Prescription pill abuse becoming widespread problem in county

Editor's note: This is the second part of a multi-part series on prescription drug abuse in Lincoln County. The names have been changed to protect the identities of the minors involved.

There has been an increase in the misuse of prescription medications in the last few years, according to law enforcement officials in Lincoln County, especially among a young demographic of teenagers to individuals in their early 20s.

In Friday's The Western News, the experience of a local 16-year-old girl was highlighted. Jenn started smoking marijuana when she was 10 years old and eventually moved on to taking prescription medications and methamphetamine to get high.

Abby, a local 14-year-old girl, also began her downward spiral in drug addiction at 10 years old. Abby had a frequently absent father who would spend the majority of his time out in the field for work, leaving Abby to fend for herself, she said. She spent almost all of her free time with her aunts.

"My aunts would go out drinking and give me some drinks," Abby explained. "If I needed help I would go to my aunts, I was always at my aunt's house and I didn't speak to my father."

There was no family history of alcohol or drug abuse in Abby's family and she would go to her mother's house every other weekend. She continued to drink with her aunts and cousins.

"At first, I drank just enough to feet it and then I would quit," Abby explained. "But I eventually got to the point of being plastered."

At age 11, Abby gradually moved on to smoking marijuana.

"I started drugs because of peer pressure and then I got addicted," Abby admitted. "I never thought it would hurt me."

If Abby smoked marijuana she wouldn't drink alcohol. Abby became introduced to the world of abusing prescription medications when her friends began taking them. She asked her friends what they were like and eventually she tried them for herself. Her friends would buy the pills from those that were selling them.

She digressed into the world that revolved more and more around drugs and her friends and further away from her family.

"I didn't do anything with my family, I was always with my friends," she said. "I would stay with my friends for weeks at a time, go home to sleep and then go out with my friends again."

Then last summer, at the age of 14, Abby was working for $8 an hour bucking bales. She was about to go to her mother's house for two weeks when she and her friends decided to buy drugs for one more high before she went to her mother's.

"Our mission was to get $100 of weed, a friend wanted pills and another person wanted to get fentanyl patches," Abby explained.

Fentanyl patches are used for pain regulation. Fentanyl is an opioid, which is a drug that contains or is derived from and imitates opium. Codeine, fentanyl, morphine, opium, hydrocodone bitartrate and oxycodone HCL are all examples of opioids. These drugs are only legally available by prescription.

The fentanyl is in gel form within the patches and the gel may be used to smoke in order to get high.

Abby ended up smoking marijuana, taking Oxycontin and morphine, waited for awhile, then "took a couple hits off the patch and smoked a patch of her own," she said.

Abby then laid down and fell asleep.

"I forgot to breathe and my friends were throwing ice on me and slapping me to get me awake," Abby explained. "We didn't know how much it would take to OD [overdose] it just happened to be me who found out. I couldn't keep my eyes open and I was turning blue."

Abby overdosed on July 27 and was rushed to the hospital. She overdosed in Troy, but had to be sent to Libby. She was in a coma and she died three times. If she would have died a fourth time, the medical staff would not have been able to pull her out of it, she was told.

Abby finally came out of the coma in the early morning hours of July 28. Doctors administered the highest dose of valium possible to get Abby out of the coma, she said.

"My dad came up from Thompson Falls, my relatives and cops were there because I wouldn't come out of it," she explained. "The cop said he was sorry because he didn't think he was doing his job good enough."

When Abby finally came out of the coma she wasn't able to speak, she had to re-learn small words. At the hospital, her mother told her she needed to get some sleep and Abby told her she was afraid to sleep because she wasn't sure she would wake up.

Abby was released from the hospital in the late evening of July 28. Abby went to live with her mother full-time and she was "grounded forever, I couldn't go anywhere for 3 1/2 weeks," she said.

In hindsight, Abby's advice is to avoid drugs. People should know what they're getting into and be prepared for the consequences, "we're not invincible," she was quick to add.