Watertown optometrist to share story

 

January 16, 2019

Melanie Weiss, O.D.

Optometrist Melanie Weiss will share her powerful message of hope and recovery in the Ipswich School Theater on Thursday, Jan. 17, 2019 at 7 p.m.

Weiss said she had three surgeries in three years. Her third surgery, in 2010 was knee surgery. After the surgeries she started to use opiods for pain relief.

She found that she had developed a tolerance for the medication. It began innocently, she said. She began increasing the doses. She had studied the medications in college and thought she could handle the increased doses.

Eventually she said it made her feel like she was "superwoman." She continued abusing the drugs for six to seven years. "The drugs had changed me," she said. She would take medications from other people.

She had built her own successful business in Watertown. In 2016 she left the office and walked to a home to steal drugs. The local police were watching her office and followed her to the home. She was arrested in September of 2016. She was charged with six felonies and eventually pled to lesser crimes. She was sentenced to 180 days in the Coddington County jail. Her 70 days in rehab programs counted toward her sentence, so she served 110 days in jail in the summer of 2017.

Weiss said she was so ashamed when she came home she contemplated leaving the area. Shortly after she came home she was asked to speak in a radio interview. "It was healing," she said. Then others asked her to speak to other groups. She decided to stay in Watertown to help others.

Her optometry license was suspended until January 2019. She was back seeing patients after New Years Day 2019.

Weiss will speak to Ipswich and Edmunds Central high school students Thursday afternoon. The public is invited to attend the event in Ipswich at 7 p.m. Admission is free.

Sheriff Todd Holtz said Weiss' time in Ipswich is sponsored by FEM Electric, Beck Law and Moore Associates.

 

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