Doctor rebuilds after opioid addiction

As a doctor, he wrote prescriptions to feed his opioid addiction. Now, he's joining the fight against the deadliest drug in America — fentanyl.

Transcript

00:00I'm trained as an emergency department physician. I'm also somebody in long-term recovery from a near-fatal fentanyl addiction.

00:07And I've paid the consequences.

00:10I can hopefully serve as a beacon if somebody says, I've gotten through it, you know, I made it. I give them hope.

00:33That's really important because addiction is an illness of isolation, whereas recovery is about connection with others.

00:47They had seen that last prescription for fentanyl and they deemed it was a danger to myself and to the community.

00:53And this time they arrested me, like handcuffed me.

00:56And this was my bottom at this point because it was in front of my family, in front of my kids.

01:01My wife was also arrested because I had written prescriptions in her name.

01:04And that was awful to see my wife handcuffed and in the jailhouse cell.

01:09And it was so strong, so potent, I was overdosed right away.

01:13But because I had the built-up tolerance from the Percocet, I was able to tolerate it.

01:17Within 15 minutes later, I was already craving it.

01:20And if I had gone much longer than that, I would start feeling withdrawal.

01:24So it soon became a very desperate situation where I wasn't dealing with the addiction.

01:30I didn't want to face what was going on. I couldn't look myself in the mirror.

01:44So far, the only real management that's been invoked is to bring out the naloxone, the antidote to the opioid overdoses.

01:51And so that's just a temporizing technique.

01:54We need to treat addiction, that's the illness, and mental illness as well,

01:58rather than just overdose itself and prevention of overdose.

02:01We need to let go of our judgment and stop putting our moral standards on people who are sick,

02:06who are in the depths of their addictions, and giving them a chance for recovery, which doesn't exist right now.

02:12I mean, really, the main effort is giving naloxone.

02:16But having a continuum of health care professionals and seamless transition from one stage of recovery to the next,

02:22that is where the solution lies.

02:24That's exactly what I'm trying to say that needs to happen for us to have any sort of inroads on the opioid crisis itself.