In part two of our four-part interview with Aimee Dunkle, she discussed her son Ben’s early encounters with opioids and how they ultimately led to a substance use disorder.
Dunkle lost Ben to a heroin overdose in 2012 when he was 20.
Ben Dunkle was first exposed to opioids when he was 13 years old and given a prescription for a broken arm. “At that point in 2007, I was already aware of the dangers,” Dunkle said. “So I made sure that the boys only had opioids for three days, perhaps not even that long, and then we got rid of what we had.”
What she wasn’t aware of was that medicine cabinets across the country were filled with opioids.
While in San Diego, 18-year-old Ben Dunkle fell from a skateboard and broke his arm. “The difference this time was that he was given his own opioids to carry,” Dunkle said. She doubted that her son took the opioids as prescribed, and recounted a poem that her son wrote about… (continue reading)
