“It got to where my wife was afraid to come home
from work. Would she find me dead on the floor?”
—Russ C., 61, who is straight now but after a neck injury got hooked on painkillers, including methadone
move out. “I couldn’t let our kids see him drunk or high,” she
reflects. “Thankfully, it never came to that.”
Doug and Melissa have been separated for three years. A
former government employee, Doug is having a hard time
getting a security clearance—or finding a job of any kind. As
2010 came to a close, he had been clean for six months.
DOUG WAS LUCKY that his wife found him—and saved his
life—after his overdose. But many people who pop opioid
painkillers at the same time they drink alcohol or take sedatives don’t survive the toxic combinations, which can fatally
depress breathing. And as the popularity of opioid painkillers has soared, so too have drug-overdose deaths. Overdoses
are now the second leading cause of accidental death in the
United States, topped only by car accidents. And look who’s
most likely to succumb: those ages 45 through 54, according
to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Steve Bartels, M.D., director of the Dartmouth Centers for
Health and Aging in Lebanon, New Hampshire, warns his
patients about the body’s declining ability to metabolize drugs
as they age. “Older adults who may be abusing marijuana,
cocaine, or other drugs are sensitive to smaller amounts than
when they were younger,” he says. “The problem is, they don’t
know that. So they get into trouble—motor vehicle accidents,
domestic incidents—at much lower levels of use.”
Substance abuse in an older adult mimics many of the
signs of aging: It causes memory loss, cognitive problems,
tremors, and falls. The upshot is that even family members
may not be able to recognize that a loved one is an addict.
Late-stage abuse—especially in women only 55 or 60 years
old—induces weight loss, muscle wasting, and, among alcoholics, elevated rates of breast cancer. “Addiction will move
you into ‘old old’ very quickly,” says interventionist Debra
Jay, coauthor of Aging and Addiction. “You may be healthy,
a runner, a vegan—but if you’re doing cocaine or any other
drug or alcohol, your body will break down much faster at
55 than it will at 35.”
THE RISE IN BOOMER DRUG USE is perhaps unsurprising.
This is the generation, after all, that made drug experimentation mainstream, so today’s 55-year-old addict is often yesterday’s high school stoner. At least two-thirds of boomers
who wind up in treatment have been drinking, taking drugs,
or doing both for the bulk of their adult lives—and during
some of their teen years, as well. “The earlier your onset, the
worse your problem,” says John Dyben, the Hanley Center’s
clinical director.
Ron Dash first smoked pot at 13 and “loved it from the
start,” he says. “I grew up reading about Allen Ginsberg and
Timothy Leary. For a kid like me, who wanted to be different, to get attention, pot was cool.” And for him it led to hash,
cocaine, mushrooms, and LSD, often amplified by alcohol.
Dyben also points to the boomer proclivity to medicate
both physical and emotional pain. “So here I am as a baby
boomer, hitting 50,” Dyben says, role-playing the midlife
everyman. “My knees hurt a little more when I play tennis,
and from the culture I grew up in I have the mind-set that
says, ‘If I’m hurting, something’s wrong. And if something’s
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