Cammie Wolf Rice's mission to save lives through opioid prevention

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Episode Transcript

Elizabeth Vargas:

Cammie Wolf Rice, welcome to Heart of the Matter. It’s great to have you on.

Cammie Wolf Rice:

Thank you, Elizabeth. Thank you for having me.

Elizabeth Vargas:

So we’re here today to talk about your son, your oldest son, Christopher, and his struggle with opioid addiction. It all began with a surgery that he had in high school. Tell me what happened.

Cammie Wolf Rice:

Christopher was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. In his senior year, they really pushed heavily to have his large intestine removed during the holiday break mid-semester.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Wow.

Cammie Wolf Rice:

Yeah, and looking back, obviously, I wish I would’ve fought back and asked more questions, but it was at the exact same time that OxyContin was released as the wonder drug. We went home with 90 OxyContins and followed by more.

Elizabeth Vargas:

They just told you, this is what he needs to take. This is an incredibly major surgery. He’s undoubtedly in a lot of pain.

Cammie Wolf Rice:

Absolutely, but no conversation at all about the dangers. It was every four hours. I’ll never forget the big orange bottle. My son was in pain, but there was no conversation of the dangers. He became addicted with one prescription.

Elizabeth Vargas:

You said he got addicted off that first single bottle, that first prescription. How do you know that?

Cammie Wolf Rice:

He had complications in the hospital and he was on morphine for 70 days. They punctured his bowel. They did an accidental, punctured his lung. So, he had many complications. Being on morphine all that time and then going home with 90 OxyContins, it hijacked his brain. We just thought, we didn’t understand his behavior being different and he still managed to function, but he was on the opioids and he’s the one that actually came to me and said, “I have a problem, mom. I need it just like you need air to breathe.” He fought it for 14+ years, Elizabeth, I mean multiple rehabs. I feel like I have a PhD in rehabs. It’s called being a M-O-M, a mom.
But going through those multiple, multiple treatment centers and him relapsing and how horrible that made him feel that he couldn’t beat it. He felt like he was letting himself down but letting us down. Ultimately, he overdosed in 2016 and life was just too hard. It was too hard. For two years, I didn’t do anything but just be in fetal position and then woke up in 2018 and said, “I’ve hid this even from my own family because of the stigma around it.” I wanted him so desperately to have a respectable death that I didn’t say anything.

Elizabeth Vargas:

You didn’t think that overdosing was a respectable death?

Cammie Wolf Rice:

No.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Oh, Cammie, my gosh.

Cammie Wolf Rice:

No. So, in 2018 is when I felt like, “What can we do to prevent?” There’s so much being done in the treatment area, and I had lived that for 14+ years. So, I really felt like I needed a purpose in the prevention lane, and I felt like there was a missing person on that hospital team. Nurses don’t have time. Doctors don’t have time to really be that. If you look at our society, Elizabeth, we have coaches for everything, workout coaches, sleep coaches, executive coaches. There’s no coach when you’re in the hospital, and that’s when you desperately need a coach.
So, we’ve developed a new position in the hospitals and I’m super proud about it because you need somebody to tell you about the dangers of the medication that you’re taking and how important it is to taper off quickly if you’re going home with opioids. Look, there is a time and place when you do have to have opioids, but you also need to understand it is not a sustainable solution and that you do have to have a pain management plan that’s non-narcotic.

Elizabeth Vargas:

My youngest son had surgery last year, and I remember him waking up in the recovery room. I was there and he was in an extraordinary amount of pain right after the surgery. The nurse said, “I’m going to give him an OxyContin.” Literally, it was just one, but my reaction because of what I now know about that drug and I didn’t want them to give him a single Oxy. They did, but I found myself undoubtedly irrationally worried that this was going to ignite suddenly some craving in him for more of that drug.
What do you wish somebody had said to you? What do you wish you had known back… Let’s rewind the tape back when Christopher came out of surgery, back when Christopher was about to come home from the hospital after all those complications and recovering and all that time on morphine. What do you wish you had known?

Cammie Wolf Rice:

It’s a great question. I wish that I would have been given pain management techniques to distract pain, to have pain management alternatives. I wish they would’ve told me of the dangers of the opioids.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Did they not know then? In their defense, was that early enough that they didn’t know?

Cammie Wolf Rice:

No, they didn’t. I mean, I don’t think-

Elizabeth Vargas:

Because remember Purdue Pharma was lying to doctors. They were telling doctors, “Oh no, this is not addictive. If they looked like they’re having withdrawal, just increase the dose.”

Cammie Wolf Rice:

Yes, exactly. That’s what happened. So, yes, I don’t think that they knew. So, yes, I wish their knowledge would’ve been there to say, “This is temporary. You need to taper off as quickly as possible to provide other things for pain.” Then there’s the mental side of being sick, Elizabeth. You have anxiety, stress, depression, and normally PTSD when you’re in the hospital with a major trauma. I wasn’t guided to say, “You need to get him some counseling right away.”
Even for me as the caretaker, it was a lot of stress that I didn’t even deal with until after he passed. But if I would’ve had more prep of what he was going to go through, having a hole in his stomach, as a 17-year-old boy, that’s hard. I think the mental side of being sick is such a big piece of the recovery process. I always say, if Christopher would’ve had a life care specialist, he would be alive today. That’s the whole reason that we created that position. I felt like that was missing on the healthcare team.

Elizabeth Vargas:

You’re giving other families what you needed and didn’t get at that time. You mentioned that you noticed right away after he was taking that first bottle of prescribed oxy, that his personality changed. How so?

Cammie Wolf Rice:

He became very reclusive. He was somewhat of an introvert anyway, but he wouldn’t come out of his bedroom and he would play video games, but he would say, “I’m not feeling well. I’m not feeling well.” So I’m not pushing him because he’s saying he doesn’t feel well, but in actuality, I probably should have pushed him to come out more. I just felt he was sick. So, he needed to be in bed, but just more reclusive. I saw more of a personality change. I think that he felt like later on, after multiple rehabs, he was very, very book smart. His goal was to be a Navy SEAL and he felt his brain was hijacked. He felt he was foggy and not as crisp and wasn’t retaining information the way he thought that he used to. Then the side effects of it, there were so many side effects.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Like what?

Cammie Wolf Rice:

I think his were specific because he had his large intestine removed. So, he had a lot of issues going on with the colostomy bag and blockage and things that wouldn’t be across the board for most.

Elizabeth Vargas:

No, we see all the ads all the time for pain pill, constipation. It really screws up your entire body.

Cammie Wolf Rice:

It does.

Elizabeth Vargas:

For a kid who’s just had major abdominal surgery, I’m sure it really created some problems.

Cammie Wolf Rice:

You build up a resistance, like you said earlier. You’re going to have to take stronger and more. When he realized that he couldn’t get them from a prescription, because he would go to the emergency room and he was thinking I was the devil, because he’s in recovery. He can’t have opioids. The emergency room had no idea at that time what to do with people in recovery. They just didn’t know. He would look at me like, “What are you doing? I’m in pain. How could you stop them from giving me that opioid?” I’m like, “No, you don’t understand. You’re going to start back at square zero.” There wasn’t the support for me. Partnership to End Addiction wasn’t around. If I would’ve had that, oh my gosh. The support that the families need, it’s absolute hell.

Elizabeth Vargas:

What does a mother supposed to do if their child is recovering from an opioid addiction and they’re in the ER in extreme pain and the doctors are saying, “We need to give him an opioid”? What are you supposed to do?

Cammie Wolf Rice:

Yeah. I always refer back that movie Terms of Endearment, where Shirley MacLaine-

Elizabeth Vargas:

Yeah, that scene where she’s-

Cammie Wolf Rice:

Give my daughter the shot. I was the opposite. Don’t give him the shot, screaming. That’s still the challenge today, I think, in our healthcare system of how to deal.

Elizabeth Vargas:

But there are other pain meds that aren’t opioids.

Cammie Wolf Rice:

Yes, there are. There are and it is getting better. So, I don’t want to be doom and gloom. I do see a lot of pain alternatives, and there are medications that are actually FDA approved coming out on the market for people, but back then there wasn’t. So, they had to put them back on the opioid and we’d be back at square zero again. It was just a continuous loop.

Elizabeth Vargas:

How many rehabs did Christopher go to?

Cammie Wolf Rice:

I think a total of five. Yeah.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Did they work? Did you have good experiences? Do you look back and say, “That was a waste of money”? I mean, I’m just curious.

Cammie Wolf Rice:

Yeah, that’s a deep dark hole that I could spend hours talking about as well. There were some that were very bad that was a waste of money. Then he went to The Refuge down in Florida, and that was the best one, the last one that he attended. He did go to Hazelden one time and that was good, but he would get out. I think what’s important is when they get out of treatment. What’s the plan? Statistics, I think, show still today that if people have a solid job to go back to, they have a likelihood of more success. Christopher, he was in college. He graduated. He went back to get his master’s. He wanted to be a social worker, but he didn’t have, I feel, a solid enough support system for when he got out of that treatment center like what to do on a day-to-day basis.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Are you talking to maintain sobriety like a sponsor or sober living, or are you talking general life stuff like a job?

Cammie Wolf Rice:

Like a general lifestyle. We had a sober support for him and counseling and therapy and all of that. He went to the meetings, and I talk about this a little bit in my book. I felt like there’s tremendous things about AA and there were a lot of great steps in AA, but the one that really was detrimental for Christopher is to stand up every day. He felt like by saying, “Hi, I am Christopher. I’m an addict I’m a loser,” it was just defeating him. Instead of standing up and saying, “I’m Christopher. I’m extraordinary and I’ve got this and I’m going to beat this and today’s going to be an amazing day,” it would take him down.
Because he beat himself up, right? Because he had such high level of, he wanted to be a Navy SEAL. He was that disciplined kid. So, he just couldn’t understand why he kept relapsing and failing, but it was hijacking his brain. So, that part I think was really detrimental for him. He needed more uplifting empowerment as opposed to feeling bad that he had failed.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Yeah, I think people still don’t fully understand, including people who are in recovery or trying to stay in recovery, that relapse is part of recovery. It doesn’t mean you failed. It doesn’t mean you’re a loser. It doesn’t mean you’re a hopeless case. It just means you have to stand back up and dust yourself off and start counting again.

Cammie Wolf Rice:

We don’t have a strong relapse plan in place, already ahead of time, of who you’re going to call. Who’s that first person? Who’s that second person? Who’s that third person that you’re going to call if you can’t get a hold of one and two? Really having a solid plan when you’re triggered and you want to use.

Elizabeth Vargas:

So after he came out of The Refuge in Florida, did he seem to you at least like okay, he’s got it now?

Cammie Wolf Rice:

Yes. He was very, very grounded. He got to the point where he would go into a treatment center. Instead of focusing on himself, he was the one helping everybody else, the newcomer.

Elizabeth Vargas:

He knew the drill so well. Yeah, I’ve seen that, veterans of rehab.

Cammie Wolf Rice:

Big time hugger, big time listening ear, really empathetic and compassionate, and he just really took on other people and their issues. That’s what he ended up doing a lot more. He was more grounded before he passed than ever. I was living in Hong Kong at the time, and he came to Hong Kong. He was the last one of our sons. We have a school in Cambodia. I was taking him to Cambodia and we were in this organization. So, we’re going on these night walks and we’re going to the school. We’re going to the health clinics. He overdosed in Cambodia.

Elizabeth Vargas:

He overdosed in Cambodia. What happened?

Cammie Wolf Rice:

In the hotel room. We were sharing a room and he went out on the street and it was very strong. It’s very strong heroin there apparently. I mean, back then in 2016, I wasn’t aware of fentanyl and it could have had fentanyl in it. I don’t know. Yeah, I found him in the morning in the bathroom and he was gone.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Oh, Cammie. How does a mother come back from that?

Cammie Wolf Rice:

Yeah, that’s why the purpose is so important. If I didn’t have CWC, if I wasn’t out saving lives, I just wouldn’t do well. I just wouldn’t. I miss him every single second. But his life was so hard that I know he’s at peace 100%. I know he’s at peace, but my brother was in recovery. I believe addiction, there is a DNA component to this. I would love to see more study around it. My brother broke his ankle, off to the races with the opioids.

Elizabeth Vargas:

He got addicted too?

Cammie Wolf Rice:

He was doing very, very well. He was in recovery, and COVID took him. So, a friend stopped by and gave him a Xanax. It had fentanyl in it, and it killed my brother. I really feel like it’s my assignment to be doing what I’m doing. So, when he died of fentanyl and then my son with the opioids, I was like, “Okay, what more can I do?” So, every time I get the chance to speak in a microphone to parents, anytime I can talk and share and educate and advocate, and people think that it’s not going to happen to them.
It’s even still today hard for me to tell you, “Oh, my brother died of fentanyl,” because I’m thinking, “Oh, my gosh.” People are thinking, “Oh, my God. What is going on in her family?” and the whole stigma thing. Wow. So, her son dies of an overdose and now her brother dies of fentanyl poisoning. It’s not about looking good. I don’t care about that anymore. I used to worry about that. It is about saving lives for me.

Elizabeth Vargas:

I was very struck by something you said in another interview. You said, “We have to start portraying people who are suffering and are dealing with substance use disorder as human beings and not as separate segments in our society, but the issue is that nobody wants to look bad. Nobody wants to be thinking they failed as a parent.” You didn’t fail as a parent. This is a disease. We still today in 2024, we still don’t treat it like the disease it is.

Cammie Wolf Rice:

No, no, we don’t and that’s the problem. I think silence is deadly. I really believe that. I think back what it would’ve been like had I came out and talked to people and could have had more support and could have had more love.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Did you cut yourself off from getting that support because you were so ashamed of the way Christopher died?

Cammie Wolf Rice:

Yeah, and even the 14 years, I spoke very little of it. There were close friends that knew that he was struggling, but I did not share like I should have. That’s why I’m saying now you got to share because we are out there. There is a whole group of people, massive group of people that have been there.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Millions and millions of people, more Americans have had experience dealing with addiction than have not.

Cammie Wolf Rice:

Exactly, exactly. So, you need to speak out and that’s the thing.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Yet so many of them are siloed and lonely and walking and dealing with it alone because of that. Getting back to Christopher, when he came to visit you in Cambodia, did you have any idea that he was using again?

Cammie Wolf Rice:

I don’t think he was using again. I think that was his-

Elizabeth Vargas:

His first time.

Cammie Wolf Rice:

So, I was in the US and we went to New York. We had a great time in New York. Then we flew to Hong Kong, and we were in Hong Kong for two weeks. I’m so blessed that I got to spend every day and night with him two weeks before he passed. We did everything. We went to the horse races. We went to the movies, massage. I would’ve known that he was using and he wasn’t. He was so grounded and so at peace.

Elizabeth Vargas:

How long had he been sober at that point?

Cammie Wolf Rice:

Definitely over a year.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Oh, wow.

Cammie Wolf Rice:

This was the longest that he had been in a treatment center, because that is one thing I will say and I want to go back to your question about Cambodia, but I feel like insurance companies really need to extend time for treatment. You can’t send somebody away in a treatment center for rehabilitation for 30 days, write a check, and think it’s going to be okay. We’d send him a little bit longer and a little bit longer. At The Refuge, he was there almost a year and that was where he really, really was better. I can’t say for sure, my family says there’s no way that he did it on purpose because he would’ve written a note or I don’t know. I don’t know, Elizabeth, and I’ll never know.
But I felt like it was a spiritual thing because I had gone to Cambodia and said, “Oh, my gosh. This is the most spiritual place.” When we moved to Hong Kong, I was looking all over Asia. What can I do philanthropic now? I’m retired. I’m living in Hong Kong, and I picked Cambodia. We have a school there. We have a medical clinic there and then my son ends up passing away there. I can’t even explain the spiritual… I mean, the next day there were 200 Cambodians, that half of them I had never even met. They were there to be there for me and had a funeral for Christopher and a Buddhist send off. Then he had a funeral here, and it was a spiritual thing. It was his time. That’s how I have to live with that is that it was his time because he definitely was not using before that night.

Elizabeth Vargas:

So he was in The Refuge, that rehab in Florida for a year. Then how long had he been out of that rehab when you took that trip to Cambodia?

Cammie Wolf Rice:

It was just right after.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Right after. So, it was his first foray out into the real world where you do have access and where I’m sure his tolerance after a year of not being on any drugs was lowered. I mean, we have millions of people who became addicted to Oxy and end up switching because once they can’t get the Oxy, they turned heroin. Is that what happened in Christopher’s case as well?

Cammie Wolf Rice:

Exactly what happened. I would’ve never dreamed in a million years that he would do heroin. I just never, and I don’t think he had a choice. I think his brain was completely hijacked, and it was telling him, “You must have. You must have. You must have.” Yeah, I think that’s exactly what happens to so many people. Once you can’t get the prescription any longer, they go to the street and then like today, then there’s fentanyl. So, yeah, that is exactly what happened.

Elizabeth Vargas:

When you say his brain was hijacked, I mean he just had a year sober in this facility that you had sent him to, and that was good that you thought was really helping him. What does that say about the power of that hijacking that he would get out and then a few weeks later pick up again?

Cammie Wolf Rice:

It never goes away out of your brain. It’s just there. Hearing you repeat that story back to me, it doesn’t give hope to others out there and I don’t want to do that because I do believe recovery is real.

Elizabeth Vargas:

It is real.

Cammie Wolf Rice:

Absolutely. I think with all of his health issues, I think that was also added to it because he had a lot of pain that he dealt with and a lot of stomach issues, a lot after not having a large intestine and all of that, have blockages and surgeries. So, I think that had a component to it as well as he was tired.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Yeah. You wrote a book about this entire experience. You called it The Flight, My Opioid Journey. You started a foundation in Christopher’s name, and yet you said you spent the first two years after he died literally wishing there was a different story, feeling ashamed of the way he died. What helped you get over that shame and not only embrace what really happened to him but to go public with it?

Cammie Wolf Rice:

Yeah, because I never said the word overdose, not even to family members did I even say that word. I think I had an epiphany. I was literally journaling, and I felt like, “How can I not walk the walk? If I don’t want people to have stigma, if I’m not willing to talk about it, then how’s it ever going to change? How’s it ever going to change?” It was a spiritual moment honestly. I think journaling was a big piece of healing for me, I mean, to help me get out of that fetal position on that loss because there’s nothing worse, like zero, nothing.

Elizabeth Vargas:

I can’t fathom anything worse.

Cammie Wolf Rice:

No, yeah, you never want to be a part of that team, that sorority, but I did meet other moms. The DEA had a family summit in DC and I went to that. I met other moms that were doing things. Of course, I had already started CWC at that point, but I just kept saying, “Gosh, why didn’t somebody tell us these things in the hospital? What is wrong with our healthcare system that I didn’t know what I didn’t know? How many people are dealing with this today? How many more people are going to die because they’re not going to know?” That was like an alarm. Then I got this burning fire inside of me like oh, my gosh, you’ve got to do something. You’ve got to ring a fire bell. You’ve got to warn people. You’ve got to tell people. Almost obsessively, Elizabeth.
I couldn’t even hardly talk about anything else once I got started on what CWC was about and what we were going to do. Now it’s still that way to this day. That is my joy. That is my joy. It’s really hard to turn it off. I came from the corporate world and I worked and did all that, but I’m working harder now than I ever have. It’s what keeps me happy, because I know I’m saving lives. I know I’m making a difference. I see the results of what’s going on with our life care specialists in hospitals. On our weekly calls when they’re on there and they’re telling me these different stories of what they did with different patients and families, I’m like, “Okay, okay, one patient.”

Elizabeth Vargas:

How many hospitals have these life care specialists now?

Cammie Wolf Rice:

So, we did our clinical trials. We started, of course, and then COVID hit. They allowed us to continue doing the trial, which was amazing. We started at Grady Trauma Hospital, which is one of the top trauma hospitals in the country. That’s our training hub. So, we’re in multiple areas there. We started in orthopedic trauma unit because that’s where young people with a football injury, a gymnastics injury.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Break a leg.

Cammie Wolf Rice:

Yup. So, we started there. So, that’s our training hub. Now we are just launching into rural hospitals. We just launched into our first rural. We’re launching into 11 hospitals this year. Harvard Business School is doing a case study on the life care specialist. We just received opioid settlement money in another state. We’ve got two hospitals in Arkansas. Believe it or not, Arkansas is leading the pack on opioid settlement money and actually getting it distributed out into the state. So, we just received funding for that. We just applied for funding in Georgia. That’s the thing, it’s complicated because every state is doing it different.
So, to apply for opioid settlement money in each state and for every state to know that we’re out there because the hospitals actually apply for the money and then we are the vendor that supplies the life care specialist program. We have curriculum that’s accredited at Mercer University. We’re going to be opening that up for healthcare workers to get accredited, CMUs for opioid education. So, yeah, there’s a lot going on at CWC, and I’m super, super proud of my team. This is not just me out there. It’s a whole team.

Elizabeth Vargas:

CWC, we should tell our listeners is the Christopher Wolf Crusade, founded in his name. Then of course, you’re on the board of directors for the Partnership to End Addiction. You and I are serving. We serve together. I think we have a board meeting tomorrow.

Cammie Wolf Rice:

We do. Yes. Yes. I’m excited about being on the board. I really am. I love the resources that Partnership provides. As I said, I didn’t have those resources when I was going through it. To be able to provide that to the patients that we serve at CWC, I am out there- call Partnership. So, there’s a lot of synergy in our strategies. So, yeah, I’m super honored to be on the board and really, really appreciate this opportunity, Elizabeth, to have this conversation. I mean, I feel like you can go all over the place when you’re talking about this. It’s like an octopus. There’s so many lanes to substance misuse, but thank you so much for the opportunity to share my story and what we’re doing.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Thank you. Thank you for coming on Heart of the Matter.