Addict Nation by Sandra Mohr Jane Velez-Mitchell Page B

drugstore to get massive quantities of pills.
    Brown added that Corey was also going to legitimate doctors and obtaining prescriptions from them. Haim’s name came up on multiple prescriptions in the state’s system. “He had dozens of doctors, many, many prescriptions, using many, many pharmacies, more than a dozen,” said Brown, 8 who tallied the total number of prescription pills obtained by the actor in the months before his death at more than 500. This would appear to be classic “doctor shopping.”
    When the coroner’s conclusions were finally issued, we were told Corey Haim died of “natural” causes from pneumonia that had damaged his lungs, complicated by an enlarged heart and clogged arteries. But even though the coroner said drugs didn’t kill him or contribute to his death, they did find low levels of eight different drugs in his system. The toxicology tests turned up the antidepressant fluoxetine (Prozac), the antipsychotic olanzapine, the antianxiety drug diazepam (Valium), the muscle relaxer carisoprodol, and the tranquilizer meprobamate. He was also taking a cough suppressant and an antihistamine. 9
    Additionally, the coroner’s investigative report noted several bottles of prescription pills were found in Haim’s name, including hydrocodone, the key ingredient in Vicodin. The narrative adds, “The decedent usually took 7 Tylenol PMs every night to help him sleep,” although he did not take any on the last night of his life.
    While my heart goes out to his family, that is not a profile of sobriety. As a recovering alcoholic, I can attest that everything an addict does is skewed and poisoned by the obsession to use. If I had died before I got sober, alcohol would have been a huge factor, even if I was technically sober at the moment of death. Addiction destroys your ability to take care of yourself. And that can impact everything from your grooming to your health.
    These tragic cases get lots of attention, from the media and from law enforcement, because they involve famous people. But all over America, not-so-famous people are seeing their lives destroyed by prescription drugs. They’re keeling over, left and right, from meds prescribed by their doctors, and nobody is doing a damn thing! This crisis is much more widespread than even the overdose statistics reflect. Tens of millions of Americans are walking, working, and driving around in an unnecessary and debilitating fog because they’re high on a little pill that they got from their doctor.
    Robert DuPont, a former White House drug czar who once ran the National Institute on Drug Abuse, put it bluntly: “The biggest and fastest-growing part of America’s drug problem is prescription drug abuse.” 10 In 2009, powerful narcotic painkillers accounted for almost 10 percent of all prescribed drugs. 11
    America’s Real Drug Conspiracy
    Law enforcement, the federal government, the medical community, and the pharmaceutical industry all have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. The result is that illegal drug users and pushers, who are mostly poor and minority, are being prosecuted in huge numbers while the abusers of legal prescription drugs, who are mostly middle-class whites, are getting high with little reason to worry about being incarcerated.
    “For the upper middle class it’s a lot safer to go to a doctor and get these drugs than it is to go on the street and put yourself at risk of being arrested.”
    —Howard Samuels, Psy.D., licensed clinical psychologist, founder, and
CEO of the Hills Treatment Center
    Our nation is in the throes of a prescription drug abuse crisis of unprecedented proportions, and our myopic, jaded, and complacent criminal justice system is in see-no-evil, hear-no-evil mode!
    Corey Haim was allegedly going to dozens of doctors. Did those doctors ever think to Google the star’s name to see if he had a reputation for being a druggie? Had they taken this simple step, his own pronouncements about his