Youth Overdose & Opioid Addiction – Overtaken (2012)

Introduction

Created by two mothers, this documentary from early 2012 covers the opioid prescription drug crisis in Orange County, California from the perspective of parents who have lost a child to an overdose and youth who are now in recovery.

You can also watch a follow-up: Where Are They Now (2014)

Quotes

“People always talk about how great drugs make you feel, but no one ever talks about how serious the consequences are of taking drugs. I thought I was invincible, that nothing would ever happen to me but it did. My entire life has changed because of the choice I made to swallow a tablet of ecstasy.”

“I was able to maintain college for a year and then once my using got serious I lost control. I was failing all my classes I wasn’t showing up for family events, I basically drove my car till I blew up, I lost all my jobs that I had, I was in an abusive relationship with my ex-boyfriend who I used with and to me the biggest thing I lost was myself.”

“I started using Oxycontin at 15 years old and before I knew it I couldn’t stop. I like to say my addiction robbed me of my morals and my ethics. I stole thousands and thousands of dollars from my parents. I wrecked cars. I wrecked relationships. I traumatized my family … I just couldn’t stop and it got to the point where I wanted to die but I couldn’t do it myself. It was a miserable existence.”

“As your tolerance goes up, you start to regain a little bit of consciousness and you have to get more loaded so you don’t think about all the people you’re hurting and how much you’re hurting yourself. You have to stay high so that you don’t care, otherwise you can’t live with yourself.”

“I think that’s the most important thing that kids need to understand – that Oxycontin, ecstasy and all the hardcore drugs and pills that you’re taking change your brain so dramatically quickly that you become an addict. Maybe not the first time, maybe not the fifth time, but it’s not if, it’s when.”

“I’ve lost six friends to overdoses in less than a year and that was heartbreaking for me and even after that, that still wasn’t enough for me to stop.”

“They were intended to be taken as a pill coated with a material which dissolved over a period of time and then release the something slowly. Now kids and adults have understood that if they remove the layer of the skin, then all of a sudden you’ve taken a time-release drug and made it into an immediate release drug that is extremely potent.”

“People that have never done drug in their life take one drug and we’re talking about drugs that, with one use, can alter your brain chemistry to where you have to have that drug. Period.”