Mom’s death blamed on US opioid crisis in heartbreaking obit
by Hannah Frishberg, New York Post, October 10, 2019
Megan Webbley, Courtesy of the Webbley Family
Her life was lost to America’s rising opioid death toll — but her family aims to save others from the same fate.
Megan Angelina Webbley died Sunday, Sept. 29. “Specifically, she died of an overdose, finally losing her battle with addiction,” reads her brutally honest obit in the Seven Days of Vermont. She was 31.
The mother of four was in New Hampshire when she passed, seeking treatment for a drug problem her family said developed after she was prescribed opiates while recovering from a 2005 cliff diving accident.
The “fearless” and “adventuresome” mom had suffered a suspected traumatic brain injury and needed her jaw wired shut after being pushed off a cliff and hitting the rocks below, face first. Her family says doctors prescribed her a “liberal” dose of opiates.
It was then, the sobering obit reads, “she lost control of her life.”
Webbley spent the past 14 years in and out of rehab and jail. A “bright and determined mother,” she was separated from her children, “who were collectively the light of her dark life.”
Her family does not mince words: “To editorialize, I am hoping that the Department for Children and Families rethinks its mission to be the punisher of addicted mothers, the separator of families and the arbiter of children’s futures, and instead embrace a mission of enhanced rehabilitation,” the obituary concludes.
“Because, as one would guess, once the mother is separated from her children, desperation sets in, even with the brightest and most determined of mothers — and Megan Angelina Webbley was that bright and determined mother … with a fatal disease and a dearth of treatment options.”
Her family still doesn’t know the exact circumstances of her death.
Every day, more than 130 Americans die from opioid overdoses, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. In 2017 alone, 47,600 Americans died from opioid overdoses.
The US Justice Department’s inspector general said in an Oct. 1 report that the Drug Enforcement Administration was “slow to respond” to the nation’s opioid epidemic, faulting the DEA for raising production quotas even as death rates rose in tandem.
In September, Purdue Pharma — the pharmaceutical company which makes Oxycontin — filed for bankruptcy protection in the face of 2,600 federal and state lawsuits against it.
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