France 2 unveils this evening the adaptation of “Mom, don’t let me fall asleep”, a book by Juliette Boudre which traces her son’s fight against painkillers. An overdose of Xanax and Fentanyl killed him at just 18.
December 29, 2016, 18-year-old Joseph Boudre was found unresponsive in his bed by his paternal grandmother. Hospitalized, he was quickly declared dead when his organs stopped. His death was due to an overdose of medication. Joseph swallowed large quantities of benzodiazepines and opiates. Her story is adapted into a TV movie, “Mom don’t let me fall asleep”, broadcast on France 2 at 9:10 p.m.
At 16, Joseph is in an English boarding house. Anxious and prone to insomnia, he was prescribed a Xanax by his director. The medicine relieves the young man. Back in France, a psychiatrist prescribed him anxiolytics to fight against the return of his discomfort. Except that the teenager quickly becomes addicted and overconsumes these drugs. His mother, Juliette, becomes aware of this but the shrink replies: “You know madam, it is more dangerous not to sleep than to take medicine.”
His family tries to help him reduce his addiction through hospitalizations and cures. One of them is almost dramatic because doctors confuse Joseph with another patient and give him Oxycontin, a very powerful painkiller. However, he manages to get out of this infernal spiral.
In December 2016, his mother understands that her son has relapsed. During the Christmas holidays, he hides in Cannes while he is at his grandmother’s. A dealer sells him what he thinks is morphine but it’s actually Fentanyl. This drug is infamous for killing Michael Jackson, Prince or Mac Miller. In France, this opiate 100 times stronger than morphine is prescribed “for short periods in certain cases of cancer or after major operations” according to the OFDT (French observatory for drugs and addictive tendencies).
Joseph mixes this Fentanyl with benzodiazepines. This mixture will be fatal to him. “I went through a period of guilt, which will live with me forever. That’s why I want to do prevention, alert, give conferences,” says his mother at the microphone. Europe 1.
Juliette Boudre is behind this project directed by Sylvie Testud. Its purpose is to highlight drug addiction among adolescents. They deviate from the classic use of opium-derived painkillers by overusing them to the point of addiction. The TV movie will then be accompanied by a debate on France 2. The mother hopes that the TV movie will then be screened in schools.
246% is the increase in hospitalizations for accidental overdoses of opioids between 2000 and 2021. This leads eight people a day to go to the emergency room for an overdose of this type of drug in France. Nicolas Authier, director of the French Observatory of Analgesic Medicines (Ofma), wishes to be reassuring all the same: “It has nothing to do with the extent of the crisis in the United States. But there is no reassuring development in France. It is necessary to be concerned about it now, because the situation in North America is the proof that once installed, the crisis is unstoppable.”
François Braun, Minister of Health, met Juliette Boudre according to Le Parisien. He confides to the daily newspaper having commissioned Professor Amine Benyamina for a ministerial mission: “I want us to understand what are the roots of addictions to avoid falling into them, rather than treating them in reaction, when it is already too late. “. The health world seems aware of this danger since opioid prescriptions fell by 6.9% between 2017 and 2021 according to Le Parisien.
