France 2 broadcast “Mom, don’t let me fall asleep”, adaptation of the eponymous book by Juliette Boudre, Wednesday April 26. His son Joseph died of an overdose of Xanax and Fentanyl in particular, at only 18 years old.
[Mis à jour le 26 avril 2023 à 22h51] This Wednesday, April 26 at 9:10 p.m., France 2 broadcast the TV movie “Mom does not let me fall asleep”, taken from the book by Juliette Boudre. She recounts her son’s fight against his addiction to drugs, and in particular to painkillers. On December 29, 2016, at just 18 years old, Joseph Boudre was found unresponsive by his grandmother. A few hours later, he was pronounced dead at the hospital.
In the magazine She, Juliette Boudre indicated that her son’s addiction began while he was in boarding school in England: “The English college doctor gives him an anxiolytic, and Joseph likes the hovering effect it gives him.” Back in France, his parents tried to send him to rehab, to no avail. A psychiatrist will again prescribe him anxiolytics which will be at the origin of an overconsumption of these drugs, and therefore of his death.
“If it could happen to him, it can happen to any kid”, according to Juliette Boudre
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 of 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. ‘European 1.
Juliette Boudre is at the origin of this project carried out 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 of the family hopes that the TV movie will then be screened in schools.
Deaths from opioid overdoses jumped 192% according to Ofma between 2000 and 2017
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 scale of the crisis in the United States. But there is no reassuring development in France. We must worry about it now, because the situation in North America is 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 Pr 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.