ABUSE OF PAINKILLERS FUELS NEW DRUG 'EPIDEMIC'

Dr. Alfred Chapman Knows Firsthand the Hold That Prescription Medication
Can Take Upon One's Life.

TAMPA - 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."