For over twenty year I began a battle with an evil force that at first I new nothing about what it was or how it had began to control every fiber of my being. I was so young and so nieve when I first began being prescibed prescription opiates by my physician I had no idea what the long term effects of the drugs could, or would end up doing to my body, my mind, my soul, my family and ultimately my life. The journey I call now The Serpents Sting was a very slow road to hell I would eventually have to face. It began at the age of fifteen with my first trip to the ear, nose and throat specialist, who began prescribing me opiate drugs for severe allergies, headaches, chronic cough, ear aches etc. Every prescription he would write out I would later discover had the drug that has became since those early days a pandemic among drug addicts,"Hydrocodone" a morphine derivative that back in the 1980's it was known in the streets as the new miracle drug made to cure any pain and all that ailed you. For so many years I tried not to blame the doctors for the hell I had suffered, for all those years making constant excuses for them such as, they didn't really know the true damage that could be caused from continually prescribing those drugs to their patients, but after about twenty years later when I found out that these same docotors were actually paid a percentage for prescribing these deadly medications to patients I began to have my doubts. The one episode that really made me see the light was the pain specialist I was seeing for severe back pain and a pinched nerve who recieved a phone call telling him a patient had died due to an overdose of the drugs he had prescribed. I listened to this phone call as the doctor showed no signs of remorse, sympathy for the family or not even a tinge of sadness, and his only reply was, " I didn't tell him to eat them like M&M's. It's not my fault he couldn't follow the directions and he hung up the phone and his last words as he screamed about was, Damn stupid people, can't they read the directions. I'll never forget that day for it was the day I" decided to quit, at least I thought it could be that easy. I could make it through the with draws but I couldn't cure the addiction that had ravaged not only my body but my also my mind. For the next 20 years I would fight my cravings, entered into hospitals and rehabs and wondered through inpatient and out-patient treatments if I would eer be able to break free from the disease of Prescription Opiate Addiction. AS desperately as I wanted to stop the cycle that had spiralled so out of control, there was still that inocent part of me that I call my Spirituality to my Lord and Savior that continued to carry me through everyday that I messed up for he knew me and he knew how desperately I wanted to stop hurting those whom I loved so passionately. My children, whom were my little miracles that I was so blessed to have after a childhood disease that gave me a rare 20% chance of not only conceiving but actually carrying to full term which I didn't but God let me carry them lonh enough so that they would be perfect little angel and I truly beliee that they were, for they would tell me stories of how they lied in Heaven and how Jesus had shown them me and told them they would be coming here to live with me in this world. I remember how adamant my daughter would get when se would tell me of how they flew high above the clouds when she was an angel but that she couldn't do it when she came here to live. My son had told me such a similar story when he was about the same age that there was not question that if we as parents listen to our children when they speak to us about before they were actually born they truly have such magnificant, glorifying stories to tell. The Bible tells of te children of God and how if only we could have the mind of a child and the loe of a child how different it could all be.
About the Author: Letitia Carter grew up in small town America. Morristown, Tennessee, a town where you never thought your child would be turned on to the powerful drug Hydrocodone by her specialist who neer once explained to Letitia's family the risk or the dangers of the long term use of the medication that would be the beginning of a life time jounery down the path of Precription Drug Addiction. Letitia became a closet addict for over twenty years because she did not know honestly that the disese she suffered from was addiction. It wasn't until her physician died and she was left without the medication that she began to realize it had been the demon that had taken posession of her body over the past fifteen years and by that time she had became so dependant or the drugs and so fearful of her Mothers rejection to her failure that it would continue to be a batlle she now called the Serpents Sting that she would secretly entered into hospitals and re=habs so that her Moter would not know of her failure into the secret world of her addiction until it came to the point that she was so heavily addicted now to the even stronger drugs such as morphine, oxycontin, and others that it became impossible to hide the addiction any longer. This is my story, this is my life.