Shelby County Coroner Diana Hawkins say the number of dead teenagers she's seen from prescription drug overdoses is simply heartbreaking.

"I hold it together while I'm there and then when I leave I cry," Hawkins said. "It hurts to have to deal with this stuff, and I want to see it stopped."

That's why county law enforcement and others are spearheading a massive campaign to raise awareness about the rise in prescription drug abuse.

Hawkins says you can prevent teenagers from becoming statistics, ending promising academic and athletic careers, just by locking up the pills you already have in your medicine cabinet.

"You go to sleep and everything shuts down, that's what I'm seeing," Hawkins added.

But it's not just teenagers: it's also adults, both young and old.

"I just graduated from the University of Alabama, and a lot of times you see people in the library hours and hours at a time on prescription medicine: they tell you openly about it and its kind of scary," said Sarah Beth Ritchey.

One common danger: combining prescription drugs with alcohol.

Hawkins explains: "It doesn't take very much hydrocodone to kill you, and if you mix it with something else, and it flat out tells you do not mix your drugs, this causes respiratory distress, it causes respiratory arrest, you stop breathing and you die."

Here’s a link to the Leadership Shelby County online pamphlet with more details about the statistics on prescription drug abuse in the county:

http://www.leadershipshelbycounty.com/forms/PrescriptionAddiction.pdf