METHADONE: TREATMENT OR LEGAL DRUG DEAL

Boone County Man Speaks Out

At First, It All Seemed So Perfectly Legal And Innocent.

A naive Travis Barker swallowed what he thought was a harmless
prescription pill, just 20 mg of a popular painkiller called OxyContin.

He was told that day about four years ago it would produce a
satisfying euphoria and banish his worries.

Barker, now 26, reasoned that taking a pill approved by the federal
government wasn't a horrible thing. Certainly, it wasn't like scoring
heroine, cocaine or some other illegal drug - lessons his parents had
taught him well growing up in Peytona in Boone County.

"I never dreamed it would be that addictive," the Sherman High School
graduate said recently.

When Barker tried to stop, he thought he had the flu. But he later
learned he was experiencing withdrawal. Since then, he has slogged
through three years of daily treatment with methadone, a synthetic
narcotic, to break his addiction to OxyContin.

But his growing unrest with the local methadone clinic's practices
sent him searching for help to get away from the narcotic. He found
the Coleman Institute in Richmond, Va., and just completed an
eight-day stint in detoxification.

Barker finally is escaping the clutches of methadone.

"I feel like I lost four years of my life completely," he said. "I was
22, owned a Mustang GT convertible and was a bartender. I was as happy
as anyone could be."

Barker said he is glad the West Virginia Health Care Authority
recently imposed a 180-day moratorium on accepting any more
applications for methadone clinics so state health officials can write
standards for evaluating them.

Since 1999, eight methadone clinics have opened in the state. Private
companies have proposed five more.

"Most in West Virginia are for-profit," said Sonia Chambers, authority
chairwoman. "Is that the best way to treat people who are addicted?"

Delegate Marshall Long, D-Mercer and a physician, said clinics make a
substantial profit from selling methadone.