Opioid addiction almost destroyed me – then I became a top marathon runner

It began in 1998 with ankle pain and a podiatrist’s prescription for seven Percocet, a pill containing oxycodone. The drug dulled both pain and anxiety, and Ken Rideout soon learned to alter prescriptions and target smaller pharmacies to get more. A move to London felt like a fresh start, but within a week he was in extreme withdrawal; he asked his brother to FedEx OxyContin, found a private doctor and kept chasing the certainty the pills offered.

“I wasn’t even happiest when I took the drugs,” he says. “I was happiest knowing that they were coming.” He flirted with sobriety — attending Narcotics Anonymous and trying Subutex — but relapses persisted. Opioids, he writes, “kill joy” and robbed him of pleasure and connection.

At his worst he was ordering from pill mills and taking “generally 20 to 30 oxycodone tablets per day,” or needed 10 pills a day just to avoid withdrawal, swinging between euphoria and deep irritability.

United Kingdom, London

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