Seduction, Elation, Obsession, Despair

'OXY' ABUSERS DESCEND INTO CRIME AND DEATH

STANTON Brian Rice's best friend died in his arms after snorting OxyContin,
but that didn't stop Rice from chasing the drug.

He spent all his money, neglected his baby daughter, robbed houses and
stole from his father. Ultimately, he lost everything he had.

"You get so scared that you think you're literally going to die if you
don't get another one," Rice, 23, said during an interview at the Powell
County jail, where he is serving a six-month sentence for violating
probation on theft-related charges. "If you think somebody's lying to you
about having one ... it'll go through your head to kill them to get that Oxy."

Rice is among those facing the consequences of abusing a powerful
painkiller that has fast displaced other prescription narcotics and illegal
substances such as cocaine and methamphetamine as the most-abused drug in
some areas of Kentucky.

Some OxyContin abusers are dead and buried, leaving families struggling to
understand their loss and the lure of the drug that caused it. Others leave
trails of thefts and other crimes, and join a mushrooming list of addicts
for whom the state has no treatment capacity.

Some believe the worst is still to come.

"It's going to ruin a bunch of people's lives," said Cody Oertli, 20,
another inmate in Powell County who was hooked on OxyContin and got caught
robbing houses to support his habit.

'It just all collided' Released in 1996 as a remedy for chronic, serious
pain such as that suffered by cancer patients, OxyContin quickly became
popular with illegal users in rural areas throughout the eastern United
States. In Kentucky, abuse has been most significant in the eastern part of
the state, where the drug started showing up about three years ago.

Earlier this month, police arrested more than 200 people in Kentucky on
charges related to the drug. Police hinted that the next targets are
doctors and pharmacies that may be overprescribing it or selling it illegally.

Gov. Paul Patton last week announced that a state task force will fight
OxyContin abuse and provide more treatment. Police and prosecutors have
begun asking doctors to be careful in prescribing the drug.

Its maker, Purdue Pharma LP of Stamford, Conn., says OxyContin is a boon to
sick people when used correctly, and that the company should not be blamed
for people who use it illegally.

The drug is known as "Oxy" or "OC" on the street, where it costs a dollar a
milligram. Oxy comes in tablets of 10, 20, 40, 80 or 160 milligrams. A
habit can cost hundreds of dollars a day.

Abusers grind the pills and snort the powder or mix it with water and
inject it, bringing on a huge initial rush and a euphoric high that lasts
for hours.

"You don't think you've got a problem in the world," Oertli said.

OxyContin is powerful and popular because it is pure oxycodone a synthetic
drug that works like heroin, said Gregg Wood, health-care fraud
investigator for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Roanoke, Va.

Other prescription painkillers that people have abused, such as Tylox, are
less powerful because they have a small dose of oxycodone and a much larger
dose of aspirin, Wood said.

Rice, 23, said he had abused morphine, cocaine and other painkillers, but
"there's not anything I've ever done that's like them OxyContins," he said.
"It makes you crazy in the head."

Michael D. Pratt, a prosecutor with the Appalachia High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Area based in London, said several factors play a role in the
spread of OxyContin abuse: a longstanding culture of prescription-drug use
in Eastern Kentucky; the lack of attention, at times, to prescription fraud
by police and prosecutors who are busy fighting other crimes; the fact that
OxyContin is such a powerful drug in an easy-to-abuse form; and, finally,
aggressive marketing of OxyContin by Purdue Pharma.

"It just all collided here," Pratt said. "It's just exploded."

Lying and stealing Three young men in the Powell County jail illustrate
that explosion. Rice, Oertli and Jason Smallwood, 21, all are serving time
for thefts they say they committed to get money for OxyContin. Each said he
knew at least one person who died while abusing it.

For Rice, the first person was his best friend, who died about three years
ago after the two of them spent several days abusing drugs, including
snorting Oxy and squeezing the juice out of morphine patches.

His friend, whom Rice would not name, vomited and labored to breathe for
several hours. The coroner said he died from an aneurysm, which Rice now
thinks resulted from snorting OxyContin.

Rice quit using the drug for three days, then got sick and started snorting
Oxy again.

"That's how bad the stuff is, whenever your best friend dies in your arms
and you still don't stop doing something," Rice said.

Police and former OxyContin abusers said unscrupulous doctors and thefts
from warehouses and pharmacies put the drug on the street.

"Obviously, the doctors are a huge source of it," said Wood.

Federal authorities have prosecuted six doctors in southwest Virginia in
the last 18 months on charges of trafficking in OxyContin and other drugs.
On Feb. 1, police arrested a doctor in Harlan County, urologist Ali Sawaf,
on charges that included illegally prescribing OxyContin.

Most doctors are honest, Wood said, but it takes only a few greedy ones to
put a lot of Oxy in dealers' hands.

Abusers sometimes fake pain to dupe doctors, or buy falsified MRI tests to
get prescriptions, Rice said.

Another key source is patients who get the drug prescribed legitimately for
health problems, then sell some of the pills.

"It ain't hard to come by," Oertli said.

Hazard Police Chief Rod Maggard said OxyContin abuse is contributing to
other crimes, including domestic abuse and thefts. "Eight out of every 10
shoplifters that we've arrested say they're trying to support their habit,"
Maggard said.

Rice, Oertli and Smallwood said they abused a variety of drugs before
OxyContin, but had never stolen to buy other drugs.

In varying degrees, they said their lives became tangled up in a numbing,
all-consuming pursuit of Oxy. "It ruins your life just wondering where
you're going to get the next one," Rice said.

Rice is a bricklayer, a trade that could earn him $1,000 a week or more at
construction sites in Lexington, he said. But he couldn't make enough to
keep up with his addiction, so he started stealing.

He cashed checks on his father's company and committed burglaries. He
visited older members of his church to scour their medicine cabinets for
OxyContin, or another drug he could sell to get Oxy.

He went into rehabilitation twice, sweating, vomiting and cramping to get
clean, but on the street the drug sucked him back into the dead-end cycle
of getting high and stealing.

"I used to be well-respected around here," he said. "As a youngster, I went
to church all the time, and everybody liked me, and then all of a sudden
them OxyContins ..."

The drug became more important than eating. When co-workers ordered food,
"I'm saving my money so I can get me a 40," he said, referring to a
40-milligram OxyContin.

He worried his mother so much that she's happy when he is in jail, because
then she doesn't have to worry, Rice said. "I see other people's parents
out there crying, and mine's out there smiling like that's a birthday
present or something," he said.

Addict sold his monkey Stories of abusers sliding into ever-more-desperate
attempts to feed their habits are increasingly common in Kentucky.

Sue Salyer said her brother, Jerry Glenn Miller, 40, of Salyersville, sold
nearly everything so he could buy OxyContin: his car, his prized saddle
horses, even Harley his pet monkey.

"It seemed like he was desperate to get money so he could go back to the
doctor and refill his prescriptions," Salyer said. "When he sold Harley, I
knew he was really getting bad."

Salyer said Miller, a mechanic and carpenter who once owned a car lot,
started taking pain medicine after he hurt his neck working on a truck.

Salyer said Miller died of an overdose of OxyContin last July. By then, the
drug had consumed more than his body, she said.

"When he died, he didn't even have a mattress," Salyer said.

Oertli thinks only jail interrupted his slide to the grave. He had stopped
working, stayed high all the time and dropped from 140 pounds to 100 pounds
during the six months before he was arrested.

"Coming to jail didn't hurt me. It saved my life," he said.

Rice is scheduled to be released Tuesday after completing his sentence. He
plans to go back to work right away, and he wants to avoid the places and
people still gripped by OxyContin.

But he still thinks about the drug and gets cold chills, and wonders aloud
whether he can resist it.

"It's hard, because in this little town you wouldn't believe the amount of
people that does them," Rice said. "This time, I hope I won't make the same
mistake."