A Day I Will Never Forget

December 5th, 2008.

I had just finished my shift at the pharmacy I was the manager of, a grueling 10 hours spent on my feet without a lunch break and barely a chance to go to the bathroom. Yeah, pretty much the norm. I was ready to go home and relax...to take some pills and crawl into bed and not get out all weekend. That was pretty much the norm too. Get up, work, go home, take pills, and try to sleep; rinse and repeat.

My other staff pharmacist had arrived and I was doing my best to get out of there and just get home. My district pharmacy manager appeared out of no where and wanted 'to talk.' So I headed to the manager's (principle's) office and was confronted by the director of loss prevention, the district manager and the district pharmacy manager. They asked me a bunch of questions. I told them the truth. I was making my own prescriptions for drugs that had been prescribed to me almost a year ago. I didn't make time to go to the doctor to get a refill, I just did it myself. I knew it was wrong, but I just didn't want to steal them from the pharmacy (that would be wrong).

They didn't beat around the bush and they didn't waste their time. They fired me and escorted me out of the building. I was mortified. They let me know that they would be contacting the local Board of Pharmacy and the authorities.

When I made it home I broke down and told my husband and my family. I hadn't just lost my job, I had be fired...terminated with cause. And that wasn't even the beginning of it. I told them about the forged prescriptions and what all I was taking and what I could expect to happen. They hugged me and told me they loved me anyways.

I was awake for the next 4 days. I couldn't sleep, the guilt was eating me alive. I was so afraid that the police would show up at my door with a search warrent and seize everything in it that I took every single pill in the house and stuck them in the blender and chopped them all up and mixed them with cat litter and threw them away. Then I took all the labels off of the bottles and burned them in the back yard.

That weekend I went through withdrawal symptoms as I detoxed off the meds I had become dependent on. I had rebound insomnia, I couldn't stand the smell of food, I was throwing up left and right and couldn't even keep water in me. I lost about 15 pounds in one weekend. I ended up having a seizure because of the abrupt discontinuation of some of the medications.

Little did I know that this was the start of one amazing journey...