When Jack O'Connor was 19, he was so desperate to beat his addictions to alcohol and opioids that he took a really rash step. He joined the Marines.
"This will fix me," O'Connor thought as he went to boot camp. "It better fix me or I'm screwed."
After 13 weeks of sobriety and exercise and discipline, O'Connor completed basic training, but he started using again immediately.
"Same thing," he says. "Percocet, like, off the street. Pills."
Percocet is the brand name for acetaminophen and oxycodone. Oxycodone is a powerful opioid. It's one of the most commonly prescribed painkillers, and is a key factor in one of the country's most pressing public health problems ā an opioid addiction epidemic. It is a crisis that started, in part, from the overprescription of painkillers like Percocet, and then shifted to heroin, as people addicted to prescription drugs looked for a cheaper high.
[For more of this story, written by Jack Rodolico, go to http://www.npr.org/sections/he...ids-hijack-the-brain]
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