Groups for Addicts of Prescription Pills Largely Anonymous

For 25 years, Richard Rowden’s life was consumed with a craving for drugs. Unlike the street addict who steals to support a habit, Rowden, a veteran, says he simply asked a psychiatrist at the Veterans Hospital in Long Beach to write a prescription for his drug of choice: Valium.

Rowden knew his addiction to prescription drugs was destroying him, but he believed there was no way out. His doctors had said he could easily stop taking Valium and that painful withdrawal symptoms would quickly disappear. But when he tried to stop, he says the agonizing symptoms persisted.

Then came the turning point, that evening in April, 1992, when Rowden walked into a Pills Anonymous meeting in Orange and described his failure to kick his habit after trying for two months.

“You laughed at me and said it will take a long time and no doctor ever said that,” Rowden recalled recently at the group’s gathering of about a dozen adults who are helping one another break free from addiction to prescription drugs.

With the knowledge that healing himself would take time, he persisted through months of withdrawal until, just about six weeks ago, the constant craving for Valium finally dissipated.

Rowden is grateful for Pills Anonymous--an organization that is itself virtually anonymous and whose members don’t fit into conventional 12-step programs. They are middle-class people who started taking tranquilizers and painkillers on the advice of their doctors rather than in an attempt to get a high.

Not only do they feel uncomfortable among the ex-cons and rough language sometimes prevalent at meetings of Narcotics Anonymous, they often have taken drugs that are more difficult to beat than heroin and cocaine.

Finding others who conquered a similar habit was vital to Rowden, who says he has been off Valium for five months now and is feeling revived.

“I owe you my sanity and maybe my life,” he told the group.

Self-help groups for prescription drug addicts are scarce. While about 200 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings are scheduled each day throughout Orange County, there are only two Pills Anonymous meetings a week in Orange County and two more in Los Angeles County.

Nonetheless, many people could benefit from such groups, said Dr. Max Schneider, medical director of the family recovery services at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, which provides a room for Pills Anonymous to meet and refers patients to the group from its detoxification unit.

“It looks like about 10% of people who use pain medication or tranquilizers or sleeping medicine become dependent,” Schneider said.

Those who work with prescription drug addicts divide the blame between physicians who misuse the drugs as shortcuts to more meaningful treatment of medical and psychological problems, and patients themselves who abuse the drugs.

“They are all good medicines when they are used in the right patient for the right reason and in the right amount for the right length of time,” Schneider said. “The problem is most of these drugs have to be tapered off and patients get so comfortable with them they don’t want to quit.”

As their bodies build a tolerance to the drugs, patients frequently increase their supply by secretively seeing four or five doctors or visiting urgent care centers and emergency rooms, Schneider said.

Most prescription drug addicts are women, treatment specialists say, possibly because women talk more freely about stress to their doctors, who respond by prescribing medication.

Members of Pills Anonymous said they identified recently with the disclosure of Sallie Dornan, wife of Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove). She described a 15-year dependency on prescription drugs, starting with painkillers and sedatives prescribed after a series of surgeries and later used as stress relievers.

Other high-profile people who periodically brought renewed attention to the problem have included Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe and Betty Ford.

Still, recovering prescription drug addicts have no national organization. Most who come to Pills Anonymous, which is not listed in the telephone book, hear about the group from chemical dependency centers or mental health professionals.

Carol, a recovering addict who started a Pills Anonymous group that meets Friday afternoons at the Women’s Mariposa Center in Orange, said there are several reasons why such groups are few.

“There is not as much public acknowledgment of this as an addiction,” said Carol, who asked that her last name not be used. “Even a lot of doctors don’t admit it is possible to be addicted” to prescription drugs, she said.

But addiction does exist, and it is hard to break.

Schneider said: “Getting off any drug is not easy but the toughest drugs to get off of are some of the legal drugs, particularly benzodiazepines such as Valium and Xanax.”

Because of this tiring battle, Carol said, only about 5% of the prescription drug addicts who come to Pills Anonymous are able to sustain recovery. “I see lots and lots of people come and very few return,” she said.

Nobody knows better how difficult it is to organize prescription drug addicts than Carrie Friedeberg, founder of Pills Anonymous.

Friedeberg said she was first prescribed Valium in the early 1960s when it was a new drug that her doctor assured her was nonaddictive. She used Valium, she said, to cope with marital problems and financial insecurity as her husband moved from job to job.

“I always took my pills as prescribed. I thought I was being a good girl,” Friedeberg said. “It worked well for a long time. But my life began to revolve around the pills. Then one morning I woke up and went to pour coffee and take my Valium and my body started to vibrate violently. I felt my heart was beating out of my chest. So I took another Valium and it got worse.”

She wound up in the chemical dependency ward at St. Joseph Hospital, where she endured a severe withdrawal that included hearing and visual distortions. “My experience was so terrifying I was determined never to take another Valium. I would rather put a gun to my head,” she said.

After leaving the hospital, she said, she tried to form a group so she could have people with whom she could relate. It was slow going. “I would sit and wait for an hour or two hours and maybe one woman would show up,” she said. “I have been for many years a voice crying in the wilderness.”

That was 15 years ago, and now she and a handful of the victorious continue to hold out a life line to others.

On this particular Wednesday night meeting, the newcomer to Pills Anonymous was Michele, a young mother in a flowered sun dress who is going through withdrawal from barbiturates.

“I feel like I am losing my mind. I cry and cry a lot,” said the doleful woman with long blond hair. “What’s the point?” she asked in desperation. “I can’t go to work and I can’t take care of my little girl. I just feel a lot of guilt.”

Friedeberg assured Michele that what she was feeling was “normal . . . it is hell,” she sympathized. “But this too shall pass and you will never have to do it again.”

“It is hard but it is worth the trip,” said Charlotte, another recovering addict. “Hang in there. If you have to hang by your fingernails, do it.”