe you wouldn’t do it. Is that fair to say? Or is it more complex than that?

[00:14:47] Melissa: Yeah, I think when I went to rehab, the counselors were like, “oh, your parents got a divorce. You must be so sad.” And I was like, “no. That was actually the best thing ever.” They were looking for excuses of an unhappy childhood of why I would be deep into doing drugs at that age. And I couldn’t come up with any answers then, and I can’t come up with any answers now. I really liked it. I really enjoyed it. I really wanted to party and I thought that I knew what I was doing. 

And I think you’re right. We do expect a person who becomes addicted to have all these traumas in their life and these reasons why they might be driven to that, but sometimes there isn’t that trauma. And there’s certainly unhappy things in my childhood, my parents fought all the time and I feel like I was an anxious child, and I think that might have been part of the reason why, because they were always fighting. It was a very tense environment between them. So I was very happy when they got a divorce because they both went their separate ways and we got a little more spoiled.

But I carried that anxiety around. And not to blame your parents, but these are just some of the things that created who I am and I don’t think that there was really any significant traumatic event in my life that I needed to run away from or hide from in the way that you can see it in these documentaries.

I was just like a regular kid going through some regular problems. But I come from a family of addicts, I come from family with history of that. And if I were to guess, that would probably be the biggest factor. 

[00:16:15] Carole: Tell me more about that. 

[00:16:16] Melissa: On both sides, my mom and my dad’s side, there’s addicts, there’s drug addiction, alcoholism on both sides. Neither of my parents necessarily would, I think, be considered that. My mom probably drinks a lot more than others, but she’s also now 70. And I always thought that I would grow out of it like her. Now she’ll have one margarita and she’s, “oh, I might be a little tipsy.” I’m like, who are you? That’s not the mom I remember. When do I get to be like that? 

And my dad just always didn’t ever get outta control that I saw. He would like a whiskey after work or some beer and that was nice too. Sometimes we could have a sip of his whiskey or tequila or something. I just liked it. But my dad’s twin brother died from drug addiction. And on my mom’s side, some of her family members are recovered or yeah, most of them, they’re recovered. 

And I tell my kids that too, cuz their dad’s a drug addict and that’s what I worry about for them. You come from that, be careful what you do. And that’s what I used to tell Noah too. When I saw that he was struggling, I guess I just wanted to let him know, it’s not your fault, this is where you come from and there’s a chance that you might take this too far. 

[00:17:24] Carole: Do you remember when you said to yourself, oh, Noah’s not okay, or he might need some help or? 

[00:17:33] Melissa: Yeah, both my kids started smoking weed when they were teenagers, and that was problematic for me just cuz I was worried, but it didn’t seem like a major deal. I didn’t see any major problems. Like I said, Noah didn’t live here, he lived outta state for all the last several years. And so I didn’t see him on a daily basis, and I don’t know if he was struggling before, but he came home in 2020 because he broke his back in Washington snowboarding and he had to come home.

He was living in Hawaii, his home was Hawaii. He was working a seasonal job in Washington and I live in California. So for him to come to a safe place to recover, he came back to my house and still had a place in Hawaii. But then Covid happened like the next two weeks. And so he was basically on lockdown and it was really hard to get him into a doctor’s appointment.

It was really hard to get him any kind of care, and they prescribed him some painkillers cuz he had a broken back and he wasn’t able to fill his prescription because there was no, I think we were able to get him Medi-Cal. But anyways, it was a real hassle. And so he says that he had to buy the pills from people that he knows.

And that is really when I saw a lot of problems. That is when I saw behavior changes, and that was when I was really scared for him and I didn’t know if this was already going on for him or if this really did start with him breaking his back. I asked him the other day, though, after we talked and he said that it really did escalate at that point because he didn’t have an option to get pills where he did. He got them off the streets and he didn’t really have care and he went too far. 

[00:19:17] Carole: Well it certainly didn’t help. 

[00:19:20] Melissa: Yeah.

[00:19:20] Carole: If you’re in pain and, huh. 

[00:19:25] Melissa: Yeah. And that’s what he has been struggling with for the last couple of years, since that happened. And so he says now that he’s done with that, but we’re not out of the woods. We’re not, it’s, and I know that, but going back to my recovery, I also know that he can be okay and that recovery is possible and that the best thing that I can do is to show up for him today as best as I can and just be a role model. Model what I show him what it looks like to be a sober person and he can choose to go this path or not. He’s gotta do his own journey. 

[00:20:09] Carole: And he has your example, he has his father’s example, so he knows what can happen if you don’t take the other road.

[00:20:19] Melissa: Yes. Yes, he definitely does. 

[00:20:23] Carole: And I felt his wisdom, you know, when I was sitting next to him and he was talking. What is the relationship between Noah and his sister? 

[00:20:35] Melissa: Oh, it’s incredible. I am so proud of them. So him and his sister are like best friends. They are, they’re best friends, and they’re bonded, and they really do watch out for each other and take care of each other. And it makes me proud because that’s the kind of upbringing I had.

And I feel like my mom, my parents, passed that on to us and we’ve passed that on to them. And I love seeing that. I already know that it’s an unbreakable bond because I have that with my brothers too. And I know they’re never alone. They have each other forever. It’s comforting.

[00:21:09] Carole: I assume after you became sober, you followed more your dream. I don’t wanna put words into your mouth, but why don’t you tell us what you were doing before and what you’re doing now. 

[00:21:21] Melissa: Well, I’m very proud of my career trajectory. 

[00:21:25] Carole: Tell us about it. 

[00:21:26] Melissa: I was already going back to school and trying to change careers, but I am now a dietician. I passed my dietetics exam in March of this year. I was able to do my internship last year and I’m working as a clinical dietician at a hospital locally. I was a bartender for many years, which is a fantastic and fun job, and I absolutely love it. I actually still do it because the hotel I work for has asked me to still pick up shifts for banquets since they’re still short staffed and I’m like, okay.

So I work a couple times a month and, but yeah, it’s very different and I went back to school in 2016. I was able to get into Cal Poly. I was really proud of that. And then after I graduated, I struggled to get into an internship and I don’t know if I still would’ve made it through if I hadn’t gotten sober.

But I can tell you that I made it through at a much higher level and in a way that I’m so much more proud of myself because I am sober doing it. I’m able to show up every day. I don’t go to work worried about smelling like alcohol. I don’t worry about if it’s money that I’ve spent or the people that I’ve offended.

I was able to show up to all of the early shifts during the internship and go to all these different rotations and everybody had good things to say about me. I didn’t have to turn in work late. I didn’t have to make excuses for why I didn’t show up. Any of those things that came along with my behavior before, which probably held me back from getting into my internship before that.

[00:22:56] Carole: So when you were going through your undergraduate years, were you drinking a lot?

[00:23:00] Melissa: I thought I would go to college after high school. I graduated from high school when I was 17 cause I’m born in the summer and I met a guy and immediately – their dad – took off, wanted to party for a year and got pregnant.

And so college was definitely put on the back burner. Went back to college later and got my associate’s degree. And struggled through that and then waited several more years and then went back to school for my bachelor’s degree. I retook a lot of classes and I made a lot of excuses and I had conversations with teachers and had a sob story about why this and why that.

And I turned in work that was subpar. And when I got into Cal Poly, it really showed. For my bachelor’s degree, thinking that I was going to just jump right in cuz I’m older and so much wiser than everybody else. But no, not at all. I had to learn the hard way that I have to learn how to use a computer, having to retain all of this information. It’s really difficult when you’re also like drinking all night long and you’re learning something new in a totally new environment. 

[00:24:03] Carole: Yeah. And also you had your daughter. You had young children. I don’t know if your husband was an active addict at that time. 

[00:24:13] Melissa: Oh, we were never married and he was always an addict. He was not around to help. 

[00:24:17] Carole: You were going back to school. That’s pretty amazing. 

[00:24:22] Melissa: Yeah, single mom. Doing it, working restaurant work, which is why I loved it so much. You can work, it’s flexible, you make good money in the short amount of time, so going to school part-time, working basically full-time, raising the kids full-time, and it was definitely a big challenge.

But I did that and that’s where the big family comes in handy. They were always very supportive. My mom had moved up here, up to San Luis Obispo when my kids were very young, and if I needed money for sports or for any kind of activity they wanted, she would pay for it. And she didn’t have a lot of money either. She was struggling. My mom will do anything for her kids or just about anybody. There’s a lot of generosity there. 

[00:25:01] Carole: Did you have any connection with her when you were getting off of all the drugs and alcohol? 

[00:25:05] Melissa: We have an interesting relationship. We have this mother daughter dynamic that should be really sweet at this age, but it’s just not yet. And we butt heads a lot. So we don’t do well being in the same place for a long time, but I know that she loves me and I love her very much. And there’s a little bit of distance between us, but as far as like being there, she was there with the kids. 

She was one of the ones who was very truthful with me all the time, sometimes very critical, and I felt like she was just being very judgmental and she would tell me that I was doing the wrong thing, and she would tell me that I wasn’t taking care of my kids and I wasn’t being a good mom.

And she would tell me that I’m partying too much and all this stuff. And I would just tell her, she she doesn’t know what she’s talking about cuz she doesn’t live near me. She doesn’t know my life and all this stuff and, but I look back on those things and I think she was right. She was right. She saw how I was living. She saw how the kids were so sad. She saw how much I was missing out on. She was right. 

[00:26:01] Carole: Do you remember when the time was, like you said, I’m not doing this anymore. I’m gonna stop, I’m gonna change. 

[00:26:07] Melissa: How I finally got sober? Yeah, I had turned in my first application to my internship that I wanted to get into, and I had been trying so hard for so long to live a healthier lifestyle. I picked up a sport. I hike. I do all these different activities. I went back to school, learned about nutrition. A lot of times my nutrition questions had to do with how drugs and alcohol affect your body and what metabolism has to do with that. If you take the supplement, do you get less drunk? Just wondering if that’s a thing. 

[00:26:41] Carole: Can you explain that to someone who’s quite ignorant? 

[00:26:44] Melissa: There’s just all these myths about if you take, I think the one was you can take like a baker’s yeast and it will break down the alcohol in your stomach before it gets absorbed into your bloodstream and then you won’t get as drunk. That’s, it’s not, I don’t think it’s true. It never worked for me. Probably just drink less. But college kids probably ask a lot of questions like that. I was an adult in college asking questions like that, so that’s problematic. Another red flag that I refused to look at. 

There were a lot of things like that, and there were just so many moments when my kids had asked me to stop drinking. Noah had asked me, he had made me sign a contract before. And so I would quit for a month or two months and then they wouldn’t notice. And so I’d be like, what’s the point? There’s all these different things that would sit in my mind. And so I wanted to change my life and be healthier, eat well, take care of myself, do the right thing.

And then I had this dual life though, cuz then on the flip side, I’m like smoking cigarettes and drinking. I binge drink. I didn’t drink every day. That was the other tricky thing is that I was never like an everyday drinker. I’m a binge drinker. And so to me that was success. I would go a three or four or five days with doing all the hard work that I do. And then so what if I party for two or three days? And not every week, but at least every other week. It was really hard to keep that up. 

And it wasn’t cute and it wasn’t fun, and nobody really wanted to hang out with me anymore. And it stopped being fun a long time ago. And so the defining moment was when I turned in my application for my internship that I had worked so hard towards and I was already drunk when I was sending it.

And I had forgotten to send my, I think, one of my transcripts. And so that was like a panic moment and I thought that I didn’t have one of my letters of recommendation in, and there was like so much panic behind this super important moment, why wasn’t I prepared? So that was really eye-opening.

And then I spent the next seven days getting super wasted, calling into work and not showing up. And after the seventh day, I was like, I just can’t do this anymore. And I had a therapist at that time who had already told me I was an alcoholic on the first day that I met him. And I was like, you’re wrong. I’ll show you. You’re wrong. 

And so for, I’d been seeing him for months and so finally I was like, maybe I’ll give this program a shot. I’ll go to a meeting. I’d been to meetings before cuz I’ve had DUIs and I’ve had to go. But, I’ve been arrested, so I’ve had to go. I’ve gotten the nudge from the judge before. But this time I was like, I’m just gonna go because what else can I do?

And for whatever reason, I sat down and I read this thing that they handed to me and I listened to what they had to say and I cried and I just heard my story in what these women were saying. I went to a women’s meeting and I heard my story, and I heard this wasn’t a bunch of old drunk men is what I thought AA was all about.

I actually saw myself reflected in what was going on there, and I really felt like I was right where I belonged and so I wasn’t ready to admit I was an alcoholic, but it felt right being there. And so I came back and that’s what I mean by recovery happens and not ever to give up because you just never know when it’s just gonna hit just right at some point. Something that is said really resonates, and for me it was just that moment. 

[00:30:00] Carole: I wonder what is your take on labels? Like the idea that you couldn’t identify with the word alcoholic, and maybe that’s a lot of times gets in the way that it’s a label as opposed to that inner revelation yourself. That’s, the way you describe it is more poetic. That it’s not a word that you were, it was something much more complex, not a word. 

[00:30:26] Melissa: Yeah, I think the label itself, the alcoholic label, has so much shame attached to it, and so you feel worthless and you get this, at least I got this image of somebody living in a gutter, just some homeless person who just doesn’t care about themselves.

And also it meant giving up anything fun. Like alcoholics are miserable and just sad for their lives, and that’s just not the way that it is. How do you get around labels? We do this all the time, all day long. We label things and we put them in boxes and that’s how we know how to react to them, I think.

But that was a struggle. Once I was able to get past the label of being an alcoholic, I am proud to say it. I am so relieved. I’m so much happier now than I have been in years. I have that childhood enjoyment of my every day, of the sun rises and I have gratitude first thing in the morning, and that’s something that I hadn’t felt in forever and it feels so good to be able to do that again. And I wish the label didn’t deter people, but I get it. It does. Can I tell you about the first time I proudly said I was an alcoholic?

[00:31:30] Carole: Tell me. 

[00:31:31] Melissa: Besides in the meetings, I started to accept it, but one day I was with a group of friends. I play roller derby. I don’t think I mentioned that. That’s my sport that I took up. And it’s super fun. I went out with the team afterwards and everybody, usually, most people who drink usually drink and I used to as well after the games. And I went out and they were like, hey, Muerte is my name. Do you want a glass of wine? You want a beer? And I was like, no, thank you. I don’t drink. I’m an alcoholic. And they were like, oh, okay, cool. And just moved on. And I was like, yeah. And I just wanted to say it again. I was like, yeah, I’m an alcoholic. I don’t drink anymore. And they were like, yeah, okay. And moved on. But it felt so good to me. It felt so empowering and I felt like now it’s a label that I can wear proudly.

I’m a derby girl, I’m a mom, I’m an alcoholic. I’m all these things that have made me who I am. And being an alcoholic has given me a lot of freedom. Now I get to be in those situations and just be like, oh no, thanks. I’m an alcoholic.

[00:32:32] Carole: My knowledge of roller derby is what I saw on tv. Maybe it was a movie. Maybe it used to be on as a sport when I was young. 

[00:32:39] Male Announcer Voice: [crowd sounds at derby bout] Good teamwork by those devil girls. 

[00:32:41] Carole: It’s very vague to me. So I remember women going around and around on these skates, like pushing and punching. 

[00:32:50] Melissa: Your memory is accurate. Yes. Roller derby started out as not necessarily a sport, I can’t remember why, but it evolved into being like wrestling, very fake, very put on, and then it died out for a while and it has made a resurgence and it actually is a sport.

It has rules. It’s like football on skates, full body contact. And that is how you get around the track. And I’m not on a banked track. What you remember is a banked track. We have a flat track and we skate at a hockey rink, but you’re not allowed to punch anybody. You can hip check ’em and you can hip check ’em hard.

[00:33:28] Carole: What’s the object? What are you trying to do? 

[00:33:31] Melissa: So there’s one skater and that’s called a jammer. And then there are four other skaters and they’re called blockers. And that’s your team. Your jammer is trying to skate around the track. And get through the wall of blockers on the other team, and you get a point for every person that you pass, and you all have to stay within a certain distance from each other.

You can’t just skate all over the place. You have to be within a certain distance. And then that jammer will skate around and get through, skate around, hopefully get through again, just get more points. 

[00:34:00] Carole: The same person.

[00:34:00] Melissa: The same jammer, and there’s jammers on both teams. And so those blockers are blocking the other jammer at the same time as you’re trying to get your jammer through. There’s quite a few things going on. There’s no ball. 

[00:34:13] Carole: There’s no ball, just your body. 

[00:34:16] Melissa: There’s some people on my team who get really all dressed up and you can wear whatever you want. We all wear the same jersey. And then beyond that, we wear, a lot of times we wear booty shorts and fish nets if you want to. Otherwise, some skaters aren’t comfortable in that, so they wear like their capris or full leggings. But definitely some fun stuff. 

[00:34:35] Carole: Now, you didn’t do this while you were under the influence, did you? 

[00:34:37] Melissa: Skated under the influence? No way, no way. That would be death. I’ve skated super hungover though, and I’ve gone to practice too drunk to skate. I wasn’t allowed. Actually, I got the nickname, I think it was Drunk Thursday. Oh my gosh. Now I can’t remember it. My friend, it was a Beastie Boys song and it was a Thursday night practice and I was so drunk and so she was saying drunk on a Thursday. 

[00:35:02] Carole: You get nicknames? 

[00:35:04] Melissa: Yes. Yeah, your derby name.

[00:35:06] Carole: What’s your derby name? 

[00:35:07] Melissa: Mine is Miel Muerte. 

[00:35:11] Carole: Dead Honey? 

[00:35:12] Melissa: Honey Death. 

[00:35:14] Carole: Honey Death. Is there a reason you got that name? 

[00:35:19] Melissa: Yeah. Well, I chose it, but my name’s Melissa and that means honeybee. And I wanted something honey, and people call me Mel, which was close to Miel, and the full name should have been like Miel de la Muerte or something like that, but it was too long, so I just shortened it. I liked the alliteration. It’s sweet and scary. 

[00:35:39] Carole: Love it. First of all, for sure, you don’t speak for all addicts and for all alcoholics, so clearly this is just your story. For you being a bartender, you are, as you said, an alcoholic. I don’t hear many bartenders announcing that they’re alcoholics. I could see you doing that, but usually, maybe this is a stereotype or it’s wrong logic on my part that you just don’t wanna be around alcohol because you don’t wanna get tempted. Can you just try to interpret what I’m trying to ask you? 

[00:36:09] Melissa: Yes, I can definitely say that it was highly recommended that I quit my job. [laughs] See, and I thought it was funny too, cuz I make good money and I was like, I’m not quitting my job. I will make this work and I did.

[00:36:28] Carole: Good for you. There you go. There’s the rules are just out the window. That’s refreshing to hear. I don’t think you hear these stories very often, like the messiness of it. 

[00:36:36] Melissa: Yeah. I’m a sober bartender. I have a really great sponsor and I went to a lot of meetings in the beginning, and I always tell people too, I think that it’s a little easier for me because being at work isn’t necessarily a trigger. Cuz I didn’t actively drink at work. I would drink before work sometimes, or be at work and be so hungover, but I never actively drank at work.

[00:36:58] Carole: What do you do to take care of yourself? 

[00:36:59] Melissa: I actually have gotten pretty good about some self-care. I am pretty active. I’ve taken up surfing and I play derby and I love to hike and I journal. I stay in contact with my sponsor. My best friend is also in the program, and so we go out to dinner together and I have a good social life, some really good girlfriends in my life and I stay busy. I love staying busy. It makes me happy.

[00:37:23] Carole: If you could tell Noah anything right now with where you are in life, what would you want him to hear? 

[00:37:34] Melissa: Oh, my baby. Oh man. I just, I want him, oh man. I want him to hear that he is so special. You’re so special. You’re so amazing. Such a great person. I would like to make sure that he knows how loved he is and I think that he’s got these amazing qualities.

He is so adventurous and curious and fearless these days. He’s always out exploring. It’s my obligation, I think, to tell him to also be careful because all of these things and all the partying that he’s doing can be fun, but it also lends yourself to being in these certain situations and he’s already dealing with the bad repercussions of addiction and alcoholism, drug use and abuse and even though in life we can’t avoid all of these things, but these things can definitely be tempered just by being careful and I just want Noah to think about that. To be a little bit more careful and to nurture those things that are so amazing with himself. But to nurture the kindness. 

[00:38:40] Carole: You want him to hear your motherly loving advice?

[00:38:45] Melissa: Yeah, I do because he is me and I can see that a lot. I see his behaviors are identical to me. If I hadn’t had kids at such a young age, I would’ve been out gallivanting around. Before I got pregnant, I was up in Sequoia working a seasonal job with their dad, and that was the first time I’d heard about jobs like that.

I was like, I wanna do that. And now that Noah is doing those things, I’m like, oh, he’s reliving the life that I didn’t live. But then he’s also very much the same personality as me, and I see him struggling with drugs and all that stuff in the same ways that I did. And looking back, as his mom, I know that I can’t tell him anything and he’s just gonna listen.

But like I was saying before, I know that at least I’m saying these things and if nobody else says it, at least I do. I want him to be somewhat careful. As careful as you can be. I don’t know if he, you’ve talked to him since he got home or since you saw him last, but he actually overdosed on Fentanyl while he was in Alaska, so it’s been really scary and it’s like my worst nightmare.

Thankfully, he seems to have really taken it seriously. While he was in Alaska, I knew he was struggling with pills and drugs and stuff, but I didn’t know to what extent. He, of course, would tell me everything is fine. There’s always signs and I know that I couldn’t confront him or force him to tell me anything until he finally overdosed.

And so with that has come a whole lot of openness and honesty and he seemed to have been really shook by that whole situation. When he went to Alaska, though, he seemed to be staying sober while he was out there and getting away from the pills and all that stuff that was around here. And then his friend came to visit and brought Percocets and I guess they were laced with Fentanyl, so his tolerance was down.

And so when he took the pill that he normally takes, this time, he overdosed. And that at the hospital they told me that it was pretty common for Percocets and Xanax to be laced with Fentanyl. They said those are the two that they see a lot and they said they had I think something like four other overdoses recently and they didn’t all live.

[00:41:04] Carole: Any advice to parents? 

[00:41:07] Melissa: No matter how old your kids are, how you show up for them and what you say to them really, they’re still listening and I feel like I would want any parent to know that as well. Whether you’ve gotten sober or not, what you say matters and how you show up matters and you might know that already, but you might not really, really feel it. I feel it these days. 

[00:41:26] Carole: What do you wish you knew then that you know now? 

[00:41:30] Melissa: When I was doing all the things that I was doing, I was so arrogant and I felt like I went into decisions knowing everything about it and not caring. Doing as many drugs as I did, and taking the kids into places they shouldn’t have been.

I felt like I did that with intention and ugh, if I could just go back and slap the girl , oh my gosh. Yeah. Ugh. That arrogance. I regret that. I regret just feeling so, so sure of myself and being so selfish. I would do that over again. 

[00:42:01] Carole: What would you like to be doing in the future?

[00:42:04] Melissa: I am working right now as a clinical dietician. But my longer term goal is to do my own private practice and practicing health at every size, practicing trauma-informed nutrition, and being like an anti-diet dietician where, you know, not just in the private sector, but in the schools, and in just in our community altogether, I feel like we are very weight centric and I wanna move away from that.

That’s what I’ve been exploring and a lot of that gentleness and kindness and personal growth and having more empathy and compassion towards others I feel like really developed through doing my step work and a lot of personal work with myself. And so I decided that my private practice name will be Simply Me RD, because I am just me.

I’m here sober. I’m here as an anti-diet dietician. I’m here just as me, every little imperfection or whatever that I have, it’s, that’s me. I wanna meet everybody where they’re at, and I want them to feel like they could be them too. 

[00:43:12] Carole: Thank you, Melissa. You’re talking to a complete stranger through a screen. From one end of the country to the other, for other people to hear that you’ve never met before. I can’t thank you enough for sharing your story. 

[00:43:25] Melissa: You’re welcome. And I wanna thank you for having me on and I enjoyed listening to your other episodes. I think the podcast that you have out here is a really special one too, and I’m sure your listeners are very grateful for what you’re putting out there.

[00:43:39] Carole: Thank you so much.

I learned so much from Melissa about addiction, sobriety, and then what can happen when you reach out for help. It’s never too late. Melissa makes it clear how addiction is way more complex and multifaceted than we are led to believe. We all have addictions in one way or another. I know I’m addicted to my cell phone.

It’s a huge topic. And in the media, we hear a lot about the drugs and the alcohol addiction that affect millions of people around the world. And of course, there’s the horrible Fentanyl epidemic that is out of control and killing all kinds of people of all ages every day. I think people addicted to whatever substance tend to be stigmatized and misunderstood, and these negative stereotypes and biases associated with addiction make it much more difficult to look for help and get access to the resources that they might need to recover. 

Of course, Melissa does not represent all people with addictions, but she does show us by example how not to give up and how there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Labels are tricky and a common theme on this podcast. We love to talk about labels, and though Melissa had her way of embracing the label alcoholic, for example, not everyone can do that.

Words like junkie and addict, they can perpetuate the misconception that addiction is a choice or a moral failing, when in fact it’s a chronic illness that requires special attention and ongoing treatment and support. I hope this episode will bring more empathy. And also open up people’s hearts to the fact that everyone deserves to be understood. And if that’s not possible, at least accepted. 

Thank you so much for listening to Wisdom Shared. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to check out all the other episodes. Go to caroleblueweiss.com. Or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like what you’re hearing on Wisdom Shared, please spread the word and share this podcast with your friends. Leave a review and subscribe so you can receive wisdom every month. Thanks for listening.

Episode Summary

This episode features mother and daughter Bobbie and Angela Singletary. This dynamic duo shares their story, full of hardship, resilience, joy, love, and support. Bobbie, Angela, and two of Angela’s kids all have achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism, as did Angela’s late sister Cindy. Listen how Cindy’s life at 33 could not be saved despite the huge sacrifices made by her mom and sister. We will hear how the Medicaid system failed them and how in spite of life challenges, including discrimination, systemic inequity, and personal struggles with alcohol,  these women continue to advocate for others.

For the visually-minded who prefer to listen and read or for those who need closed captioning, watch the transcript video here: https://youtu.be/1qFpEPqzdD0

About Angela and Bobbie

• Angela’s Podcast: A Little Perspective
• Angela’s Website
• The book featuring Bobbie’s essay: A Little Perspective: REAL Stories of Little Ladies
• Documentary EveryBODY Matters featuring Angela
• Angela’s interview with NPR about the treatment for achondroplasia: https://www.bodiespodcast.com/resource-pages/not-your-average

From This Episode

• Tulane University
• Special Delivery From Pregnancy to Toddlerhood
• Mindy Silva  – Wired on Development
• The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
• Dwarfism: Raising a Little Person, Wisdom Shared episode with Audrey Curwin
• Dwarfism: Life as a Little Person, Wisdom Shared episode with Jillian Curwin
• Dwarfism: A Mother-Daughter Conversation, Wisdom Shared episode with Audrey and Jillian Curwin

Find and Follow Carole and Wisdom Shared:

• https://www.caroleblueweiss.com/
• Subscribe to my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@WisdomSharedCaroleBlueweiss
• Follow me and send me a message on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/caroleblueweiss
• Follow me and send me a message on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carole-blueweiss-pt-dpt-23970279/
• Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carole_blueweiss/

The Wisdom Shared Team

• Audio Engineering by Steve Heatherington of Good Podcasting Works
• Social Media and Marketing Coordinator: Kayla Nelson

Transcript

Episode Notes