'I WOULD HAVE DONE ANYTHING TO GET THE DRUG'

Her oxy addiction spiralled out of control

By her 23rd birthday, Penny Quinlan had twice given birth by caesarean
section and undergone surgery for a ruptured spleen -- her introduction to
post-operative pain and the revolutionary drugs on the market to fight it.

Following the spleen surgery, she developed endometriosis, in which the
lining of the uterus travels through the fallopian tubes and invades other
organs. It doubled her over in agony. "I tried non-medical ways to deal with
the pain," Quinlan recalls, "but nothing was working."

In 1998 a friend gave her a small yellow tablet that would change her life:
Percocet, a painkiller that combined the opiate oxycodone with
acetamenophin. It was like putting a match to a fuse.

Last week, Quinlan was sentenced to 12 months house arrest for fraudulently
obtaining close to 3,000 oxycodone tablets from 15 doctors in less than a
year. The Comber woman pleaded guilty to 217 counts of double-doctoring, and
defrauding the Ontario Drug Benefit Plan, which buys medicine for social
assistance recipients, of $8,720.68.

Her lawyer, Bob DiPietro, said Quinlan fell into a rapidly growing
"subculture" of users who pinpoint the doctors and pharmacies most likely to
yield an oxy score, and share information on the Internet.

In her first interview since her arrest, Quinlan, a single mom, recounted an
escalating pattern of drug abuse that suggests anyone sent home from the
doctor with "something for pain" can be at risk of getting hooked. Quinlan
said some of the doctors supplied her pills knowing she was addicted.

"Most of them gave me the pills because they were genuinely concerned and
wanted to help relieve my pain," said Quinlan, 32. "Some knew what I was
doing and didn't care, and people taking the drug will tell you the doctors
to go to."

One of the doctors defrauded by Quinlan said her case illustrates how
physicians walk "a tightrope" with powerful drugs, trying not to let their
fear of unwittingly supplying a junkie stop them from helping someone with
genuine pain.

The friend who gave Quinlan the Percocet in 1998 continued for the next two
years to give her one or two pills a month.

In 2001, Quinlan convinced her family doctor to sign a prescription for the
drug. But not long after, a friend introduced her to OxyContin, the purest
form of oxycodone, and Quinlan found it even more effective. The doctor
agreed to prescribe it.

"The doctor moved me up, right to 80 mg of oxycodone, no in-between," she
said, referring to the strongest dose. "They tell you it's addictive but not
that you can become addicted after using it for three days. I suppose you
should look it up yourself, but all I cared was that it was taking away my
pain."

Quinlan did not believe she was abusing the drug, taking what she believed
was necessary to relieve her pain.

But when her doctor learned that she had requested oxy from a second
physician, he concluded she was "a junkie" and cut her off.

"I was frantic," Quinlan said.

What followed was a whirlwind tour of doctors' offices and pharmacies from
Windsor to London in which she scored oxy while failing to disclose to the
doctors that she had been prescribed the drug elsewhere in the previous 30
days, as required under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

According to documents presented in court, her trek began June 6, 2002, with
a visit to Dr. David Foster in Essex.

She received a prescription for 40 oxycodone tablets, filled by Essex
Dispensary, and a bill for $95.99 went to the Ontario Drug Benefit program.

Four days later she was in the London office of Dr. David Boyd, a pain
specialist recommended by her family doctor, and received a prescription for
90 OxyCodone pills. After a second trip to Boyd on Aug. 16, she went to the
Belle River clinic of Dr. Dusanka Jezdic on Aug. 26. The doctor, who had
seen her prior to a hysterectomy procedure, prescribed 14 oxycodones.

Over the next 11 months, Quinlan neglected to tell any of the doctors she
visited about prescriptions she was getting from other MDs. By this time she
had received and consumed 2,600 oxycodone pills, an average of nearly eight
a day. "It spiralled out of control," said DiPietro. "It's a hard addiction
to shake. People just fall off the wagon quicker than people addicted to
cocaine because the drug is so powerful."

A number of the prescriptions were written in walk-in clinics and at the
Windsor Regional Hospital emergency room. They were filled at eight
different pharmacies. When Quinlan felt she was getting too much from the
Windsor area, she'd try London. DiPietro said it took a level of
organization for Quinlan to pick her spots, but thanks to the Internet,
addicts "all seem to go to the same places, hit up the same doctors and
pharmacies."

Quinlan recalled a clinic doctor offering her one-time assistance, but "not
to come back. He maybe suspected what I was doing." At another clinic, the
doctor "was very good and after seeing me a couple of times said he would
speak to my specialist, and would keep trying to help me. I never went
back."

A family doctor who "could have helped me because she doesn't just keep
giving out pills" was unable to take Quinlan on as a permanent patient
because her practice was full, Quinlan said. Women doctors were "more stern"
in their questioning, she said, "because while they understand female
problems, they also know the hard questions to ask."

Family physician Dr. Wallace Liang treated Quinlan once in the Windsor
Regional ER, and according to court documents wrote her a prescription for
14 oxy pills on Christmas Day 2002.

Liang, who could not specifically recall Quinlan's visit, said physicians
regularly get hit up for narcotic prescriptions by the addicted and those
with criminal intent.

"They come in with all kinds of excuses, telling you they lost pills in the
toilet or they're going on holiday and need extra pills," said Liang.

He follows guidelines set out by the College of Physicians and Surgeons for
determining if a patient might have illegitimate reasons for requesting pain
medication.

"Our duty is to treat pain and you don't want to deny someone a legitimate
and necessary treatment," said Liang.

Court records show that Dr. William Posloski also saw Quinlan in the ER,
prescribing 20 pills on Nov. 24, 2002, and while he declined to discuss her
case, Posloski said drugstore junkies show up frequently.

"It's unfortunate and basic to what's happening in Windsor and Essex County,
with large numbers showing up in ER because they don't have family doctors,"
said Posloski. "It's an effective medication for pain control, but is
subject to abuse. It puts us in a horrible position when someone presents to
you claiming to be in a great deal of pain."

While she confessed to buying oxycodone on the black market, Quinlan denied
selling pills.

"I wouldn't go down that road, and I certainly wouldn't do that to my
children. It was hard enough to have them find out that their mother is
addicted," said Quinlan, whose common-law husband died in a 1997 snowmobile
accident. "They've seen me unable to stand up because of the pain, and in a
way they understand it, but they don't and I feel terrible for doing this to
them."

In May 2003, a speeding ticket spelled the beginning of the end of Quinlan's
double-doctoring. An OPP officer seized seven pill bottles from her car,
each from the same period, only one containing pills. He reported her to his
superiors.

Quinlan's bottles were returned to her and she was sent home.

Brent Fraser, a manager with the pharmaceutical services co-ordination unit,
drug programs branch at the Ministry of Health, reviewed the amounts the
Ontario Drug Benefits paid out in claims for Quinlan. He submitted a report
to the ministry on May 22, 2003, along with the ODB claim sheet.

Both documents were sent to the OPP's health fraud branch. In July, OPP drug
enforcement officer Det. Const. Jim Bannon opened an investigation and, on
Aug. 28, he obtained and executed warrants to search eight pharmacies linked
to the case.

On Sept. 3, 2003, Bannon sent a fax to each of the 15 doctors who, according
to the documents, wrote prescriptions for Quinlan.

Four months after her initial arrest, officers with the OPP's health fraud
team arrived at Quinlan's Comber home, charging her with double-doctoring
and fraud.

Quinlan, whose boys are 13 and 15, said it may have been a blessing in
disguise.

She continues under the care of one of the doctors she duped, Boyd, the
London pain specialist who, according to court records, prescribed 670 oxy
pills in seven visits between June 2002 and February 2003.

"He knows all about my history and what I've done, and he's helping me. He's
still giving me the medication and knows I can't cope without them right
now," Quinlan said. "I'm getting three 80 mg and three 40 mg per day."

Boyd said he is unable to discuss Quinlan's case, but stressed that people
with drug dependency should not be suddenly cut off.

"That drives them to do illegal things and does nothing to help get them off
the drug and their lives sorted out," said Boyd.

Quinlan wants to get off oxycodone, but won't go the methadone route,
believing it to be nothing more than substituting one addiction for another.

"I'm only 32 and I don't want to live like this forever. I don't want to
wake up every morning knowing I'm an addict.... When the pain of the
addiction became so bad after my doctor cut me off OxyContin I would have
done anything, probably even steal if I had to, in order to get the drug."