There is a common stereotype that people who are addicted to these drugs fit a certain mold– inner city, homeless, young, lazy, unmotivated, and sometimes even dangerous. After all, isn't this what the people we see using drugs on TV look like? The stereotype couldn’t be more false; addiction can happen to anyone. Unfortunately, it is common among Native American reservations, your aunt is not exceptional. Like many people on the reservations who became dependent on painkillers, she started for reasons related to her disability, following a routine surgery.
So how do you fix it? The easiest answer that you and your family can be given is to rid your aunt of painkillers and start the process of easing her body off of them, gradually reducing the dosage each day.
In most cases though, the solution is much harder. Addiction to painkillers and other medication is no easier to overcome than an addiction to alcohol. For those who have been using pills for a long time, just as with those who have been abusing alcohol over a long period, in-patient treatment may be necessary. As with alcohol and illegal drugs, there is no miracle cure and the individual may need to undergo treatment more than once.
You can find more information in the Substance Abuse Section of our Family Life and Disability workshop. Some of the characteristics of effective treatment programs described in that section are:
- A team approach with one person taking primary responsibility, similar to an IEP team, that involves multiple services for substance abuse and related to meeting the special needs of a person with a disability. At the most basic level, just imagine if the treatment facility was not accessible to a person in a wheelchair or required lots of reading of material that was very difficult for a person with a severe reading disability.
- The family should be included as part of the team, and teaching the individual with a disability and family members to take responsibility should be part of the program. Once the individual leaves the treatment program, support by the family will be key to recovery.
- The program should have people with the 'right credentials' and there should be enough of them for the number of clients they have. If there is one licensed addiction counselor on staff for 125 clients, this is probably not the program you want.
What if there are no programs like this in your community? Then maybe you should look into getting a good treatment program started. You? Yes, you. Please click below for the section on self-advocacy and how you can be an agent of change.
Self-advocacy: Making Change Happen