I Stole My Dog’s Medication And My Mother Found Out
By: Timothy O'Neill
Tags: Mental Health, This Happened To Me, Addiction, Life, Self

I Stole My Dog’s Medication And My Mother Found Out

She wants me to go to detox, not going to happen

Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash

My dog, Percy, was prescribed Xanax as he got adjusted to his new medication, Prozac. The bottle came with two refills. After a few sleepless, restless nights coming off the opioid partial-agonist Suboxone I decided I had had enough and pulled a move I had never tried before. I refilled Percy’s prescription over the phone one night and the next morning I picked it up. 60 pills of 1 mg Xanax. Taking 10 to 15 in a night they were gone in days. They didn’t really calm me down or sedate me or help me sleep, they just threw off my equilibrium.

I felt no guilt or remorse about my actions because who, at the end of the day, was being harmed? Percy was already off the medication. It was up for grabs. It was an exercise in low cunning at its finest. I felt suave, confident, like I had pulled off a neat trick. Until my mother went to the pharmacy to pick up Percy’s Prozac and was informed that his prescription for Xanax had been filled. Why would they tell her? What was the purpose? Excuse me, I’m still in blame-everyone-but-myself addict mode.

My father was the first one to call me out on it. At first I lied and denied then, with a heavy heart and jittery conscience I admitted to him that I had indeed picked up the prescription. Who else could it have been? “That’s a felony!” were his first words to me. I shrugged that off. He was angry and sad. He asked me how many I had left. I told him zero. He was flabbergasted. I took the whole bottle in four days? That’s right. I’m an addict and I have a high tolerance for any substance that enters my body, especially bullshit.

The next few minutes consisted of the random question and lots of anxious head rubbing on my father’s part as we waited for my mother to get back. I just sat in the chair and stared into space, waiting for punishment like the kid who stole the last cookie from the cookie jar.

My mother eventually arrived and stormed into the room. “You stole his medicine?” Not really a question. “That’s it. You’re going to detox. You’re going to rehab.” “No,” I replied simply. They wouldn’t accept me. I wasn’t currently using, I wasn’t experiencing withdrawals. But if I had told them this last night at the hospital where I went for a mental health evaluation I probably would have been admitted. Might still be. Time will tell.

I can’t be trusted. I can only be trusted to do one thing: look out for my own self interest. I’m not overly fond of being alive and all the torment I’ve been through has softened me, it hasn’t hardened me. I don’t have the capacity to suffer the way that I used to. So I used my maladaptive coping mechanisms in a lousy bid for relief. Am I happy or proud that I did it? No. Would I do it again? Yes.

Percy is just fine, Percy is good on his Prozac. Which is odd, because at first they were convinced that it was the Prozac that I stole when it takes 4 to 6 weeks to build up to therapeutic levels in your brain. No high to be had there. No, I went for the Xanax. I even went for the half empty bottle of Xanax that was left over at home and refilled it with allergy medication.

But I’m in part conciliatory, part defense mode right now. Will this be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and gets me kicked out of the house? I’m 35. What could the consequences possibly look like? I’m not driving at the moment. I’m not doing much of anything. I should apologize wholeheartedly to my mother. I know when I do things like this it breaks her heart and I’ve broken her heart so many times I’m surprised it still beats. We’re all stressed out, on edge with each other and this could prove to be the catalyst that pushes us further apart as we’re forced to remain closer together.