Toledo family encourages understanding of prescription-drug abuse

Staff report

WARREN

State Rep. Sean O’Brien of Bazetta, D-63rd, and April Schalow of Holland, Ohio, near Toledo, agree that people often don’t fully understand the impact of prescription-drug abuse.

“This is the face of addiction. It starts right here,” O’Brien said Tuesday on Courthouse Square looking toward Schalow, her husband, Kyle, and their four young children, all dressed in orange T-shirts.

Kyle Schalow says the problem of over-using prescription drugs can lead to illegal opiates such as heroin. He referred to these people in society as “Generation Rx.”

April Schalow became addicted to prescription medications several years ago but has been clean for more than two years.

The Schalows are traveling around Ohio this summer. They stopped first in Perrysburg, then Findlay before reaching Warren. They bring with them thousands of bottles formerly used for prescriptions, and they arrange them into a picture that illustrates the problem while they talk about it. The bottles are from around the world, including most of the 50 states.

The family’s goal is to collect 38,000 prescription containers and take them Sept. 28 to Washington, D.C., to the FED UP Rally on the Mall and March to the White House. They have about 8,000 so far.

Kyle Schalow says the project borrows from another idea — the Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall — and also encourages “purposeful recycling” of the containers.

The project, which they call Rx Epidemic Memorial, also is an effort to educate people about the problem as well as the services available in each community. Additional trips are planned in July to central Pennsylvania and Toledo.

“What we’re finding is that the communities have really great programs, but people are not aware of them,” April Schalow said. “Part of the problem is that there is such a stigma associated with addiction, they don’t want to talk about it,” she said of addicts.

State Sen. Capri Cafaro of Liberty, D-32nd, said her 18 months of working in hospitals as part of her master’s degree studies in social work opened her eyes.

“I saw quite a few babies affected by the opiate epidemic,” she said. “There’s nothing more poignant than a baby with withdrawal.”