DOCTOR'S ORDERS, THEN THE PAIN OF WITHDRAWAL

Nine years ago, Michael Sowell was an administrator at a rehabilitation care
company when he fell from a ladder at work. Back and hip pain plus a hip
replacement followed.

This 6-foot-4 former football and baseball player found his way to a pain
clinic and a doctor who said he could help. Sowell took home OxyContin to
ease his discomfort.

Within a year, he had gone from one 10-milligram pill twice a day to three
40-milligram tablets three times a day, with as many as five or more
Percocets in between to help tide him over. The more side effects Sowell
experienced, the more pills the doctor prescribed--stimulants to help pick
him up in the morning, a sleeping pill to help knock him out at night.

At work, Sowell took to staying in his office, trying not to deal with
anybody. Sowell eventually lost his job. At home in an affluent Atlanta-area
neighborhood, he often was agitated, and his young children began avoiding
their unpredictable father.

Again and again, according to Christy Sowell, the doctor said her husband
needed more of the drugs because his body had become tolerant.

Eventually, though, the Sowells realized something was terribly wrong. To
this day, Michael Sowell can't bring himself to call himself a drug addict.
In his mind, he was just caught up in something bigger than he ever
understood.

Even though Sowell wanted to become drug-free, withdrawal was torture, he
said.

"One minute I'd be freezing, the next minute I'd be hot and flailing from
side to side," he said. Every minute of the day, he felt a "whole body
hunger. You feel it from your little toe all the way up to your brain, like
you're restless, you're closed in, you know what you need and you can't have
it."

"You want to die--you don't know how you ended up this way. I don't know if
I'm ever going to get this hunger out of my body," Sowell said. "Today, I
would take any pain other than the pain of withdrawal."

Sowell slowly has been ratcheting down his dosage for the past two years,
trying to break his habit. In a few weeks he plans to ask his new doctor if
he can go cold turkey, but he's worried, he admits, because "I still want to
take more [drugs] every day."

People addicted to painkillers face one of two types of treatment. Some
undergo medication-assisted therapy combined with behavioral therapy, a
program that usually involves methadone treatment with counseling.

Another option is long-term intensive treatment in a hospital or residential
facility, followed by extended monitoring and counseling.

No therapy can be successful unless the person confronts the inner demons
that feed his addictions, said Robert Holden, vice president of the American
Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependency. Loneliness, a sense of
inner emptiness and a feeling of being unloved are some common ones.

That can be especially hard with people hooked on prescription painkillers
because many, like Sowell, "don't acknowledge they're addicts," Holden said.
"They rationalize that they're taking these drugs for their pain. They don't
want to see who they are, or what they've become."