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Pill Popping Soccer Moms

By Stacy Barnes | May 6, 2011

The role of a stay at home mom usually adheres to a standard motherhood checklist and one that she gladly takes on. Keep the house neat, cook healthy meals for her family, and devote herself lovingly to her husband and children. Drug use and addiction is never something that a mother would ever willingly choose to add to this list.  Unfortunately, with pain killer drug abuse growing more than 300 percent in the last decade, drug addiction is no longer an issue that just affects “the streets”. It is an issue that our elderly, teenagers with access to a parent’s medicine cabinet, and even our beloved stay at home moms are now struggling with.

Because trained doctors handle the prescription of opiates, mothers tend to see this form of self-medication as an acceptable way to deal with everyday stress, not realizing that taking such medication can easily lead to misuse and addiction. In addition to dealing with stress, mothers who turn to prescription drugs may also do so to numb any mental disorders they are dealing with such as anxiety or depression. Because a mother may feel like she has to be a strong and positive influence on her child’s life, she may try to cover up any negative issues and emotions she is struggling with by using prescription drugs. But anytime prescription drugs are used to handle an emotional disorder, the emotional disorder is only being masked, not properly treated. Tending to these emotions with medication is a quick and dangerous attempt at healing and one that will only lead to future problems for a mother and her family.

Getting help for a possible prescription drug addiction is also an issue for many stay at home moms. Though prescription drug use and abuse amongst women is on the rise, women are still less likely than men to seek treatment, especially women whose primarily role in the family is a stay at home mother.  A woman whose every day life is dedicated to taking care of her loved ones may feel like the whole family is dependent on her and that she needs to be available around the clock for them. She may even go as far as to worry that a stay in rehab or admittance to drug addiction could cause her to lose her husband or even her children. This is a dangerous way of thinking as there can be no positive outcome for a drug addiction that goes untreated.

Overdose due to prescription pain medication is now one of the most common causes of death in America and the devastation caused by the loss of a mother due to overdose would be life changing for her family. It is in the best interest of a mother to seek treatment in drug rehab immediately so that she can be returned healthy to her family, ready and able to resume her role as a loving partner and well providing mother.

Topics: Addiction, Drug Abuse, Drug Rehab, depression, prescription drugs | Comments Off

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