By Claudia Gold, MD, November 9, 2021
I recently watched the excruciatingly real documentary Jacinta about three generations of women in Maine whose lives are torn apart by the relentless grip of opioid addiction. The film brilliantly takes the viewer inside the profound love of mothers and daughters that prevails over the ravages of abandonment and loss.
Soon after, I began watching the docudrama Dopesick that graphically reveals corporate greed beside the rampant destructive force of oxycontin on both individuals and communities. The two films merge at a tragic common point when we learn that in their early marketing efforts Purdue Pharma deliberately targeted the state of Maine because of high rates of jobs that cause physical injury and subsequent pain.
Both films sync well with my personal experience as a clinician in rural Western MA where I work with young children in families struggling with substance use disorders. Again and again, I see parents in recovery who have lost custody show herculean strength as they aim to follow every requirement of child protective services. But with the stress of separation from their young child, together with economic hardship, family conflict, and the added layer of social isolation brought on by the COVID pandemic, the force of addiction can prove too strong. They suffer a recurrence.
As a specialist in infant-parent mental health who knows too well what multiple disruptions in primary caregiving relationships can do to a young child’s development, I find this particular chapter of the story especially hard to watch. I see the joy and love when parent and child are together, followed by rapid escalation of “problem” behavior as a young child reacts in the only way they know how to this incomprehensible loss. I havewritten extensively about psychiatric medication used to treat behavior that represents a child’s effort at communication. But when a 2-year-old who has been separated from their mother for the third time in a year begins to bite and kick at daycare, a foster mother’s imploring request to increase their dose begins to make sense.
Comments (0)