Week 5 of 2025’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge is “Challenge”
We’re all familiar with the Rolling Stones’ song “Mother’s Little Helper.”
“Kids are different today” I hear every mother say
Mother needs something today to calm her down
And though she’s not really ill, there’s a little yellow pill
She goes running for the shelter of her mother’s little helper
And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day
With the advent of radio and television, women were under more pressure than ever to be perfect. Buckling to unrealistic societal expectations, many turned to their doctors who were quick to prescribe medication. These magic pills calmed nerves, gave an exhausted mother a needed energy boost, lulled an overactive mind to sleep, and helped a housewife shed those stubborn pounds. Some doctors, with little understanding of the dangers these medications posed, prescribed additional pills to combat side effects, so some women were on a whole cocktail of drugs. They didn’t question their doctors. They were the experts, after all.
Though it was a common problem in the 1950s, I was surprised to learn that my great-grandmother Blanche battled prescription drug addiction. That sweet, little old lady I remember so fondly? No way!
In letters and cards written to Blanche in the 1940s, references are made to hospital stays and illnesses. Local newspapers mention that she was a “surgical patient." One of her sisters even asked in a letter, “How is your bum?” Curious about what ailed her, I asked my uncle if he knew anything about surgeries she had around WWII. He didn’t – it was before his time and his grandmother never mentioned it. He did say Blanche struggled with her weight – something obvious in pictures of her throughout the years where she yo-yos from stick-thin to heavy-set. And then he casually dropped that Blanche was addicted to prescription drugs.
We don’t know which drug she was addicted to. Was it something prescribed for pain? Weight loss? A treatment for menopause-induced insomnia? Maybe Blanche was suffering from anxiety? Unfortunately, we’ll never know what Dr. Dash prescribed for her or what it was for. We do know she kicked the habit sometime around 1956 after her husband Dana passed away unexpectedly. Their marriage was a happy one, plus Blanche had never lived by herself. She went from her mother’s home to her husband’s and then had babies immediately. She wasn’t a needy person, but with her kids grown and her husband gone, she was lonely.
My grandparents Helen and Fred invited Blanche to live with them. Fred’s one stipulation for his mother-in-law? She had to get off the drugs first. He didn’t want those problems brought into his home around his boys. If I had to guess, Fred was also upset because Helen was upset that the drugs were impacting her close relationship with her mother. Fresh on the heels of her father’s death, Helen couldn’t bear the prospect of losing another parent, so Fred played the bad guy and delivered the ultimatum. It came from a place of love.
Fred really did love his mother-in-law, and he had nothing but contempt for Blanche’s physician, Dr. Dash. Years later, he still referred to the man as a “God damned horse doctor.” He had a point. As it turns out, Blanche wasn’t the only member of my family Dr. Dash hooked on drugs. I expected my mom to be surprised when I shared this story with her, but she wasn’t. Dr. Dash was also her mother’s doctor and prescribed what was essentially speed to Nana Connie for “weight loss” after her back-to-back pregnancies. One member on each side of my family… It makes you wonder how many other women in the area saw this doctor and also suffered addiction.
Quitting cold turkey is difficult and the odds were certainly stacked against Blanche. In 40-60% of cases, substance addiction has a hereditary component, and as we know, her father died from alcoholism. The timing also wasn’t ideal. The drugs possibly made the death of her husband more bearable, and instead she had to endure the crushing weight of his loss while going through withdrawal. When I think of all my tiny little great-grandmother went through, a Shakespeare quote springs to mind: “Though she be but little, she is fierce.” Battling addiction was one of the most challenging things Blanche ever faced, but through sheer grit and determination, she fought her way through.
Knowing her struggles makes me love and admire her so much more. When we remember our grandparents or great-grandparents, we view them through our own limited experiences with them. They’re old when we’re born, they’re old when they die. We see them as kindly, wrinkled people who live in the periphery of our lives, giving us hugs, kissing our boo-boos, and often spoiling us rotten. We rarely think about the lives they lived long before we came into existence. They were young once, and loved, and dreamed, and fought demons, and survived.
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