DEATH BY VICODIN, A Family Tragedy

I would like to introduce you to my daughter Tiffany, a beautiful blue-eyed blond with potential and talent, on her way to success in her chosen career. Unfortunately, at age 27, she died tragically from liver failure as a direct result of an addiction to the prescription pain medication Vicodin, which began after a serious car accident. Her father and I provided Tiffany with strong values and a loving home. She was popular and successful in school. She had a strong faith in God. Along with her two older brothers, we consistently supported and encouraged her to achieve her chosen goals. We loved her dearly.

Then... we stood by her side at the end of a long and horrific battle, helpless to stop her pain and fear as she slipped away. All our love and prayers did not prevent the loss of our beautiful child.

Now... what do we do with our feelings of guilt and anger? How could this have happened? Where did we go wrong? What should we have done? The thoughts that go to "we should have seen the signs" and "we should have taken some action", continue to haunt us. People have told us that addiction is a disease over which we were powerless, which we believe intellectually. Emotionally however, the guilt continues to be overwhelming and leaves us with such pain in our souls.

The purpose of this web site.

I feel that one way for our family to help ourselves, and those like Tiffany, is to reach out to others. We know there are others who have had the experience of losing a loved one due to addiction or misuse of pain prescriptions. I want you to know that my family and I are here and we know how you feel.

My family and I have two goals:

One is to receive and provide emotional support to other family members and significant others who are also suffering. Second is to utilize our collective energy to highlight this devastating problem in our society with the intent of exploring methods of making the prescription of highly addictive drugs safer, thus resulting in the reduction of loss of life. We don't want anyone to suffer as we have, but even more importantly, no one to suffer as Tiffany did.

How to use this web site:

Simply click on the question(s) you would like to answer, below. Click the "Post Answer" button to leave your own personal experiences on the site. You can also respond to other people's posts. They can respond to yours, creating a dialog. Hint: After posting an answer, or a response to someone else's answer, you can receive notifications of other's posts. After typing out your message, simply check the box next to "Notify me when a reply is posted" before hitting submit.