Abuse of painkillers fuels new drug 'epidemic'

Alfred Chapman is well aware of the allure prescription narcotics hold.

He's a doctor, but it wasn't his work, case studies or research that provided the proof he needed. As a medical student, Chapman's need to alleviate his back pain evolved into an addiction to prescription drugs.

"I had an excuse, and I was off to the races," he says of a habit that resulted in six arrests, a million-dollar debt and the loss of his medical license and his family.

Today, the Clearwater doctor speaks publicly about his struggle to regain sobriety to help explain that prescription painkillers can be abused by anyone. He says he considers himself lucky now, but it took years to restore a relationship with his daughter and to earn back his medical license, which still has restrictions that include random drug testing for the rest of his career.

His experience is far from isolated, say experts and law enforcement officers fighting what they call a growing epidemic of drug abuse, crime and deaths involving legal drugs such as oxycodone. That painkiller has gone from being standard treatment for injuries to an in-demand narcotic selling for $10 a pill on the streets.

"This is as big as when cocaine hit the streets in the 1970s," says Hernando County Sheriff's Detective Cody Silagyi. "This is like legalized cocaine."

And its effects are increasingly deadly.

Oxycodone - an opioid - caused more deaths in Florida last year than any other drug. Of the 941 deaths statewide brought about by the substance, 209 were in Pasco and Pinellas counties, according to a Florida Medical Examiners Commission report released June 30. In Hillsborough, there were 101 deaths.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse speculates that legal but highly addictive opioids, depressants and stimulants are increasingly in demand because they're readily accessible. The group reported that an estimated 6.3 million Americans in 2004 used prescription medications for nonmedical purposes.

"None of us is saying there are not legitimate pain patients," says Sharon Kelley, chief operating officer of Tampa's Associates in Emergency Medical Education and host of a recent prescription drug abuse summit here. "We're living in an epidemic."

Legitimate doctors and pharmacies are being duped by so-called doctor shoppers who seek multiple prescriptions in order to sell them for illicit purposes. So are the parents of teens who siphon pills from the medicine cabinet and replace them with vitamins or aspirin.

No one takes these drugs with the intention of becoming an addict or hurting themselves, Kelley says.

"Look at Heath Ledger. He wasn't overdosing," she says of the popular 28-year-old actor who died in 2008 from a mix of prescription drugs, including oxycodone. "He screwed up."

A cocktail of prescription drugs also is suspected in Michael Jackson's recent death, although officials have not confirmed that.

But celebrities aren't the only ones drawn to the drugs.

Tampa anesthesiologist Abraham Rivera says his patients undergo testing before he considers treating a person for chronic pain, a condition in which the brain is unable to diffuse pain that should normally go away. He also won't treat someone with drug arrests, and subjects them to random testing for illicit drugs.

"We don't prescribe opiates indiscriminately," says Rivera, president of the Tampa Bay Pain Management Society.

There are ways to differentiate between someone needing pain management and addiction. Chronic pain patients need medication to go to work or take the kids to school, much like diabetics are dependent on synthetic insulin to get through the day. Addicts, Rivera says, are compulsive, show lack of judgment and continue to use and abuse prescription drugs despite evidence it is not helping them function.

"Addicts use drugs to escape their world," he says, "not to exist in it."