SUMTER, S.C. — Sumter Behavioral Health Services is providing community members with a way to dispose of their medication safely. This free resource is called Deterra, which is a pouch that you add water and pills to before throwing it away.
"I’m able to give advice or help because I’ve been there," Sean O'Connor, a peer support specialist at Sumter Behavioral, told News19.
O'Connor has been sober for two years now. Before that, he spent more than two decades fighting addiction. During that time, one way he would access drugs was through getting medicine from loved ones without them realizing.
"I would purposefully go into peoples’ homes," he shared. "Like people that I knew, family members or whoever, and I would ask to use their bathroom and I would literally go into their medicine cabinet and take whatever. Cough syrup. Pills...I got a lot of medicine that way."
According to pharmacist Tim Skipper, O’Connor isn’t alone.
"You don’t want children or your teenagers to get access to medications," Skipper explained. "A lot of times, that’s when addiction starts."
That’s why Sumter Behavioral Executive Director Sarah Campbell is trying to get residents to get rid of their medicine using Deterra.
"You end up with teenagers -- very young people -- messing around with medication. They don’t want to die...It just takes one time," she said. "The more that people will dispose of the medicine that’s unused, unwanted, unneeded, the less likely it’ll end up in the hands of someone who just doesn’t need it."
Now, O'Connor is able to use his past experiences in his work at Sumter Behavioral. He says when he was going through active addiction, he didn't have as many resources.
"I believe that I could have gotten cleaner sooner," he said, thinking about if resources had been more accessible. "I had no idea where to start…all I knew was getting high."
O'Connor says now in his current role, he sees people come in asking for help. Thankfully, O'Connor says, he's able to provide that help.
While medication can fall into the hands of people intentionally looking to abuse it, Campbell says not everyone has that intent.
"People pass medicine around a lot and it gets in the hands of people who really don’t need it," she told me. "We have a lot of accidental overdosing because people will mix medicine and not know that they shouldn’t mix it."
This could happen if you lend medicine to a friend or family member without realizing what may be in it.
According to John Beckner, senior director of strategic initiatives at National Community Pharmacists Association, "Both prescription medications and over-the-counter come into play here."
A good rule of thumb? Beckner says if your medication is expired or if you're finished using it, it's best to safely dispose of it.
