When Al Vineyard visited her doctor for an injury on the job, she didn’t know her pain medication would lead to her nearly losing everything.
“My doctor put me on opioids, and it really snowballed from there,” Vineyard said.
She began taking her medication in shorter intervals, sometimes running out weeks in advance.
Eventually, Vineyard said she moved on to heroin, methamphetamine and more.
“Really, whatever I could get into a needle is what I shot,” Vineyard said.
Now, approaching three years of sobriety, Vineyard shared her story alongside pharmacists, law enforcement and medical personnel and other experts during an employer substance abuse panel at Hollister High School Wednesday.
Stemming from a presentation during a Hollister Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Mike Tucker, branch manager at Arrowhead Building Supply Inc, said the presentation hit a personal note.
“A brother and a father-in-law passed away that was highly addicted to opioids from previous back injuries,” Tucker said.
Tucker then reached out and was introduced to Marietta Hagan, project coordinator for the Substance Abuse Initiative for Taney and Stone County (SAI). According to Hagan, the workshop goes hand in hand with the SAI’s mission of increasing local awareness regarding substance abuse.
“One of our focuses today are to mind your meds,” Hagan said. “Which is to monitor your medication, secure them and dispose of them properly to get them off the street. The second one is to report, they’re going to share some tip lines which gives law enforcement a chance to investigate.”
Heather Lyons-Burney is a doctor of pharmacy and a clinical assistant professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Pharmacy facility at Missouri State University. A Branson resident, Lyons-Burney has a clinical practice site at Faith Community Health Clinic and was one of the hosts of an expert panel Wednesday.
“We’ve been in the dark a little bit,” Lyons-Burney said. “It felt like the issue was more of a big city thing. We’ve been awakened in southwest Missouri to the traffic that comes through. As we’ve heard here today, as people become addicted to opioids, it’s a slippery slope.”
According to Vineyard, it is important to remember an individual with an addiction is often struggling internally.
“They’re battling a war where their mind and their heart are on opposite ends,” Vineyard said. “This isn’t what they want. In their heart this isn’t what they want, but their mind is so overtaken by the drug they don’t know how to stop.”
With the conversation around opioid addiction growing, Lyons-Burney said prescriptions for opioid-based pain medication is becoming less common, but is still an issue.
“As a pharmacist, we’ve become better about educating the public on how to take pain medication,” she said. “Anyone can become addicted.”
Along with her faith as a Christian, Vineyard attributed her recovery with taking the steps to reach out and ask for help.
“Get help,” Vineyard said. “Don’t be afraid to ask for help. When I was an addict, I was afraid of asking for help because I didn’t want people to go ‘Oh, she’s a junkie, let’s take her kids away, she’ll never get a job.’ But when I finally lost everything and reached out for help, there were so many people in this community who bent over backwards to help me, and there’s a lot of people in this community that would if people would just ask for help.”
For those needing to safely dispose of medication, Hagan said local law enforcement, in Hollister, Branson, Kimberling City and the Stone and Taney County Sheriff offices, have anonymous drop boxes.
There are also a pair of local resources for those struggling with addiction. Burrell Adult Addiction Services is located at 155 Corporate Place in Branson and can be reached via phone at 893-7740 and the Larry Simmering Recovering Center is at 360 Rinehart Road in Branson and can be reached via phone at 320-6380.
Source: Branson Tri Lakes News