A JUNKIE'S CONFESSION

SOMETIMES, even with a national story, I can know with certainty that public
figures or media reports are full of it because my personal experience
flatly contradicts what the public is being told.

Like last week, when the head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
warned a House subcommittee and the American public about the widespread
abuse of the prescription painkiller OxyContin.

OxyContin is the trade name for a time-release version of oxycodone, a pain
suppressant on the market since 1995. The time-release version is ideal for
treating chronic pain. Because it works so well, its popularity has soared;
the maker, Purdue Pharma, recorded over $1 billion in Oxy sales in 2000.

But over the last year, a steadily growing avalanche of official warnings
and media scare stories have been exaggerating the hazards--and, from a
druggie's standpoint, desirability--of OxyContin. Two early incidents of
OxyContin abuse, in Kentucky and Virginia, were inflated for political
purposes by local officials, then seized upon by media outlets looking for
the Next Big Drug. The alarm gained a life of its own, repeated and
embellished so many times that it has gained the aura of truth. And so,
reports of DEA head Asa Hutchinson's testimony last week described
OxyContin's "heroinlike high" (a phrase common in articles on the drug) and
that it was "a likely factor" in 296 overdose deaths in two years. Suggested
responses to this manufactured crisis have ranged from federal tracking of
prescription rates among doctors and geographic areas to calls for pulling
the drug off the market entirely.

I don't generally defend drug companies, but Hutchinson, in ripping Purdue,
showed the worst kind of fraudulent political opportunism. The "abuse" in
this case is two decades' worth of War on Drugs mentality, clouding fact. So
let's start with fact.

OxyContin does not produce a "heroinlike" high. If it did, I couldn't write
this column. I've been taking the drug every few hours for the last seven
years because of persistent pain stemming from an operation that saved my
life--another person's kidney and pancreas were transplanted into my body.
The pain hasn't responded to any other treatment. I couldn't function from
day to day without oxycodone. And for many, many people with cancer, AIDS,
and other serious ailments, it's the difference between a relatively normal
life and pure hell.

When I first took it, I got a little light-headed and chatty. It can be
pleasant, though not hugely so; were it freely available, I certainly
wouldn't go out of my way to take it just for its "high." And after taking
it routinely for a while, the high disappears entirely.

Perhaps I just don't react much to drugs. But even when I've accidentally
taken more than my normal dose, OxyContin has not been a remarkably fun
drug, and if you take way, way too much, you just get nauseated and shaky
and start vomiting. Or, if you take a whole bunch of it, you die. The only
difference I can tell at the moment between being on it and having missed my
dose is that my leg doesn't hurt much. But I can well imagine someone not
familiar with the drug expecting a "heroinlike high," then overdosing
because they take some and nothing happens, so they take a whole lot more.

And yes, OxyContin is a narcotic, and I am "addicted" to it, in the sense
that if I don't take it I'd get nasty withdrawal symptoms. In terms of
whether my body would be unhappy without it, I'm also "addicted" to a number
of other prescribed drugs and to food, water, oxygen, and my sweetie.
Addiction is an overrated concept.

OxyContin is invaluable for me and many other people. If you figure,
conservatively, that $1 billion in sales means a million people took
OxyContin in 2000 (spending $1,000 each on it), that's about one overdose
death for every 3,000 immeasurably improved lives.

But . . . many of those deaths came when OxyContin was combined with other
drugs, legal or not. It wasn't necessarily the primary cause or even used
incorrectly. Moreover, we don't know how many of those deaths were
suicides-- quite possible for people facing permanent chronic pain. And if
OxyContin abuse is so epidemic, considering that it's addictive, where are
all the Oxy-related crimes? Junkies stealing to get their fix? Gangs with
organized sales networks? No such crime wave is reported anywhere, despite
nearly a year of media hype that has surely raised the curiosity of junkies
everywhere.

An invaluable drug is being portrayed as a menace to society, with a handful
of tragedies being expropriated as proof. It's the sort of fiction that has
used a very real problem--drug abuse--to justify a decades-long grab for
government power--the War on Drugs. The War on Drugs is dead; it hasn't
worked, and with new laboratory-designed drugs, it will soon be completely
unenforceable. We should instead be teaching people how to use mind-altering
substances responsibly. (We could start with alcohol.) Meanwhile, keep your
hands off my OxyContin. It's time for my next pill.