Nation's Opioid Epidemic

Floor Speech

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Mr. NEAL. I thank Congresswomen Clark and Ann Kuster and Congressman Frank Guinta for the good work that they have done in calling attention this evening to this crisis that now threatens to overwhelm rehabilitation centers across the country. What I want to specifically cite in my comments for the next few minutes is a very human story. Her name is Bethany, and she wrote to me on January 18 of this year.

Dear Congressman Neal:

I am writing to you regarding the heroin prescription pill crisis our State and Nation is currently entrenched in. I am a physician assistant who graduated from Wake Forest Baptist Medical School in their Physician Assistants program in 2003. I have worked in various outpatient clinics, as well as at Bay State Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts, and at the Cooley Dickinson emergency room operations in Northampton, Massachusetts. I have treated overdose patients, have been alongside physicians who have pronounced patients deceased from an overdose, as well as having referred patients to crisis support teams, outpatient treatment, and rehabs.

After all of this, I never expected that I would become addicted to prescription painkillers after a series of surgeries and illness. I suffered in silence, alone in fear, shame, and guilt. I was a functioning professional who referred my addicted patients to various resources, but when I tried to reach out for help, I hit roadblocks.

For instance, the emergency room I worked in was outsourced so that when I went to the emergency room director on two separate occasions to ask to go to the Employee Assistance Program, I was told that those resources were only available to hospital employees. I tried outpatient therapy and 12-step programs, but I kept sliding backwards.

After years of struggling, I couldn't keep silent any longer. I confessed my addiction to a coworker. I felt that, finally, help would come. Instead, I was fired for cause and without benefits. The fear that had kept me silent for all of those years was now my reality. My husband was a stay-at-home dad.

And now how could we support our three children?

I felt like my life was falling apart. Little did I know that what I was doing was actually falling into place. With family support, I found a rehab program for 6 months where I could go with two young children. I saw my oldest on the weekends.

After graduating rehab, I interviewed and signed up with the Massachusetts professional reporting system. For 5 years, I have called in daily. I am subjected to at least 15 random drug tests a year. I go to 2 to 4 hours of recovery meetings every week and attend a professionals in recovery meeting weekly. It was in the professionals meetings that I finally found a sense of belonging. It was the vital piece of the puzzle that had been lacking as I searched for recovery but kept backsliding.

She writes in this letter to me of her strong faith and how it helped to get her through this very difficult time in her life, but she also points out that the system is broken, that the emergency room funding for reaching individuals is inadequate, that pain management is inadequate, that pain scales, treatments are inadequate.

She writes:

I found myself overtreating pain at times because I was taught that we could get sanctioned from not treating pain. I felt obligated to treat someone's subjective pain without objective findings or reason.

She writes of all of the challenges that she faced, all having started because of surgeries and illnesses that she had that required medication that, in fact, in the end, she could not successfully escape.

She testified in a forum that I held. She was courageous enough to get up and talk about the problems that she had.

Do you know what?

She is doing better.

So we call attention to those tonight who might find a path forward from the grim reality of heroin that sells on the streets of Springfield and Hartford for $3 a bag. This was an individual who had a normal working relationship with colleagues. This was an individual who went to work faithfully, had a professional designation, and found herself caught up in the opioid crisis because of the prescriptions that had been given to her early on.

I know of the maintenance plan that is being proposed and of the suggestions that are being offered for more physicians to secure training and how opioids might be extended to those who need them, but I would implore this Congress to act favorably upon that proposal and that legislation.

We all regularly go to caucus meetings, we go to a host of get- togethers, at which we always attempt to upgrade our skills. There is nothing that will upgrade your skills like the coarseness of a campaign--I can tell you that--but we all find that professional opportunity to challenge ourselves to do better in this institution.

That should not be unlike those who are outside of the institution. Where you regularly require courses for attorneys, CPAs, and others, why not for physicians so they may receive the training that today would be readily available with the assistance of this Congress, hopefully after the vigorous activity that we will take this week?

I close as I opened. I thank Congresswoman Clark for her leadership, Congresswoman Kuster for her leadership, and Congressman Guinta for his leadership on this issue. I am telling you, across western and central Massachusetts, this is devastating families. There is an opportunity here for the Congress to respond.

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