Addict Nation (9 page)

NIKKI, RECOVERING PRESCRIPTION PILL ADDICT: I went to about four different doctors at a time. After having multiple spinal surgeries, I used to keep my records with me. I would go to the doctor, and I would say, “I want to get a doctor closer to home or I want to get a doctor closer to work” . . . I had two doctors in the city, one in the suburbs and one in another borough.

Most of the time I would say to them, “You know, I’ve been on very strong medication for a very long time, and I want to wean off of some of it.” So I would tell them exactly what milligram I wanted to come down to.

To have it covered by insurance, as long as the strength and milligrams was different, you could get as many prescriptions as you want for that month. So I could have four different prescriptions for OxyContin, as long as the strength was different.
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VELEZ-MITCHELL
: That is absolutely mind-boggling. Now we’re hearing the ex-fiancée say Corey Haim took forty, fifty pills (a day). How many pills were you taking at the height of this?

NIKKI
: I was probably taking about that many . . . OxyContin more than anything else. Everything else was just more of a chaser. The OxyContin is what really had me to my knees.

VELEZ-MITCHELL
: Why didn’t the doctors pick up on it? That’s what everybody wonders.

NIKKI
: Well, you know, I had a valid injury. And to tell you the truth, I quote unquote, don’t look like a drug addict. You know, we’re very good actors . . . These were well-respected hospitals and doctors. And addicts are just really good liars. We’re very good at getting what we want . . . it’s more common than anybody knows.

In real life, that woman is a white, fifty-year-old mother of two college-aged sons who lives in a middle-class community. She is your average suburban neighbor. For emphasis, let me repeat: she says she got away with doctor shopping because she “didn’t look like an addict.” Doctors are just as prone to stereotyping as anyone else. In our collective minds, we’ve created the “image” of a drug addict and that image is usually a poor, inner-city black or Latino. Those are, for the most part, the people being imprisoned for drugs . . . illegal drugs. But if the statistics on overdoses are any indication, the reality is America’s average drug addict today is increasingly a prescription-pill-popping middle-class Caucasian with a family and career.

La Vida Lohan

Troubled movie star Lindsay Lohan had already gone through three rehabs, two DUIs, reckless driving, and cocaine use when the courts finally seemed to be cracking down on her.
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A judge ruled she’d violated probation by missing several court-ordered alcohol education classes and ordered her to jail, where she served thirteen days. But a probation officer’s report revealed the real problem, noting Lindsay “takes the following prescription drugs: Nexium, Zoloft, trazadone (Desyrel), Adderall, and sometimes Dilaudid for dental pain.”
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Hello?!
Dilaudid has been compared in strength to morphine and heroin. Even as it seemed like the whole world was begging her to get clean, her probation officer’s report concluded her testing “positive for amphetamines and opiates” was “not a violation of probation.”
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The lawyer for Lindsay’s dad wrote an angry letter to California’s attorney general complaining of “reports that she is able to call up doctors, and obtain whatever she wants, in whatever quantities she wants, whenever she wants. She can ingest these substances in jail . . . and on probation while subject to random drug tests, as prescription drugs are allowed. It’s a giant loophole that could cost her her life.”
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That the courts thought these drugs were medically necessary and therefore okay reveals just how little our criminal justice system knows about drug abuse and how druggies cop their stash.

Sometimes the Drugs Are Just a Mouse Click Away

An addict with a laptop can find rogue Internet pharmacies that offer a simple online questionnaire in place of a visit to a flesh-and-blood doctor or let you talk to their doctor on the phone. In 2003, an FDA official told a congressional committee, “A patient-doctor relationship, in many cases, is never established. Attempts to stop some U.S. doctors and online pharmacies from issuing online prescriptions without a physical examination have not always been successful.”
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While there are many legitimate online pharmacies that do it right, the anonymity associated with the Internet could certainly feel like a protective cover for addicts who don’t want someone in a white coat studying them when they request their refills.

“The fact that companies on the Internet can call my client—who is addicted—to try to seduce her to buy more pills is a crime, an absolute crime.”

—Howard Samuels, Psy.D., licensed clinical psychologist,
founder, and CEO of the Hills Treatment Center

After appearing on
Issues
, Nikki, the recovering prescription pill addict, talked me through the clever ways addicts use the World Wide Web to get high. “I went on this website. If you pay them one hundred seventy-five dollars, they send you a six-page list of pharmacies in Mexico and elsewhere. You call them and you speak to their pharmacist and they will send you a prescription from that country.”

Those willing to physically trek into Mexico find it’s a breeze to score. Mexican border towns are chock full of pharmacies that cater to American customers, often middle-class addicts hunting to get high. Nikki regaled me with stories of her drug-seeking forays south of the border. “I was in Mexico and I went to a pharmacy to get Valium, and Xanax sticks, and I was also able to get Percocet and Vicodin. But when I asked for OxyContin they sent me three blocks away to a hole-in-the-wall doctor’s office up a flight of stairs. I gave the doctor fifty dollars and he gave me a prescription for 120 OxyContin, and then I went back to the pharmacy and paid cash for the pills.”

Woodstock Redux

I’m not a Christian Scientist. I believe there’s a good reason for doctors and legitimate medicine. I go to my doctors regularly and take prescriptions when I need them for absolute medical necessities. I am grateful for the level of health care that I’m lucky enough to receive. However, there’s a growing trend in America to try to solve all manner of discomfort, real or imagined, physical or emotional, with a pill. That tendency has morphed into a cultural addiction.

“In the addict’s mind it’s okay because it was prescribed by a doctor, so it makes it easier to cross that line of addiction. In my private practice I’ve noticed that six or eight years ago the drug of choice was heroin and crystal meth where I would intervene. Today I would say it is 30 percent alcohol, 10 percent cocaine and crystal meth, and 60 percent prescription drugs.”

—Ken Seeley, addiction expert and founder of Intervention 911

It’s my belief that Big Pharma has long had a plan for us baby boomers who’ve come limping into the valley of middle age filled with vague aches and pains. The pharmaceutical industry is keenly aware that the Woodstock generation (and the disco generation after it) have always had a love affair with drugs. Big Pharma has simply figured out a way to make the drugs legal.

The legality of powerful, mind-altering medications gives boomers deniability. While they once smoked pot and dropped acid (or later did coke), today their long hair is shorn and gray and they’ve transformed themselves into “upstanding” citizens with “respectable” jobs and kids who need to be put through college. The hazy memories of wild nights partying are filed away in a little box in the closet to be forgotten. However, what has
not
gone away is the boomers’ need to stuff their pain. Along with their respective individual traumas (divorce, job struggles, family conflicts, toxic secrets), the boomers, in particular, feel the need to self-medicate to fill the void in their lives. I happen to be one of those addicts, and that’s why I’m in recovery.

Most of us boomers experienced a period of intense idealism in our youth where we really sought to understand the meaning of life and make our lives count, in a way that our parents had not. We wanted to be authentic! We wanted to change the world. We marched and chanted! We were the peaceniks who questioned authority and spoke truth to power. But as we took our place in the world and became the authority figures ourselves, the peace signs got tossed in the circular file and the bohemian minimalism of a spiritual life gave way to a craving for material comforts and status.

In other words, many—if not most—boomers sold out. Our rebel anthems have become the soundtracks for TV commercials. There is a subtle hollowness to the success many boomers have achieved, be they bankers, developers, lawyers, or some other species of professional. Some have made big money but, by caving in to an ego-based definition of success, have allowed their core values to become corrupted. As their stock portfolios fattened, many secretly careened into spiritual bankruptcy, which is a symptom of addiction. In fact, addiction to materialism dovetails neatly with addiction to prescription pills. It’s a classic cross-addiction. The obsession with materialism leads to depression, which leads to antidepressants.

Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University, has written a thought-provoking book called
The Life You Can Save,
arguing that Americans who would instinctively stop to save a drowning man are also morally obligated to help the millions dying of poverty around the world (whom they can’t see) by tithing a significant percentage of their income to charity. “We might say that the rich have a right to spend their money on lavish parties, Patek Philippe watches, private jets, luxury yachts, and space travel, or, for that matter, to flush wads of it down the toilet. Or that those of us with more modest means shouldn’t be forced to forgo any of the less expensive pleasures that offer us some relief from all the time we spend working. But we could still think that to choose to do these things rather than use the money to save human lives is wrong, shows a deplorable lack of empathy, and means that you are not a good person.”
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That’s a harsh assessment. But there’s a sliver of unpleasant truth somewhere in there that we just don’t want to face. How do we stuff these secret feelings of shame over the morally corrupt choices we’ve made? By self-medicating.

Where Have All the Hippies Gone? To the Pharmacy!

Instead of bellbottoms and beads, they’re in khakis and reading glasses. Instead of grass and LSD, they’ve got medicine cabinets filled with Valium, Vicodin, Prozac, Effexor, Paxil, Zoloft, Percocet, Wellbutrin, Xanax, OxyContin, or Ambien . . . to name a few.

Playing Doctor

A sexy, soothing woman’s voice explains how she’s taking an antidepressant but thinks she still might need a little something extra to help with her moodiness. An authoritative announcer explains how most people who are being treated for depression still experience symptoms of depression. The voiceover artist explains that one antidepressant alone just might not be enough. The viewer is urged to consider asking his or her doctor to add on . . . (name that drug).

I am paraphrasing an actual commercial for an antidepressant currently on the market. Now this is a drug with a slew of potential side effects, from confusion to seizures to thoughts of suicide to uncontrollable muscle movements and even trouble swallowing.
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If you take just a moment to ponder these commercials, it should become obvious that the whole concept of direct advertising of prescription drugs to consumers is problematic! It’s essentially asking people—who are not doctors themselves—to play doctor! “Ask your doctor about (insert drug)” is the suggestion at the heart of each and every one of these ads.