WHITE, MIDDLE CLASS HOUSEWIFE - HOOKED ON LORTAB

FARMINGTON - "Mary" looks like your stereotypical Utah housewife.

The 34-year old, who asked that her real name not be used, grew up in a
strong LDS home. She was the Young Women's president in her ward. She is
the mother of five children. She has never touched a drop of alcohol, and
growing up she never saw an illegal drug.

Mary is not the type of person you'd expect to see standing trial for
felony drug possession. And she is definitely not the type you would
suspect of being a hard-core addict.

But for several years Mary was addicted to Lortab and several other
painkiller medications. Before she was caught she was taking up to 50 pills
a day. Sometimes she would take so many pills at once that they would
become lodged in her throat and she'd force herself to throw up to clear
her esophagus. She was so addicted, however, that she would pick the pills
out of her vomit and swallow them again.

On another occasion, Mary cut a Lortab pill in half and was caught by her
husband licking the dust off the dresser where she had just cut the pill.

"I devoted my life to drugs," said Mary, who wanted the name "Mary" used
for this article because she and others like her were referred to as "Mary
Poppin Pills" in jail.

Mary's addiction to Lortab highlights a growing problem in Utah and the
United States. About a quarter of the people enrolled in the Davis County
Drug Court program are there for Lortab and other prescription medication
addiction, said Davis County Sheriff's detective John Carter.

"It's probably the legal drug of choice," concurred Adult Probation and
Parole spokesman Bradley Bassi. "It's one of the most prevalently abused
legal drugs."

DEA resident agent-in-charge Barry Jamison said his office has seen limited
Lortab problems in Utah over the past several months but added, "We know
the history of this drug. It has exploded in other areas. It hasn't
exploded here yet, but it has the potential."

What sets Lortab abusers apart from typical cocaine and heroin addicts is
the type of people who abuse the drug. Drug agents say Lortab abusers come
from every race, every sex, every income level and every social status.

Lortab is an opiate like Vicodin, another abused painkiller medication. The
most common abuser is a Caucasian woman between the ages of 20 and 40.

In Mary's case, she used her LDS background to her advantage. She said she
would purposely seek out LDS doctors and sit in their lobby reading an LDS
Church magazine. "They would give me anything I wanted.

"We're little Mormon women. What could we possibly be doing wrong?" she
said in a sarcastic voice.

As her abuse grew, so did her guilt. Mary said she would teach a lesson
about the Word of Wisdom in her Young Women's class while high on Lortab.
Then she would go home and pop more pills to help her deal with the guilt.

Mary started abusing Lortab after the birth of her fifth child. She quickly
learned that she could fake a headache and make it last for a long time.
Soon she began to come up with a number of illnesses. "I'd find out which
(illnesses) could be diagnosed," she said.

She could stretch an appendicitis for two months' worth of Lortab
prescriptions. Ovarian cysts, kidney stones, back pains. Mary said she
could commonly fake any of the three and get more Lortab pills because
doctors didn't check the validity of her illness. "Doctors won't touch your
back," she said.

Mary later learned the dentist was another source for Lortab. She would
make a toothache last for months.

Other women told the Deseret News they would get root canals they didn't
need just to get the prescription.

Some people have let their teeth rot on purpose so they could get a
prescription for the powerful painkiller, Carter said.

In another incident, Carter said he knew a woman who purposely threw
herself down a flight of stairs and broke her femur just to get more Lortab.

To keep up with her increasing craving for Lortab, Mary would do what is
referred to as "doctor shopping." At one point she was seeing 26 doctors at
the same time and getting painkiller prescriptions from all of them.

At the height of her abuse, Mary said she started calling in her own Lortab
prescriptions. She would call pharmacies and shuffle papers in the
background to make it sound like she was calling from a doctor's office. It
was a pharmacy that had caller ID however, that finally brought Mary's scam
to an end.

Mary said it's not hard to scam a doctor, and some doctors agree with her.

Dr. Michael Crookston, medical director of LDS Hospital's Dayspring drug
and alcohol treatment program and one of only two certified addiction
psychiatrists in the state, believes doctors need to be more educated on
the signs of addiction to prevent being scammed.

But Michael Ashburn, medical director of the pain program at University
Hospital and the current president of the American Pain Society, said there
is no significant data to show whether physicians are being used as the
primary source of Lortab abuse. He said some of the abused drug is being
smuggled into the United States from Mexico.

Both Ashburn and Crookston said Lortab is becoming more prevalent on the
street as underground rings are developed to distribute the drug.

Some Lortab abusers resort to stealing the drug, although such cases are
rare, Ashburn said.

"Jen," who is currently serving time in the Davis County Jail and also
asked that her real name not be used, is one of that minority.

Jen's creative solution to feeding her addiction to prescription drugs was
to go to real estate open houses and then ask to use the bathroom. While
she was in there, she would search the medicine cabinet for pills.

Dusty Bell freely admits to her love of painkillers.

She has loved them for 30 years, since she broke her leg skiing as a
16-year-old growing up in Sun Valley, Idaho, the privileged daughter of an
Olympic skier.

"Part of it was growing up in the '60s environment," she said. But a bigger
part was that she was hooked and she knew it. By the time she was 22 she
was doing whatever it took to get the pills.

She was an addict while working as a firefighter. She was an addict while
she worked as a 911 police dispatcher.

"There were periods of sobriety," she said, but not many and they didn't
last. "Invariably I screw things up."

Dusty later went to prison for prescription fraud and forgery. She moved to
Utah four years ago for methadone treatments that are still illegal in
Idaho. The methadone has kept her off the prescription pills and her
occasional dabbling in heroin, but she's still not happy.

"Methadone is a drug and it affects you like a drug, a very powerful drug,"
she said. "I am high right now, and I don't get to the point of clarity
very often. I am definitely not where I want to be."

"Pam" is another member of drug court program who asked that her real name
not be used. In addition to being a Lortab abuser like Mary, she was also
an alcoholic. Her husband had her arrested six times for public
intoxication inside her own house, she said.

Pam said her Lortab abuse and alcoholism were so bad that she used to pray
at night that she would be caught because she knew that was the only way
she'd stop.

Pam's substance abuse problems reached a climax on the night she took
several Lortab pills and drank an entire bottle of whiskey. She said she
was so high that she jumped out of her second-story window, landing on her
head. But rather than allowing anyone to assist her, she ran into a nearby
field to hide, she said.

Later, she went back to her home and crawled into the doghouse in the back
yard, where she was eventually discovered by a police K-9 unit.

Both Mary and Pam said even after they were arrested they initially refused
to put themselves in the same class as heroin and cocaine users. "I don't
belong here," went through both of their minds as they went from court to jail.

"It's not a sin," was Pam's original way of thinking. "It's doctor
approved. You can get it from your neighbor."

Mary graduated from drug court in August 2001. Pam is scheduled to graduate
in September. Mary is continuing her rehab in a treatment program and works
with volunteer groups.

What Mary saw in jail and in her treatment program were eye-opening. So
far, it has been enough to scare her into staying straight.

There were 26 people in the beginning of the treatment program she was in
after she got out of jail. Of those 26, four are now dead from overdoses
and the remaining 22 are using drugs again, she said.

Now, Mary says, she can spot a Lortab abuser right away and she believes
the problem is much more prevalent than what is being reported.

Crookston doesn't believe the solution is to put additional restrictions on
Lortab. "It hasn't changed the availability of heroin," he said. "I think
the vast majority of people are using these medications appropriately."

An increasing number of doctors have become wary about over prescribing
Lortab, however. And some patients have to jump through several hoops
before they can get the pills they need, Crookston said. "The solution is
to have more treatment available for people who are developing a problem."