“I bought the house specifically so my family could stay united and so that I could show them the right way of life,” Debbie says.

The proximity, however, has been a mixed blessing. Her daughter Rachael has been battling an addiction to prescription pills for 10 years, and her daughter Tabitha has been struggling through years of addiction to prescription pills, among other drugs.

“I thought it was street drugs. I never dreamed it was prescriptions,” Debbie says. “Why do the doctor’s keep giving them this crap?”

Rachael was 13, Debbie says, when her psychiatrist first prescribed her drugs, which she began abusing.

“When they were little, professional people, adults, were giving my children drugs,” Debbie says. “These adult people were wrecking the lives of my kids.”

Debbie is upset that she never gave consent for her daughter, who was 13 at the time, to receive prescription medication. It has forced her to confront the larger issue of some health professionals’ attitudes toward prescribing pharmaceutical controlled substances with little regard to the ramifications of their actions.

“It’s a crisis situation in this town,” she said. “We need help here.”

Rachel and her sister Tabitha talk to their mother Debbie about their efforts to find jobs. Neither woman has been able to get stable work since leaving prison in 2007.