Alex Gardella seemed to have an enviable life from the outside. As a successful real estate broker residing on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, she lived with her husband and their three children.

Gardella had recently welcomed her third child into the world. Her older children, twins—a boy and a girl—attended a nearby private preschool. To manage the bustling household, a nanny was a regular presence to lend a hand.

Beneath the surface of this seemingly idyllic existence, however, lay an untold struggle.

In 2020, Gardella was grappling with severe postpartum depression and anxiety, hidden battles that affect approximately one in every eight women across the United States.

The reality was that in 2020 Gardella was struggling severely with postpartum depression and anxiety – conditions that affect one in eight American women.

The only thing quieting her mind from the stress of her twins’ pandemic-era hybrid school schedule and the constant needs of a newborn baby was a small bottle of white, chalky pills: oxycodone. 

She had been prescribed the opioid for her pain after she suffered serious post-birth complications, but her addiction quickly spiraled out of control.   

‘I felt like I should be really happy and that I’m so blessed that I’m here and I have these three little kids,’ Gardella, now 38, told the Daily Mail. ‘I thought I should be really enjoying this moment with my newborn and feedings.’

‘To be totally transparent, I hated every minute of it. I was gritting my teeth the whole time. So when I did get this prescription, it was like, oh, I actually feel enthusiastic about this day. I feel like I can do it.’

Alex Gardella (pictured), a 38-year-old real estate broker in New York City, had a picture-perfect life on the surface. But deeper within, she struggled with opioid addiction

Gardella had just given birth to her youngest son (pictured) in 2020 when she was prescribed oxycodone, one of the most addictive opioids that fueled a decades-long crisis in the US and abroad 

Following the birth of her third child, Gardella had suffered a retained placenta during her c-section.

This occurs when all or part of the placenta – an organ that develops during pregnancy to provide nutrients to a fetus – remains stuck in the uterus after birth and has to manually be removed.

After undergoing an emergency operation, doctors prescribed Gardella oxycodone, an opioid used to treat severe pain. 

Sold under the brand name OxyContin, it is one of the most addictive drugs of its kind, driving a decades-long opioid epidemic linked to nearly one million deaths in the US alone.

And Gardella is just one of the millions of middle-class, seemingly perfect mothers who have ended up hooked on the pills. 

Experts estimate that around 13 million Americans abuse opioid painkillers each year.

‘It was the first time I had ever taken a medicine that provided not just physical pain relief but emotional, immediate relief from postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, feeling overwhelmed, underwater and having to care for these three little people that were solely dependent on me,’ Gardella said.

‘Now I can look back on it and say, ‘Well no wonder I reached for the first thing that provided some relief.”

After several refills ran dry, Gardella estimates that she spent about $300 per week on pills from a dealer in the neighborhood who she found on Craigslist.

Just like her groceries, the drugs were delivered right to her door. 

In March 2022, she underwent an unrelated surgery to remove a liposarcoma tumor, which develops from fat cells, from her stomach. 

Doctors prescribed her a low dose of oxycodone, which she instantly knew was not going to be enough. 

‘That’s really when things started to spiral for me,’ she said. 

A couple of weeks later her extended family noticed how ‘off’ she seemed, leading her husband to confront her about her addiction.  

The couple called a psychiatrist who prescribed gabapentin, an anticonvulsant also used off-label for substance abuse, and naltrexone, which blocks the effects of opioids to reduce cravings.

Gardella (pictured with her three children) told the Daily Mail that opioids helped quiet her postpartum anxiety and depression

Gardella was told by her doctor that she must ‘absolutely not’ have any opioids in her system while taking naltrexone, as it forces any displaced opioids from the brain’s receptors and triggers severe withdrawal. 

‘I was like, ‘Whatever, I’m just going to do whatever makes everybody happy. I’ll be fine,” she said.

But after taking naltrexone with opioids still in her system, she became dangerously ill. She described how after bringing her children home from the park, she ‘lost all control’ and experienced severe vomiting while her body turned into an ‘icicle’ from chills.

‘It kicked my body into a withdrawal that was so violent and physically taxing that I thought it was going to kill me,’ she said.

‘It was probably one of the worst days of my life, but at the same time, it really forced me to confront the issue.’  

Gardella called an ambulance and was rushed to the hospital where she stayed for four days to detox. She then stayed sober for about nine months. 

But in January 2023, she fell off the wagon and sought out her dealer for more pills. 

She had taught Sunday School that morning and was on her way to meet a friend for lunch in downtown Manhattan. After lunch, she hopped into a cab and asked the driver for a phone charger. 

‘And that’s it, that’s all I remember,’ Gardella said. ‘Then I woke up in an ambulance outside my apartment building.’

When she overdosed on oxycodone pills that were likely laced with fentanyl, Gardella apologized to the paramedics who stabilized her. They told her: ‘Apologize to your husband. Apologize to those three beautiful kids’

Gardella had overdosed on what she believes were oxycodone pills laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 100 times more potent than morphine that is often added to other drugs without a buyer – or dealer’s – knowledge.

As little as two milligrams of fentanyl can be deadly.

She remembers apologizing over and over again to the paramedics who stabilized her. She said the paramedics told her: ‘Apologize to your husband. Apologize to those three beautiful kids.’

‘That hit me like a ton of bricks,’ Gardella said. ‘I was ready [to get sober] at that point. That was the biggest wake-up call of all time.’ 

The following week, Gardella’s addiction counselor started her on Vivitrol, a monthly injection of naltrexone, which she still takes nearly three years later to curb her opioid cravings. 

She compared the drug to having a security system installed in her body. After nearly three years, the noise in her brain had quieted without oxycodone.

‘I plan to be on [Vivitrol] for the rest of my life if I have to,’ she said. 

Gardella and her husband (pictured on their wedding day) both went through counseling and therapy to build back trust that had been lost during her addiction

Gardella (pictured) is now sober and taking Vivitrol to curb cravings

Gardella and her husband also went through counseling and therapy to build back trust that had been lost throughout her addiction. 

The couple’s children, now nine and five, are too young to remember their mother’s addiction or overdose, though Gardella does plan to tell them about it one day. 

For now, she hopes sharing her story and connecting with other former addicts will help dispel the misconception that the opioid epidemic only affects certain groups of people.

‘My biggest hope – and this is what I would commit the rest of my life to doing – is really tackling this issue like an epidemic, like we did with HIV and AIDS,’ Gardella said.

‘If a medication like Vivitrol exists, imagine if we put our funding and our research efforts toward finding a cure, so to speak. Why aren’t we doing that, if this is truly an epidemic?

‘This is a disease, so let’s treat it like a disease.’