Parents’ plea for crucial opioid monitoring and prevention

Our son Adam’s opioid addiction began, like most, with a legitimate prescription after a surgery. By September 2015, our son was dead, stolen from us by a Fentanyl overdose.

Opioids can affect anyone, at any time, at any place — even in the safety of a loving home. Adam’s addiction started in the home medicine cabinet, where we innocently tucked leftover painkillers next to first-aid kit staples such as Band-Aids and Tylenol. We thought we made a good choice, one that would help our family in the event of a future injury or surgery. And we will always live with that choice, and without our son Adam.

What could we have done differently? What could have saved our son? Every day is spent considering the possibilities, and we are always crushed by the reality of what happened. Adam is gone, and every answer found only leaves us with more questions. We never considered locking away our prescription opioids. Why would Adam — or our three other children — be interested? Wouldn’t we know if the unguarded opioids were tempting them, or if they had begun experimenting with drugs?

Eventually, our persistent questions helped us identify the core issue. We were never educated on the risk of opioid dependence from legally-prescribed medication, and we never disposed of unused medication. It’s agonizing, knowing these two simple steps might have saved Adam’s life.

No parents should see their children die. That’s why we founded the Zero Left campaign, to protect families across the U.S. The wide availability and overprescribing of opioid medication continue to lead to overuse and abuse. Overuse and abuse lead to addiction, and addiction is a one-way street to death. However, removing unused opioids from the house goes a long way toward preventing abuse, addiction, and death.

Average American families like ours aren’t the only ones fighting back against the opioid epidemic: The pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts has introduced a comprehensive opioid management program. Based on a simple intuition, their program is designed to give patients undergoing opioid therapy the medicine they need — and not one pill more. This tool will help change the course of growing addictions and save lives in the process. Combining a seven-day-limit to first-time opioid prescriptions and proprietary safeties built into their managed-care network, the problem is addressed at its roots for a growing number of patients around the U.S.

It’s not just smaller supplies for new prescriptions, however — Express Scripts is also taking proactive measures to better educate new patients on the safe use and disposal of opioid medications — two actions that hit home at Zero Left. Their program even provides special Deterra disposal bags with each opioid prescription, simplifying the disposal of unused medication and enhancing the security of safe disposal by breaking down the medication.

We were thrilled to learn that this program is already making a meaningful dent in reducing unnecessary quantities of medication in people’s homes in such a short time.

The fight against opioid abuse cannot be won by a single family or business. Recent research from Zero Left shows that four-out-of-five opioid users began their addiction while undergoing a legally prescribed opioid therapy regimen.

Studies show that nearly 60 percent of patients undergoing opioid therapy have been prescribed other drugs that could interact dangerously. Of those patients, two-thirds were using drugs prescribed by at least two physicians, with just under half filling prescriptions at multiple pharmacies. Every additional pharmacy, every additional physician, and every additional route through which a patient acquires health care creates an added layer of confusion.

Every American is paying a huge price for mismanaged pain therapy — the emotional, physical, and financial costs are no secret. All stakeholders in the healthcare sector need to seriously collaborate and find ways to mitigate the ever-growing opioid dependence epidemic.

If only we would double-down on scrutiny of the legal pharmaceutical-opioid supply from production, to prescription and consumption, we would be well on our way to defeating the opioid epidemic.

Narcan, the brand-name of overdose-stopper Naloxone, has been the main weapon against the opioid epidemic. But these miracle solutions are proving less-and-less effective against synthetic opioids like the Fentanyl that killed Adam. We need a renewed, systemic approach to monitor and mitigate the routes through which opioid abusers most frequently become addicted.

While Naloxone is a miracle in emergency situations like overdoses and has saved countless lives, it is merely a Band-Aid solution to the opioid crisis and provides little foothold for long-term change. A lasting solution lies in careful oversight of the venues where drugs are prescribed, and prescriptions filled. It’s clear to us that companies like Express Scripts are uniquely positioned to block the road to addiction.

The nation’s best chance at ending rampant opioid abuse is to devise solutions that allow the regulation of prescription opioid use at all points in the healthcare system. This includes encouraging a parent or friend to speak up if something doesn’t seem right about the people we love.

We left our opioids unguarded, and our son paid the price. We’re proud that others have begun championing the cause of preventing opioid addictions before they start. Now we know that Zero Left is the only way to go.