Born on Opioids | What It's Like

[Music] opiate dependency is extremely dangerous I thought I would just do it once and it would be that would be it I had never thought I would have an addiction problem in my life my biggest fears were her having to go on morphine and having to go to the NICU and that is the last thing that I wanted and I knew that if that was going to happen to her that was completely my fault that was completely because of the choices that I made and my inability to realize that I had a problem before I did and that she would be stuck in there alone in a NICU for like four weeks and that would be my fault [Music] was October 1st 2010 we went to Ottawa for a friend's birthday party we ended up having a couple drinks I don't usually wear heels so when we went out that night I wore about a 2 inch heel it was not a very big heel at all the bar that we went to the dance floor was kind of tiered so when we were dancing I kind of walked backwards and I fell off of it I tried to catch myself from behind and when it did I broke my own ax in three places my radius twice and shattered my wrist we went to the hospital right away they told me that I had broke my arm and they just gave me four pills to take home with me I didn't know what they were at the time they just said to take two of them for the ride home to help with the pain they were percocets now I know that pet and that's the first time that I've ever taken them [Music] Canada seems to be at the center of the opioid crisis I don't think we'll see a decrease in the opioid epidemic because it really is an epidemic we have huge numbers of people in Canada now who are dependent the problem won't be a decrease in it until we build up social social systems and infrastructure that give people alternatives to leading painful lives we are among the highest users of opioids of prescription opioids in the world that's partly a good thing that's partly because we have universal healthcare and people have access to physicians and many people have coverage for medication impoverished people can go to a doctor and get a prescription and have the prescription paid for but they can't get membership at the why paid for or physiotherapy or Massage Therapy paid for so really we're a wealthy society which has this wonderful health care system but then the only remedy we have for people is opioids I started painkillers about three years ago I have back pains there's two different curves in my spine and I have sciatica and a friend of mine referred me to a pain specialist and when I started seeing him did some x-rays and then put me on percocet it just made me feel like I'm normal just that I could do my everyday activities without being in pain or thinking about the pain which made it a lot easier my life revolved around either finding someone who could get me pills or finding money to get pills that was the first thing I thought about when I woke up and whether I'd have enough to get through a day it was it controlled my day from the time I got up til well even I'd wake up in the night so I guess it was always always controlled my life [Music] opioid dependence doesn't just make you addicted it makes a whole other life for you I had to relearn simple things like how to fold laundry without being on percocet how to go to work without being on percocets how to hold a conversation without being high and it's hard it's really hard it completely changes the type of life that you have I went to my family doctor to get a prescription renewed and he said well you know you've been on it for about four years now do you just want to try cutting the dose in half for a month and then you should be good to go from there so my prescription I took it faster than I should have and so I was stuck for a bit like two weeks and then I ended up finding people who had them who would just say yeah here you go you know like take some of them when I went back to my doctor's though he just cut the medication off from there and that's when I went into withdrawal again I had some stolen for me once so I ran out early and that's it till your next prescription is made going through the first round of withdrawal was shocking for me you're vomiting and sweating and shaking and crying for no reason but I couldn't sleep I had migraines I felt hot I felt cold I felt nauseous and they would come and go in waves and it made it almost impossible to function feels like you have the flu times hundred it's awful I would never wish it on anyone I ended up caving and I took the pills and you know an hour later all of it's gone I've been that outsider looking in and saying you know how easy it is well why don't you just stop right and it's not that simple my whole life revolved around it but it tore apart like everything that I had you know it eats away at everything guy was selling things I shouldn't have been selling I was pawning off items in our home and I was hiding it from everybody I hid it from my whole family some of them still don't know about it like I was taking my paycheck and going to the bank and withdrawing you know hundreds of dollars and I didn't want to be doing it I was I remember one time I went and I was crying while I was doing it because I didn't want to but you're so like you're so deep in your withdrawal that you will do anything to get out of it I started looking up treatment centers and treatment like addiction specialists and stuff and that's when I started on mr. Larson it has done wonders it's kind of brought me back to who I was in the beginning before all of this started the withdrawal from opioids is uniquely dangerous to pregnant women and their babies pregnant women it causes irritation and contraction of muscles all over which gives the sort of jumpy legs feeling that a lot of addicts get when they're in withdrawal pregnant women will also get an irritated uterus that starts to contract and that can possibly lead to preterm labor with all the dangers that that that involves for a very premature baby so in an infant suffering from severe withdrawal that discomfort and instability of the nervous system can actually lead to seizures and in some cases has been fatal so the funny thing about opioids in pregnancy is that most of the damage that comes to opioid injection drug users comes from the fact that the opioids are made illegal there's nothing that causes birth defects for exam there's nothing that interferes with the function of the placenta or the health of a mother so unlike caffeine and tobacco and alcohol and cocaine which actually caused damage caused cell damage they interfere with the placental function they can cause miscarriage and preterm labor a safe measured regular dose of an opioid will do none of that [Music] [Music] when I found it I was pregnant I was pretty shocked me and my husband we weren't planning a pregnancy but we weren't disappointed in a pregnancy by any means we'd been together for nine years at that point the timing that happened with me was extremely lucky because I had just started the suboxone program four weeks before I got pregnant before I'd conceived when a woman goes from using illegal drugs on the street which have contaminants and are injected and are used in dangerous ways and she's given a safe regular dose of a pure medically produced pharmaceutical like methadone or buprenorphine she's healthy and most of the women that I see who are on opioid substitution in pregnancy have full-term pregnancies and deliver big fat healthy babies the only problem is that once you cut the umbilical cord the baby is cut off from its supply so really the uniquely with opioids the problem happens after they're born when they no longer get they're over maybe going through withdrawal will be irritable crabby will cry a lot will be jittery it'll have poor control of its motor functions and it'll be shaking a lot it will have trouble controlling its temperature so it's temperature will either be too warm or too cold and it won't feed very well and it will feel nauseated it will feel like swallowing and when it does swallow it has a much greater tendency to vomit and to have diarrhea so food doesn't stand and doesn't nourish the baby so not only can it suffer suffer from a seizure but it will also fail it'll have failure to thrive it won't be able to absorb nutrition and it will starve to death if it's not if the withdrawal isn't interrupted you our society has a huge desire to medicalize things we medicalised the hell out of everything there's a line and we cross it sometimes and we need to step back it's not always a good thing to intervene and to do stuff just because we have the technology previous to our rooming in program the first time we would meet them would be when they presented in labor and then following delivery baby would be taken out of the room separated from mom put into the special care nursery and monitored their mums could come down and see their babies as as frequently as they wanted but typically we've seen a big difference in how often parents were even in the nursery the environment is not as comfortable so in the nursery environment there's lights on 24/7 it's noisy there's staff coming and going there's multiple babies in one room and monitors going off and nurses doing activities which which is very loud and if they're in a nice alert you can't just pick them up it's not it doesn't makes you feel like you're not the mother or I guess the father and either way it just makes you feel like you're just somebody and somebody there looking at a baby and that's not even yours Abraham's and his team found that if they leave the babies with the mothers and let the mothers comfort the babies continually and keep the baby in contact with its mother they rarely had to start morphine on those babies when they're experiencing you know neonatal abstinence there's a lot happening there their brain is overworked it's firing fast when baby's room in with their moms they're in private rooms where we can modify the environment we can pull the curtains pull the blinds we can have decreased lighting we can have decreased noise there's less people coming in and out the nurses are there if you need them but you're the one that's looking after after the baby and you can hold her and you're the one changing other and you're not constantly being watched by somebody it's a big change it's great one of the most wonderful things for all babies and especially for for this population is skin-to-skin so baby just in a diaper skin-to-skin with mom or or the support person and that is so soothing the power of human contact is nowhere as important as in the mother and child bond right after birth just before Kingston General Hospital switched from immediately putting opioid dependent babies into the NICU 80% of those babies would experience severe enough withdrawal that they had to be started or morphine immediately upon introducing rooming in that number dropped the number of babies requiring morphine dropped to 20% I can't remember the last baby who needed to be switched down to an ICU and give them morphine I was so worried about being judged that knowing that when I went in there everybody knew why I was staying for five days there is a lot of stigma around substance use especially during pregnancy they are concerned that they're going to be judged and they feel guilty they feel immense guilt part of what we do is try to alleviate some of that fear that we're not here to judge them we're here to work with them and provide the best care for them and for their babies it definitely helps your confidence level because you're doing it yourself and you thought your child so you are primarily in charge of taking care of your child so it makes you feel like a mother this time not like somebody that's just there to to look at a baby I got a lot of support all of the nurses that came in they were tremendously supportive they had answered any questions that I had everything went great and I was only I got to leave the morning in day five [Music] so the really wonderful thing about rooming in is that it has allowed mothers who are on methadone or buprenorphine to feel like normal competent mothers and because in fact they are the person who is most able to comfort a baby is its mother seeing that baby come to her in her arms settle down when it's been screeching and crying I think is enormous Lee confidence-inspiring and especially in the case of women who have experienced trauma and who have experienced loss and who may have had difficult and turbulent childhoods themselves addicts are told that they're bad wicked lazy selfish inconsiderate people who are just engaging in a fun habit without caring about the effects that it has on other people which is not the case that's not what addiction is addiction is a loss of choice and it's terribly frightening and disempowering just to be an addict to also have the police the courts doctors nurses the emergency room psychologists tell you that you're also a bad person and lazy and should just pull up your socks and stop makes you feel also like an idiot like a worthless idiot because you can't help yourself so being in the hospital and being told we understand you have a medical condition it's called addiction you can't help it your baby is going to need special care after and we're here to make sure that the baby gets the special care I think that's it that's amazingly empowering it it doesn't take any special training to let baby's room in with their mothers it takes less staff it takes less technology it takes less hospital space for less time and the babies do better so this is a this is a program which is easier to do cheaper and has better effects there's no reason not to do it it's only inertia and laziness that would wouldn't make a hospital continue to separate to routinely separate an opioid dependent baby for its mother and put it in the NICU under the MS can belief that somehow that's going to be good care for the baby it will not be good care the baby will experience more severe withdrawal because it's been separated from its mother it will require morphine it will stay in the hospital for several weeks if those hospitals really are concerned about diminishing healthcare budgets they should leave the baby with its mother give her a private room she'll be out of there with her baby in five days and everybody will be better off can't be happier it makes me feel so good that I was able to keep her healthy in the first place and then show her everything see her see how she thrives and just grows having her has changed literally every single part of my life they're all meeting their milestones they're all active and smart you wouldn't even know they were born on methadone they're just like any other any other baby any other kid [Music] you you

Channel: Today's Parent

Views: 658,433

Keywords: opioids, opioid crisis, opioids addiction, opioids withdrawl, addiction, withdrawl, painkillers, painkiller addiction, drug addiction, drugs, drug abuse, percoset, percoset addiction, pregnant on drugs, addicted, addict documentary, drug baby, baby addicted to drugs, addiction specialist, drug treatment, treatment center, NICU, opioids pregnancy, preterm labour, premature baby, infant withdrawl, morphine, morphine addiction, opioid substitution, Neonatal abstinence syndrome

Id: pmt3Fsw37gI

Length: 20min 26sec (1226 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 26 2017