Honesty Liller is a 40-year-old woman who started using drugs at the age of 12. She says that what started as a way to fit in with her friends turned out to be a nightmare that would see her life take many dark turns.
A wake-up call
She jokes about how she would lie relentlessly, even with a name like Honesty. However, a call from her father when she was 26 made her realize the kind of misery she was putting her family through and decided to seek help.
Honesty’s case is just a grain of sand in the opioid crisis desert that the US has been dealing with since the 90s. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, deaths associated with overdose from an opioid have quadrupled between 1999 and 2019, peaking at half a million deaths. A Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration survey reveals that over 1.6 million people aged 12 and above in the US have an opioid use disorder. About 10 million people misused prescription opioids in 2019, while over 700,000 had used heroin. Additionally, more than 70,000 people died from a drug overdose in the same year.
The CDC observes that oxycodone, methadone, and hydrocodone are the most abused prescription opioids and are responsible for the most opioid overdose-related deaths. A further report by the CDC shows that one in four patients on long-term treatment using opioids battle opioid addiction.
Honesty Liller had already experimented with a few drugs, including cocaine, when she was in high school. She later started using opiates prescribed to her after a car accident when she was 16 and eventually graduated to heroin at 17.
She did not even quit when she got pregnant three years later and gave birth in withdrawal. She recounts how all she wanted was some heroin because the withdrawal effects were so severe.
Hope for opioid addicts
When she finally decided to get help, she went through with it. She’s now 14 years into recovery and heads the McShin Foundation, where she started her recovery journey.
