Page 6 - Addiction and Overdose: Confronting an American Crisis

injured on the job. An unemployed coal miner in West Virginia using heroin
because it’s cheaper than the prescription painkillers he took for his back
pain. Celebrities such as Prince and Michael Jackson, who both started
taking prescription painkillers for legitimate reasons, became addicted,
and eventually died from overdoses. And twenty-seven-year-old Adam Kull,
a top wrestler and soccer player in high school who became addicted to a
prescription medication for anxiety and then to heroin.
When Donna Kull arrived at her son’s apartment, two police officers
escorted her up the stairs. “I remember taking a very deep breath and
looking into Adam’s bedroom,” she says. “He was lying on the floor with
blood spilling from his mouth. The officers wouldn’t let me go into the room,
as it was still a crime scene.”
(Authorities consider the scene
of a sudden, unexplained death
to be a crime scene until the
cause of death is determined
and foul play is ruled out.)
“From the doorway, I squatted
down and looked at him, tears
welling up in my eyes, shaking
my head. I said, ‘Why Adam!
Why? I can’t believe it.’ I told
him that I loved him, that I was
proud of him, and then I said
good-bye. Adam was on his
way to the medical examiner’s
Michael Jackson died in 2009 after his physician, Dr. office in Newark [New Jersey]
Conrad Murray, injected him with the surgical anesthetic and I had to get home to tell
propofol, which Murray routinely used to help Jackson
sleep. Jackson’s years of addiction to Xanax and opioids my family.” Like Donna Kull,
likely contributed to his death. Jackson’s addiction to the authorities suspected
prescription painkillers dated back to 1984, when he that Adam Kull had died of a
suffered serious scalp burns while filming a commercial.
drug overdose. The medical

6 Addiction and Overdose