FENTANYL POISONING: Dr. Karen Jackson's Story

when you think about substance abuse you never think that it will happen to your family and when it hit our family the way it did with my sister I promise myself that I would get the word out that the opioid addiction does not discriminate it happens to the least of us to the most of us my sister was a doctor she had her PhD in education she was a minister just the person who you would least suspect to be addicted to opiates people need to understand that the opioid addiction is a physiological addiction so just like I crave water it's the same way people who have the addiction with opiates they crave the drug initially my sister was prescribed opiates for knee and back pain I really believe that she wasn't able to get the prescriptions [Music] by doctors anymore so she turned to the next best thing that she could to get that fixed and that's when she started reaching out to negative influences um and drug dealers I'm a federal probation officer I deal with this kind of stuff all the time but when it happened in my family foreign it just it it caught us all by surprise my sister and I were extremely close um we were best friends if you saw her you saw me and when it hit so close to home you know I make referrals to drug treatment all the time I never in a million years thought that I would have to do this for my sister but I did and it was tough but the addiction was so powerful she was in a lot of denial she did a lot of deflecting she pointed the finger at other things going on but she never accepted responsibility [Music] and it was was very hard she was such a strong human being she was like she was my rock she was my everything she always came to my rescue she was more than you know just a big sister like she would tell anybody don't mess with my sister you know that's that's the kind of person she was so when this happened I think in my mind I thought well I knew that she would be able to beat this if anybody could beat this Karen could beat it and so when covet hit and everybody was on lockdown there were signs but I don't I didn't recognize those signs until after the fact I had to go through grief counseling because six months prior to her dying [Music] I had already lost her and I I yeah I had already lost her so I I actually started going through grief counseling because I knew at that point there was nothing else I could do my sister was very charismatic and my sister was a very strong motivational speaker a very powerful minister and she knew that Bible inside and out and when she started to use scripture to justify some of the things she had done I knew this isn't this this isn't Karen this this is not my sister because she was the type of person she didn't tolerate foolishness she didn't tolerate you know people making dumb mistakes her thing was you're doing this because you want to do it and I'm not going to be a part of it that's the kind of person she was and so when her addiction got exposed I started noticing that she's not accepting responsibility for the addiction Karen I think was dealing with some depression I think that she was just going through a lot and so when she died my husband and I was like you know everybody's blaming everybody but nobody's blaming Karen and it's not something that Karen wanted I know she didn't I know my sister did not want to die but the drug was just so powerful and because she was such a strong person weakness just was not in her vocabulary it just wasn't and so probably to admit that I'm weak I'm powerless against it against you know this addiction um she just couldn't do it she did go on substance abuse treatment once though I was so proud of her she was weaned off of the the pills and things were going great things were really going great but she relapsed and so when she relapsed when the conversation was I've been calling my counselor but she's not calling me back okay now the probation officer hat is kicking in okay yeah and she would say it over and over and she would be so convincing oh my gosh she would be so convincing I've been calling that counselor and that counselor's not been calling me back and so finally I just had to tell her okay okay so she was sick I was at work and got a phone call that the paramedics were at our house and they couldn't resuscitate her and her husband had come home from work working a night job he came home from work and found her passed out unresponsive um she was gone yeah yeah she was gone they were there were pills um and what she would always do is to intensify the high she would take her pills with wine and that's literally how she was found that's how she died she died at home when you buy drugs from a drug dealer you don't know what you're getting and so essentially that's what happened when I got a copy of her death certificate it said on their fentanyl alcohol Xanax and hydrocodone and the reason on her death certificate it said substance abuse so that's how she died and I know she did not commit suicide because that was that was not Karen um but I do believe she overdosed because she didn't know what she was getting I think we didn't talk about it um like we probably should have because of pride um and that is the worst thing to deal with when you're dealing with someone with with substance abuse it is it's you have to push the pride to the side you you can't be embarrassed um because it happens it happens [Music]

Channel: Texas Pictures Documentaries

Views: 2,366,148

Keywords: Fentanyl

Id: 0bPt-pE6CXI

Length: 10min 11sec (611 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 08 2022