The Opioid Crisis: One Man's Journey And A Nation's Challenge

The Opioid Crisis: One Man's Journey And A Nation's Challenge

My mom was so frustrated she brought me to a graveyard and dumped me on someone’s grave. I woke up to her screaming and crying saying, ‘This is what I have to get used to… a dead son.’” For Matt Czaplicki, this was the wakeup call he needed to truly commit to recovery from the drug and alcohol addiction that had plagued him for the better part of his adult life.

Like many of today’s youth, Matt’s substance abuse issues began as a teenager – drinking with friends at parties, smoking marijuana casually. But it wasn’t long before he was thinking about it every day, regularly wondering, “When am I going to have another chance to get drunk?”

Matt was a hard working student: he kept up good grades and even landed a scholarship to swim at a top public university. By the halfway point of his college career, grades and swimming hardly mattered. He was an alcoholic – drinking every day with no rest in between, gaining 50 pounds and eventually waking up every day at 4 A.M. to drink just to not feel sick in class.

Over the course of 12 years, Matt went through multiple phases of drug addiction, starting with alcohol, which led to him using cocaine and painkillers when he reached his mid-20s. He ultimately transitioned to heroin and crack cocaine abuse. “My mother had developed a stress-related heart condition because of things I was doing, and I didn’t want her to die while I was struggling with addiction,” Matt explained. “Seeing her in physical and emotional pain at the gravesite… That’s when I decided my life needed to change.”