Prescription for trouble

Jonathan Bowling never knew exactly what happened.

He said he was taking a prescription drug to help cope with a sports injury. Then, out of nowhere, he was hooked.

"I had a prescription drug problem for about 10 years," said Bowling, a Florence resident who is now in his 40s. "First, they make you feel better. Then, if you have an addictive nature, you're hooked and (the pills) just feed that fire."

Bowling said he licked his problem by seeking help from professionals. But others are not as fortunate.

Counselors as well as law enforcement agencies that are involved in fighting drug abuse all have seen horror stories they can quickly recite. They often involve crushed relationships, lost jobs, crime, major health problems and - on occasion - death.

Those horror stories have them alarmed as they see prescription drug abuse significantly increasing in the Shoals as well as around the country. They say, in fact, prescription drugs have become the drug of choice for many people - and the abuse does not see gender, age, color or economic status.

Franklin County District Attorney Joey Rushing said methamphetamine may be the illegal drug that gets all the media attention, but another growing drug problem is prescription drug use.

"Prescription drugs have always been a problem, but it seems that it is just ballooning out of control over the past five years," Rushing said.

The Web site streetdrugs.org, based in Plymouth, Minn., cites studies that show prescription narcotic drugs are the most used and abused medicines.

A 2002 survey indicates that nearly 30 million people, which represents 13 percent of the total U.S. population age 12 and over, had illegally used prescription pain relievers in their lifetime.

"It's because of the ease with which these drugs can be obtained," said Curtis Burns, director of the Colbert County Drug Task Force. "It's not illegal to possess prescription drugs with a prescription, and there are very few households that don't have some kind of prescription narcotics in their medicine cabinets."

Myron Crunk, director of the Lauderdale County Drug Task Force, said the number of cases involving prescription medications is rising rapidly.

"Ten years ago, you just didn't see or hear much about prescription drugs; that's not the case now," Crunk said. "Prescription drug cases are running neck and neck with meth cases. I'd say the problem has increased by 50 percent from what it was just a few years ago."

A study by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration revealed more than 15 million people used prescription drugs in 2005. That increased to more than 16 million in 2006.

University of Michigan researcher Lloyd Johnson, who conducted a drug abuse study for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said there was a decrease in the number of teens using illicit drugs or drinking alcohol between 2005 and 2006. There was an increase, however, in the number of teens using prescription drugs without prescriptions.

"Because most of the illegal drugs like LSD, Ecstasy, cocaine and heroin have shown considerable declines in recent years, while the misuse of prescription-type drugs has been growing, the latter have become a more important part of the country's drug problem," Johnson noted in his study. "Marijuana is still by far the most widely used of all of the illicit drugs, but even its use has been in gradual decline recently."

Rushing agrees that the availability of prescription drugs has sparked the increase in abuse cases and addiction with adults as well as juveniles.

"We see it a lot more in juveniles than in years past, and that's because it's easier for them to get," he said. "We've had cases of juveniles getting caught at school with their parents' prescription drugs."

The problem extends beyond the medicine cabinet at home, though.

"There's always been a problem with people having easy access to prescription drugs, but then there are those who go from doctor to doctor with fake medical problems, getting prescriptions," Rushing said. "Then there is the Internet. We've even seen cases where prescription drugs were used like currency. In one case, prescription drugs were being traded for someone doing cleaning inside a house."

Another trend showing up in the area has law enforcement officials shaking their heads.

Burns and Crunk said "pharming parties" are popular among younger drug users.

"They take all the medication in their house and bring them to a party," Burns said. "They put all of the pills together in a bag, and then they reach in and start taking whatever pill they find."

The risk is enormous, officials say.

"They're just playing with danger," Crunk said.

And then there's theft.

"People who want drugs are going to stop at nothing to get what they want," said Gerald Baer, chief deputy of the Wayne County (Tenn.) Sheriff's Office. "We have a lot of residential burglaries where all the suspects were looking for was drugs. If there aren't any pills there, they didn't take anything.

"Plus, we've had some fake burglaries, where people reported that their house was broken into and prescription pills were taken, just so they could get more from the doctors."

Baer said prescription drugs are the biggest problem facing his department, "and it's growing."

"For a while, we saw a lot of meth, crack and marijuana; now it's pills," Baer said.

Crunk said the task force in Lauderdale County receives two or three reports a day involving prescription drugs.

"There's very few houses we go into (with search warrants) that we don't find illegal prescription drugs along with the others - marijuana, meth or crack," Burns said.

Authorities said the most common types of prescription drugs being abused are hydrocodone and oxycodone - both pain killers.

Reggie Watkins, a counselor at Bradford Health Services, said a study by the National Institute for Alcohol and Drug Abuse revealed that Alabama had the highest abuse of hydrocodone in the nation in 2007.

"The pain narcotics are very popular," Watkins said. "And once you get hooked, it's hard to get off."

Bowling said it's easy to deny having the problem because prescription drugs are obtained legally all the time.

"I know it's easy to deny because I did," Bowling said. "But it makes no difference that it's a prescription drug. It is a problem and you have to get help. I did."

Watkins said most people who abuse prescription drugs have to get treatment after they've gone "too far."

"I bought into the recovery process and it worked," Bowling said.

Watkins said getting off prescription medications can be harder than other illegal drugs.

"That's because of physical withdrawals," he said. "It's psychosomatic. They're always hurting and complaining. It's hard to get them to understand it's not the physical pain they're experiencing."

Watkins said he has been with Bradford for 20 years and during that time he has seen many people get help from a variety of addictions. But the addiction increasing the most involves prescription drugs.

"There's no telling how many people I see come back time after time where they have fallen back into the same addiction," Watkins said. "It is a treatable disease, but a person has to take that first step, and that's to change their mindset."

Bowling said the sad reality is that you never totally beat the addiction.

"I'm still in recovery, always will be," he said. "Once an addict, always an addict. I'll never be recovered from this until the day they cover me up."

Tom Smith can be reached at 740-5757 or tom.smith@TimesDaily.com.