UPSCALE JUNKIES

OxyContin is not just for "hillbillies" anymore - the painkiller has turned
an increasing number of upscale New Yorkers into addicts, doctors and
social workers told The Post. "I definitely have seen more of it," said Dr.
Brealyn Sellers, who has an addiction-recovery practice in Greenwich Village.

Sellers said poorer, heroin-addled New Yorkers have stayed away from the
drug - dubbed "hillbilly heroin" - because of its higher cost.

But "for the white-collar people that I take care of . . . OxyContin is an
attractive option," said Sellers, director of Rehabilitative Services at
Bellevue's methadone treatment clinic.

Emergency-room visits in the metropolitan area involving oxycodone - the
active narcotic in OxyContin and similar drugs, Percodan and Percocet -
increased almost 300 percent from 1995, when there were 34 incidents. In
2002 (the latest figures available), there were 135.

Between 2000 and 2002, the numbers jumped 141 percent.

"It's No. 2 right after heroin" among the upscale opiate addicts at the
Addiction Recovery Institute in Westchester, said Dr. Clifford Gevirtz, the
institute's medical director.

"The patients that I'm seeing are doing some doctor shopping," he said. "I
don't need to go to the corner bodega to get my drugs - I can go to the
doctor's office."

A few years ago, Dr. Laurence Westreich never saw anyone using OxyContin at
his Manhattan practice. Now, the drug, the painkiller that hooked radio
host Rush Limbaugh, has outstripped Vicodin and Percocet as his patients'
drug of choice.

"It's more potent than the others," said Westreich, an associate professor
at NYU's Department of Psychiatry, Division of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse.
"You get more bang for your buck."

Purdue Pharma LP began marketing and selling OxyContin in 1996. Abusers
quickly discovered that they could crush the powerful painkiller to destroy
the time release and by snorting or injecting the powder, they could get
the full dosage effect at once.

"They buy it from dealers in their dorms," Sellers said of her mostly
college-age patients. "They put it in a shot glass, pour boiling water over
it and drink it like a shot."

OxyContin is expensive compared to other drugs available on the street -
$25 to $80 a pill, or about $1 per milligram. A prescription for
40-milligram strength OxyContin costs about $4 per pill.

The drug-induced high can last for 12 hours, addiction counselors and
doctors said.

By contrast, a heroin user can buy a $10 bag for an initial high that lasts
about an hour.

Another draw for OxyContin users is that they can order pills online
without a prescription.

"You're less likely to get in trouble for buying OxyContin over the
Internet than buying heroin on the street," Westreich said. "It's more
genteel, in a way, although the effects are very similar."

A source with the NYPD's narcotics intelligence squad said there have been
more OxyContin arrests recently, but said its presence was minor compared
to cocaine, marijuana and other illegal drugs.

But another NYPD source acknowledged that OxyContin, like other
prescription drugs, can fly under the radar of local law enforcement.

The DEA has undertaken a "National Action Plan" to track OxyContin
prescriptions, deaths and crime.

But Robert Strang, a former DEA agent who now heads an investigative and
security company, said law enforcement is hard pressed to track the problem.

"There is no national database to determine how many prescriptions are
given out," Strang said.