I make fun of my job a lot. It’s never a dull moment when you’re working in a pharmacy that’s located in a not-so-awesome area. There’s a lot of great people, but we’re also in an area that’s filled with tobacco shops and check cashing places. Across the street, there’s a shady hotel that’s bad enough that local cops like to sit in our parking lot and watch the comings and goings of its residents. Whenever there’s a headline about a drug bust or some sort of weird crime, we all look to see which of our patients has made the news. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, honestly.
However, there’s a lot of times when things aren’t always happy-fun-time-RA-RA-RA. For every kid I’ve watched grow up, every injury I’ve seen heal, there’s a darker situation. There’s elderly patients who’ve come in to pick up their monthly maintenance meds one week and go into hospice two weeks later. We had one patient who was shot by police a few weeks after an arrest for pistol-whipping someone else. By far the worst, however, is the sheer number of addicts we see.
Most people think “addict” and assume the word is referring to some sketchy dude hanging shooting up in our parking lot or going to multiple pharmacies and doctors to get painkillers. Don’t get me wrong, we have plenty of those, but there’s a lot of addicts that we call the “invisible” addicts. These are the people you wouldn’t guess have a problem, the little old ladies hooked on Ambien and tramadol, or the folks who end up hooked on oxy after a work injury. Recently, a treatment center opened up nearby, and we’ve been seeing an upswing in Suboxone scripts, and we’ve been getting some of the less savory types of addicts.
But – and this is a huge but – there are a few nice folks. One of these is a guy I’ll call P. P and his family have been coming to us for about 10 years now. The entire family has a collective addiction problem of varying degrees, from alcohol to hard drugs. For most of this last year, he was in a rehab center and later a halfway house. We hadn’t seen him in a while and assumed he was in jail. It was part of probation and the suspended sentence for a crime so ridiculously laughable, he’d be very easily identified if I gave any details.
Happily, P was a completely different person when he started coming back with prescriptions from the treatment center. We chatted about how awesome it was that I kept of all the weight I’d lost, and how his girl just wanted to jump him constantly because she switched her birth control and got a sec drive again. P was in three Thursdays back to fill his weekly Suboxone script and got a call from his girlfriend. She was at home with their baby and P’s aunt, and could he bring home some Narcan? His aunt was on the cusp of overdosing and she wanted it just in case.
P spent the rest of his time in the pharmacy in a panic attack. He’s been clean for eight months now, and family just keeps using. He wants to stay clean and get a job, but he can’t get away from them because his uncle can’t take care of himself and no one else in the family will do it.
A week ago, P came in for another week of Suboxone. He handed the script to me and told me he might not be around for a while. He’d been out with some family members and one was caught shoplifting. Associating with unsavory folks violates his probation (even if they’re family), and with that, his sentence is no longer suspended. He’s looking at some real time behind bars. You could tell P was sick with panic and he can’t/won’t get anything more than what few meds he’s been prescribed. He’s worked damned hard to get and stay clean and off of the opiates and benzos, and here’s his family being idiots again.
Since then, P’s girlfriend has a script still waiting to be picked up from last week. His aunt came in yesterday, and I wanted so badly to ask her what’s going on, but that’s against the rules.
He was supposed to come in yesterday for his weekly refill, but hasn’t.
