By JoAnn Bocca-Rivieccio

I am writing this article on Mother’s Day. Today is a combination of sadness and happiness . Of course I love celebrating this special day with my family. The problem is I have lost half of my heart , Franke has past and been in heaven for the past 9 Mother’s Days.
My heart goes out to all the families that have lost their children to substance abuse. Especially to moms that have lost a child, I know there are many that have lost two and three children to this epidemic.
But what about the moms that have lost their only son or daughter ,this has to be totally devastating.
Yesterday, I went to Marlboro for a 5K in memory of our lost Angels, many parents where there running . How devastating and overwhelming this event was; not only were we celebrating our children. we were supporting each other during hard times.
There were different groups there and book signings and a group called TIM today I matter , Jim Lally started this group when he lost his son to this epidemic. He and others havehave made poster size pictures of our children and displays them at many events . there must have been 200 posters what a beautiful vision that was to see.
Raffles, 50 50’s, food being served to the runners and the starting point for the Opioid Spoon journey down the east coast. Such a great event .
Now back to this horrible epidemic I am seeing that not only is this disease affecting a whole generation and the elderly . it is taking a toll on the medical field as well. A recent TV show did a report on Doctors, Nurses and other medical staff, a high percentage of them are addicted to opioids as well. So now here’s my question, Why hasn’t anything been done to stop opioids from being made and the FDA from approving more pain meds ? Don’t we have enough being made ?
We have lost over 400,000 loved ones to opioids. 200 are dying everyday due to the misuse of these meds. Lets not forget all the drugs coming in from other countries. We see and hear on social media warnings of bad batches and many overdosing.
Time for the politicians to work a little harder to help stop the overdoses from continuing. Call everyone in office and ask what they are doing to help stop these death ? I bet they won’t be able to give you an answer. For all we know there may be a few representing us in office yhay have SAD (substance Abuse Disorder) . Hope all is well with everyone. Get help if you are using don’t be a statistic.