September 26, 2007 — Editor’s Note: This is a series of first-hand accounts of lives touched by drugs here in Carter County The names will be changed to protect identity.



On Sept. 26, 2006 we lost our youngest daughter, Tina, age 22. She died due to the sale of illegal prescription drugs. We tried so hard to raise our 3 children right.

Someone once told me that my children were "morally beautiful". That's one of the highest compliments a parent could receive. Tina graduated with honors in 2002. She was six feet tall with long brown hair, vivid green eyes, and an oval face. She was beautiful.

All it took to upset our world was for her to meet the wrong friend that lead to the wrong boyfriend. These people heavily influenced her and it was hard to recover from a boyfriend who beat her, mistreated her, and tore the young woman's self-esteem down all the while telling her that he loved her.

It is so strange, now in looking back, to see how much pain and hurt this young woman endured at this person's hand for the sake of love for him. The prescription drugs were there for huffing through the short straws; I just didn't see it. I trusted this child whom I thought I knew. She was so smart and levelheaded. Now, she is gone, as she was found dead sitting on her bed in her room in our house.

She left a now three-year-old daughter for my husband and I to raise. The boyfriend is currently in prison for biting the child on the face and neck hard enough to leave bruises.

The child, his child, was only eight-months-old when he got caught for this violence on the child and beating up Tina who was trying to protect the child from him.

However, we learned this was actually the third incident of biting his baby because we learned he had bitten her twice before, but Tina covered it up with lies to protect him.

What smart or sane person does that? He had even pushed Tina through a glass door cutting the complete inside of her thumb down to the bone, all the way down which required two skin grafts. He was on Xanax bars.

I, too, questioned what I had done or not done right in raising this child of mine.

I, too, prayed over my children and asked God to bring them someone in their lives who would love and cherish them. I don't blame God for what has happened to my family. I just don't understand why my child was taken. How can I go on living without her? I have been able to get through day after day because I have a little girl who keeps asking where her mommy is. I know it is up to me to raise her, if God allows me to live long enough to raise another child. This child will not have a mother the rest of her life. I have been blessed and still have my mother.

Kristy doesn't understand why mommy can't come back to us from Heaven and I am trying to keep faithful and understand this all myself.

The doctors who prescribe the medications, the manufacturers of the medicine, the pharmacists who fill the prescription, and the people who illegally sell these pain medications are responsible to one degree or another for the lives they are destroying. Even if they have no knowledge of the great evil they have unleashed on families, I believe they won't escape judgment on that Great Day. But for their actions, my child would be alive.

A man wrote a letter to the editor of a local paper asking the doctors what they recommend be done about the renegade doctors prescribing these dangerous drugs, realizing there are only a few who persist. There was no reply. With all the doctors in our area none had any comments, recommendations, or suggestions. Well, I have two:

How about legislation that requires a patient, needing more than two or three refills, have to have a second physician examine and agree to sign off on the prescription of these powerful drugs if additional refills are necessary? How about the illegal seller, once convicted, be banned a lifetime from obtaining these medications they claim they need? There are computer lists, so tie them into law enforcement with the name of the patient/convict, doctor/doctors and pharmacies. There are answers. We've just got to find them with God's help. We have to do something to stop the killing of our children and others due to the illegal drug use.

Just look at the obituaries. Every other day, there are young people whose lives were cut short due to drugs. These are families being left to deal with the loss and it touches every socio-economic group. Families are being destroyed.



NOTE: Those who are or have been addicted to drugs or have suffered loss due to the drug addiction of others are invited to send their story to mhogan@journal-times.com fax to 474-0013 or 286-4201, or drop off at the Grayson or Olive Hill offices.