prescription drug abuse. he has seen first hand how pills can ravage some unlikely addicts. somebody told me when i was in college that i was going to become a drug addict and rob a pharmacy i would have told them they were out of their mind. josh boyd was an all american, small town kid from monroe, washington. i started playing baseball and got really into it. around that. in college, the talented south paw dreamed of playing for the majors until he got hurt. i collided with the short stop and separated my nerve that runs from your spine through your deltoid. boyd was x-rayed, given pain pills, and sent on his way. delaudid at first then vicodin. i eventually ran out of those. whatever i could get from my friends because it was 24 hours a day pain.
it s a nightmare. i layed in the the bed in jail and squirmed for three nights and sweated and puked and i you can t explain it. you can t explain it. it s just misery. and yet, boyd describes his arrest and conviction as a blessing. i would still be getting high right now. if i would ve got away with it, then i would ve had i would ve od ed. i would ve absolutely od ed. instead, boyd is in long-term inpatient rehab and slowly fighting his way back. it s intense. from the minute you wake up, it s the hardest thing i ve ever done, by far. the daytop teens are walking that same long road back to sobriety. i still have the mental obsession, like i ll think about, like, taking a pill, chopping it up and, like, drawing a line and snorting it. like, i ll still have that mental obsession in my head. just thinking about doing it,
the epidemic of prescription pill abuse. my life was on pause while i was using drugs, that s how i take it. i was just stuck in that moment, doing the same thing, over and over again. these kids are fortunate. they landed at daytop, new jersey, a residential treatment facility for teenagers. they may have flirted with death but escaped with their lives. [ ambulance siren ] yet the overall statistics are chilling. drug overdose deaths from pills like oxycontin, vicodin, methadone and others have skyrocketed, increasing 160% in just five years, killing more americans than heroin and cocaine combined. [ ambulance siren ] what s more, the federal government reported 3/4 of a million prescription drug-related visits to emergency rooms during 2006 alone. that s an extraordinary number, so, yeah, it s a real serious problem. after josh boyd was arrested for robbing pharmacy, he was forced to go cold turkey.
his baseball career was over and so was college. once i didn t have that anymore i kind of didn t know who i was. but if i was eating pills all day long it minimized everything else that was going on deep inside me. nothing s bothering you at all. you re so relaxed. felt invincible. no one could touch me. nothing could hurt me. for josh boyd the descent into oblivion was gradual. he moved back home, got married, went to work for his dad. but he kept getting high. it went from just those vicodin to oxycontin and once i took it to that level, i was searching to get high all the time. i was doing probably ten to 15, 80 mg a day. the street price on that is like $70 to $80. which meant josh boyd s habit was costing him as much as $8,000 a week. five days after nick dent got busted and just a few miles away josh boyd entered a rite-aid
wielding an air soft pelt pellet gun. i remember it clear.let gun. i remember it clear. i remember passing a note, pay attention. stay calm. do what i say. i will shoot you and her if you do something stupid. even when i was doing it, i remember going, what are you doing? a call to 911 and a short foot chase later, boyd was tackled by the cops. and that was that. i was sitting in the back of the cop car and just like had this peace all of a sudden. finally. somebody stopped me from this madness. despite getting busted, josh boyd and nick dent are the lucky ones. they survived their addiction with a chance to reclaim their lives. others have met a different fate. in the seattle area alone, deaths involving prescription pain killers have more than doubled since 2001. but it s not only desperate, strung out young men who are breaking the law. we came to realize that this