DEAD BEFORE 30, TONY STILTNER FOLLOWED EASY PATH TO ADDICTION

The first prescription Tony "T-Bone" Stiltner, 29, got from Dr. Fortune J.
Williams read a bit like a laundry list, according to a federal lawsuit:
three Stadol, an analgesic nasal spray; 45 alprazolam, a tranquilizer; and
60 Vicodin, a painkiller.

Ten months and many similar prescriptions later, Stiltner was dead --
another in a long line of Appalachian drug addicts who died before reaching 30.

An autopsy found that Stiltner died not of a drug overdose but of
hypertensive heart disease, a condition associated with high blood
pressure. Still, a lab report said that he had marijuana and prescription
drugs, including Lorcet, Soma and Xanax, in his blood.

Regardless of how it ended, the brief life of T-Bone Stiltner shows how
readily junkies have been able to feed their prescription-drug addictions
in Eastern Kentucky.

A wrongful-death lawsuit claims that Stiltner or his wife drove from their
Portsmouth, Ohio, home to Williams' offices in Greenup or Lewis counties 34
times in 10 months. For much of 2000 and 2001, they got prescriptions from
various doctors every three to 10 days, court records show.

Stiltner generally avoided trouble until 1997, when a serious dirt-bike
accident, followed by a divorce the next year, sent him spiraling on a
pill-fueled odyssey with a new wife, said his mother, Patricia Powers, 48.

By 2000, his sister, Mary Howard, 24, was driving Stiltner to see Williams
at a clinic in South Shore, Ky. "You couldn't get in the door," recalled
Howard, a nurse's aide. "They were lined up all the way out to the road.
You could see them selling their prescriptions in the parking lot."

Stiltner's widow, Felicia Stiltner McManus, 25, said in an interview that
she and her husband spent much of their time looking for prescription
drugs. Many friends who did the same died of overdoses, she said.

"Jackie Burton did," she said. "Crystal Thomas did. ... Pearl Walker died.
... That's just off the top of my head, people I knew directly." She
paused. "I'm the only one left, I guess."

Last year, McManus said, she married a disabled Wellston man and quit
taking drugs.

Powers, Stiltner's mother, has sued Williams in federal court, claiming
that, as a result of the doctor's "drug prescribing, Anthony Stiltner died."

Williams wrote her a one-sentence response: "I am not guilty of malpractice
in the death of Anthony Stiltner."

Williams sent that note from the Lewis County Jail, where he is being held
on prescription-drug charges. State and federal officials seized records
from his office in September 2001 and suspended his medical license the
next month.

A state record showed that in 101 days, Williams wrote prescriptions for
46,160 prescriptions, an average of 457 a day. That's nearly one for every
minute of an eight-hour day.

In an interview, Williams said he did not practice medicine improperly; is
innocent of the criminal charges; and did nothing to cause Stiltner's death.

Personally, Williams said, he doesn't remember Stiltner. "Four thousand
patients," he said, shrugging.