All of us carry a sacred bundle inside of us, and inside of that bundle are all of the
beautiful things in our lives, you know, our language and our culture and our family and those
positive memories.
But there's also some things in there that are not so good, and those are historical traumas
and traumas that we've experienced individually in our lives that we may have never talked about.
And so we carry that inside that bundle and I think that part of, um, the use of opioids
is not only tied to pain management but it's also tied to numbing some of those feelings
that we have in our bundle that we're not quite ready to face head on.
My name's Alyssa Macy and I'm a member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs.
I had, uh, ruptured my achilles about 5 years ago and I had to use opioids to manage pain.
I literally felt like I was floating away and it was scary to me.
I didnt' like feeling like I didn't have control of my own body, and I didn't like feeling like I
didn't have control of my own mind. And that was the biggest reason why
I chose to stop taking those very early on, instead of refilling that prescription.
I also was aware that there was a high chance that I could get addicted to pain medication
and I didn't want that to happen.
It's important to have a choice, your only choice should never be that we want to give you drugs.
That should not be your only choice.
I don't feel like we, uh, teach young people how to ask the right questions when they
see their Physician. I think the number one thing that we should be asking is,
"is there an alternative to taking prescription drugs?" "What are my alternatives?"
I mean those are questions that 20 years ago I wouldn't ask, um, now having gone through
a major surgery I definitely would approach it much differently than I did when I, when I had my injury.