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ATTENTION:

My name is Jesilyn, and I’m writing to you today concerning a medication called Coricidin. On Friday February 27, 2004 a young man, who will remain nameless, walked into a local QFC Grocery Store and stole a box of 24 coricidin tablets, an 18 pack of Budweiser, and 2 forty-ounce beers. The young man was thirteen years old. This child met up with my fourteen year old daughter, who at that moment was drug free and convinced her to take the over the counter medication as a way of “Feeling good/ getting high”.


Two hours later my daughter called for me from her bedroom. She told me what she had done, and told me she felt sick. She was very frightened. I asked her what she had taken, how much and where she got it. She answered my questions honestly. She had taken sixteen Coricidin tablets. I immediately called poison control, they advised me to get medical attention immediately.

When we reached Highline Community Hospital they took her strait back to a bed. Once there they inserted IV’s and hooked her up to vital machines. Her heart rate was 145; mind you a normal rate varies between 60-100. Her breathing rate was 45 times a minuet. The average respiration for a 14 yr old child is 14-20 times per min. As she lay in that hospital bed with electrical cords attached to her chest and tubes in her arms, my heart felt like it was breaking. Do you know what it’s like to hear your child ask, “Mommy am I going to die?” I do, and I can tell you that it is the most horrible thing next to loosing that child you can face. Imagine you couldn’t answer that question because the situation was beyond your control. Now imagine begging your child to slow their breathing and try to stay calm that you understand that they are scared but if they don’t calm down they will make things worse. Imagine that you are holding their hands as their body shakes and their eyes stream with tears. Do you see how disturbing this would be for a mother who loves her child more than anything in this world?

My daughter knows all about drugs. As a parent I psychologically inoculated her with the pros and cons of drug abuse. I followed every means possible to prevent her involvement but it was not enough to prevent this tragity. She made it through this horrible experience with minimum complications. The effects suffered ranged from being scared, to physical problems such as lack of sight, hyperventilation, and dangerously increased heart rates, to feeling high for days after the occurrence. She has vowed to never touch medications legal or otherwise again.

After speaking to my Psychology professor at Highline Community College I decided to follow Dr. Baughers advice. I looked up information concerning this drug on-line. What I found was a national disaster! Preteens as young as 12 years of age are dying because over doses brought on by the Coricidin. The abuse rate is rising daily. After collecting data I decided to visit the QFC grocery store down the road and talk with management.

I walked into the store, found the Coricidin on the shelf, and asked to speak to the store manager. Kevin came out and asked if he could help me. I held out my hand and said, “Hi, my name is Jessica Montgomery, and 1st I’d like to give these to you.” I handed him the boxes I had collected from the shelf. I showed him an 8X10 photo of my daughter. I told him this is my 14-year-old daughter. On February 27 this child almost died from an over dose of Coricidin. I continued to explain how she had acquired the drug. I expressed my concern about their storage of medication. I pointed out that the medication is located in the back of the store in isle 6A. I explained that his cashiers could not possibly see when a child steals medications. I asked him to change the location of the meds so that it could be supervised. Kevin told me that he is not capable of such dicission making. I asked him to provide me with the information I needed to contact the person responsible for the store lay out and medication ordering. We walked over to Customer Service, and as he looked for the information I needed, I noticed, in the glass case behind him there were, Trojan condoms, pregnancy tests, cigarettes, and one type of medicine (a box of Kroger Brand Antihistamine nasal decongestant cold and allergy). Sad that they keep protection behind glass but not the most harmful of drugs that has killed many teens in the United States. He gave me the following address and phone number:

QFC Bellevue Office

10116 NE 8th Street

Bellevue, Washington

98004

425-455-3761

Fax# 425-990-6589

Before I left the store I thanked Kevin and told him I hoped that I would get attention to this from the address he gave me. I told him I would not give up. I meant that.

I left QFC and walked over to Bartell’s Drugs. Again, I walked in and gathered one of each of the Coricidin boxes from the shelf (five different boxes). I asked a clerk to allow me to speak to the Manager. Rod Guild stepped out and I again held out my hand and told him my story. As I showed him my daughter’s photo he said, “I think I know where this is going.” I shook my head yes, and finished telling him what happen. At first, I thought he was going to react like Kevin at QFC did. Instead he said,” You got this off our shelves?” I nodded my head, YES! He walked over to the Cold Medicine section looked at me and said, “I’ll take care of this.” Mr. Guild immediately began to take the items off the shelf. He showed me others he had taken to a glass cabinet prior to my visit. I asked permission to add his name to my letter and any articles I planned to send out, he said he didn’t mind. I thanked the man, and left with a feeling of accomplishment.

My story is not unusual, my daughters over dose is not unusual. Children all over the United States are over dosing, and dying daily. I called the poison control 1-800 number. I asked them how many cases of overdose do they get daily involving Coricidin. The gentleman I spoke to said, “ We deal with tons of HBP cases”. He said “there isn’t a day that goes by that at least one Coricidin overdose case isn’t called in to the Poison control hotline.”

With this story in mind, I ask you to help me protect our children. I ask you to make Coricidin abuse less accessible. I ask that if you aren’t the one who makes the discussions for where and when kids come in contact with the drug that you pass this on to those who can. I am asking people to walk into their local stores and follow my footsteps, force the change. If the store disagrees with your protest and you can’t gain cooperation contact the media, papers, news, and make them see the danger. Our children’s future depends on the prompt actions of the adults in charge of their care. May another child never die in vain!

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Jesilyn

www.true-emotions.net

j_montgomery@true-emotions.net

Logosnote: Today I got an e-mail from Jesilyn which contained the following message:

QFC as of yesterday....called to tell me ALL this drug will be removed from every QFC store.... for me this is an accomplishment...



The other reason that I was interested in posting this particular item though it has little relation to marijuana is because this person took it upon herself to do something about a problem that she had found, and that my friends is activism at its finest!

To find out now that her actions have created a change for the better just makes it all that much more significant to what we are doing here.

If we don't strive to make the world a better place through our thoughts and actions, the world won't become a better place. It isn't the responsibility of the government to create these changes, it is our responsibility. The sooner we understand that, the sooner the world becomes a better place to live.

Become active!

Note:
The tie to marijuana here is best described by the author in an e-mail dialouge I had with her. I don't smoke weed myself haven't in years however I do wonder with weed being safer and natural how can they keep this on the shelves while making weed illegal.

The connection is that kids have access to drugs that will kill them, Cannabis does not have the capacity to kill anyone as a direct result of consuming it."

I also asked her to supply a laundry list of actions that she went through to create this change. If you see something needing changed in your environment, try these ideas out, and see if they work for you too. If you have anything to add, please do so.

1. collect info about the situation you want to change.
Be sure you include satistics and reputable opinions. in this case dr's and emergency personnel would work best.

2. approach others concerning your ideas, sometimes others have ideas that will help you in your quest.

3. Find out whats been tried before, learn from it.

4. Always approach people with Respect..If you act violently and disrespectful people never listen.

5. Remember the kids... People care about children for the most part.

6. Pick and choose your battles carefully.

7. Compile a letter, and make that letter very public. join groups, go to news forums. gain support...but stay respectful.

8. If the subject includes stores like mine did...approach the owners. Point out the dangers..in this case you want weed legal.. You point out that many harmful drugs are perfectly assessable to kids.... Where weed a natural substance is illegal.

9. Last but not least DO NOT GIVE UP!

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Brother Logos
The more I learn, the less I know.
THC Ministry | The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ | The Reluctant Messenger of Science and Religion
True religion is real living, living with all one's soul, with all ones goodness and righteousness. --Albert Einstein

 

Ilúvatar

that is my only beef with the letter. i feel very sorry for your daughter and hope the best for her, and also coricidin is a VERY DANGEROUS drug, but kids aren't dying every day from it. i don't doubt that the poison control gets at least one call a day for an overdose, but everyone of them won't die. this isn't to say that it isn't harmful to their bodies. i've heard of bleeding from every imaginable place from that stuff, but they don't always die because of it, and that mostly happens when they don't seek help.

Again, I'm not saying that coriciden isn't dangerous, and it needs to be put behind the counter to become less accessible, but kids are not dying everyday from it.

again best of luck to you and your daughter, Jesilyn

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NotRegistered

"On Friday February 27, 2004...."

How is it possible that this person is writing about an event that will not happen for two weeks?

mech4sage

I know exactly what your talking about, except tat I dont have anny kids but know the dangers of the crap. The chemicals in craciedents are the same drugs in other various halucanages spelling sorry! and can have severe affects some friends I ONCE KNEW took the crap. Im sorry to hear about your daugter, now in columbus the are put behind the counter mostly due to good parents. and thanx you for carring GO MADD MOMS!!!!!!!

(edited article quote out) Logos

Logos

My bad, I was supposed to edit that. Should have been Friday the 7th, which doesn't make sense either, so it was either the 6th or the 7th.

 

Higher Logic

It's a good letter, has a nice emotional attatchment to it, but you can die from almost anything. You can OD on Tylenol, cough medicine, bleach, KY Jelly, and just about anything else. The only part of the letter I enjoyed was the thing about cannabis and how even in the most highest of doses you cannot kill yourself, which should have been the MAIN focus of the letter...

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Logos

Normally I wouldn't have even posted it since there is no marijuana connection aside from the one she made when I pointed that out to her. I wanted a reason to post it, and the reason I chose was that activism pays off with a plan and some perserverance.

After just one week with a local medical marijuana activist group, I'm finding the work very rewarding. I'll elaborate in the future.

horns_are_music

I just wanted to say that the article is very touching however, I have to agree with several of the other comments. People are not dying daily from this or other over-the-counter drugs but simply because one death occurred from this rather odd situation, it is blown up to make it seem like a serious problem. Not a lot of people realize that more people die from single car accidents alone then from this. So it seems to me that you are focusing your energy on this one small subject way too much. It would seem more efficient to find a way to make cars safer rather than to try to make entire stores across the country "clear their shelves" of this drug that many people rely on everyday to get over a cold like the medicine was made to do. There are thousands and thousands of medications that people can use to get "high" on. Are we going to make stores put every single one of these behind their shelves? I'm not saying I don't care about the few deaths that have occurred from this. I just think that people need to focus this amount of energy into a bigger problem that would save more than just a few lives. I admit, I have taken Coricidin, more than once. I regret that I ever did it but let me say this. The effect that it gave me was surreal. I didn't feel violent or anything. I was simply high. Everything was hazy to me and I can recall MOST of what happened but it was something like none other. It took about 1 1/2 hours to affect me after I took the 12 tablets. At first I didn't think it was doing anything to me but then it will hit you suddenly. One second you will feel normal then the next second you will feel like your head just got 10 pounds lighter. My vision was affected greatly by this. I couldn't actually make out anybodys face, even when they were standing directly in front of me. That was the initial hit. The drug lasted for a little more than 24 hours. After I regained my eye sight, I was very difficult for me to walk. In fact, I couldn't walk. I had to crawl on the floor and everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. Just to give you an example, I would turn my head to the left and my eyes would still me seeing what was in front of me and then slowly my brain would register that I had actually turned my head and my eye sight would "catch up" to me. I don't want this to come across as bad. The entire time I felt very good and didn't care what happened. Now that is actually the bad part. If somebody would have had a heart attack or something like that in front of me, I probably wouldn't have cared seriously. It just made me not care about anything. Going to sleep was something else. I never actually went to sleep. I simply feel into a trance. I was acutely aware of what was going on around me. Several hours later I felt somewhat normal but the effects were still there. The entire next day I felt like I could run for days and never get tired. My reflexs were very slow and sometimes I would get dizzy spells. Looking back now, I see how stupid it was that I ever decided to take it. The choice to take it was entirely mine so the choice to quit was also entirely mine. I made the choice to quit it after I read about some of the serious side effects and reading some stories. And in some of these stories, the people had only taken 5-6 tablets, however I swallowed down 12 and 16 tablets one time. I am very lucky to have not gotten sick. In fact, I never ever felt sick but I think it was luck that was with me those times. But like I said, I think that we are focusing too much energy on a subject that is in fact, not that big of a deal. That is all.