INAPPROPRIATE / ILLEGAL DISTRIBUTION OF NARCOTICS?

I will not start this post with the typical old "hypothetically" speaking
business .... I will start by saying everything I write here is the truth to
the best of my knowledge. My brother and I have been very close since
childhood, as we were the black sheep of the family. There are two boys and
3 girls in the family. It seems we just went our own way since finishing
high school. We both left our home state and have lived 1000+ miles away
since. Each of us in different areas of the country ... however, we maintain
a very close relationship the same as if we lived next door to each other.
We have confided in each other about issues we would not discuss with anyone
else, including our spouses. Not that we don't trust our spouses, it's just
that some things we want to protect them from. We've trusted each other with
virtually anything and everything and have never once had to worry about
being betrayed. That's why somehow I feel like I'm betraying him now ... but
I'm only asking questions and no names, places, etc are factual, etc. ANYWAY
enough of the background ... on with the issue...

My brother has been 100% disabled for about 6 years now. It was a work
related injury, thus he's been compensated via Workman's Compensation. There
has been no issues regarding payment of the medical bills, etc. His medical
bills and pharmacy bills are paid, and he receives his paycheck once a
month. His paycheck is approximately two-thirds of what his gross salary was
at the time of the injury. He has not and will not receive any lump sum
awards because heads, hearts, and backs are not covered under the lump sum
award act. He is in severe pain 24 / 7 and has been since the injury. He has
undergone surgeries, therapies, consoling, etc. The doctor said to make no
illusions about it, the condition will worsen and continue to deteriorate as
time passes. Every known treatment has been tried and there's no question
about it, the doctor was right ... the condition has worsened and continues
to do so.

The only available treatment at this point is medicine. Of course the
medicine has been part of the treatment since day one and due to the nature
of narcotic pain medicine he is now taking an unbelievable amount of
medicine daily. His pain medicine includes Oxycontin 50 mg four times daily,
morphine (ir) 15 mg three times daily, mepragan fortis (Demerol) 30 mg two
at bedtime and Neurontin 800 mg four at bedtime. Along with all the pain
medicine he takes a ton of anti depressants, god only knows what brands and
how much, but according to him it's a ton.

There are times his pain is so intense, he's only a moment away from
grabbing one of his handguns and using it. We have discreetly removed those
as a precaution. It is pretty much known that if a person decides to commit
suicide there is very little if anything that anyone can do to intervene.
I'm not talking about people attempting suicide 4 or 5 or nineteen times,
for the most part people in this category are actually crying out for help.
Even though there have been many cases of accidental suicide as a result of
these cries for help. For instance, a person may take a very lethal dose of
medicine planning on the wife to arrive home as she has everyday for 20
years at 4:30 or 4:45 p.m. and she is delayed as the result of a fender
bender, hence blocking her way home and when it's all said and done she
arrives home an hour later than normal ... which is the hour that caused the
accidental suicide.

We have watched my brother deteriorate terribly over the last 5+ years.
Between the pain from his injury, the severe depression and the terrible
side effects of long term narcotics use, etc. Anyway, he visits his primary
care physician every thirty days and receives his prescriptions after
discussing any relevant issues since the last visit. The pharmacist he uses
is the same one he has used for years. When he first started using her, she
was the pharmacy manager at a local superstore ... I won't mention the name.
After his injury he continued to use that pharmacy because she was an
extremely professional and caring person, like the extremely rare kind these
days. He received a phone call from her one night regarding her departure
from her employment at the superstore. She informed my brother that she had
purchased her own pharmacy and would truly appreciate his business. She
informed him her pharmacy would be providing free pick up and delivery. They
would pick up prescriptions at his house and deliver the medications almost
always on the same day. Long term use of the pain medicines caused a serious
addiction problem along with all the other horrific side effects. My brother
often used more of, mainly the Oxycontin, than his daily amount. Often times
he would use 2 or 3 times the amount he should have been taking. Hence, he
would be out of medicine before his next doctor's appointment. One evening
when the pharmacist arrived to deliver his medications and pick up his new
prescriptions my brother told her he was sure glad to see her because he had
ran out of his pain medicine 3 or 4 days prior to that. She said you should
have let me know, I could have helped you out. Well, that opened the gate to
what I believe has worsened his condition tenfold.

Before his next appointment he ran out of the pain medicine several days
early, he didn't say how many days early at the time. He contacted his
pharmacist and told her. That night she delivered enough Oxycontin to carry
him through until his next doctor's appointment. This became routine and
before long he was running out of the medicine as early as two weeks. She'd
bring him enough to get by until his next appointment and it wasn't long
before he was using those up and calling her. It came to a point when she
would ask him how many he needed and he said he'd tell her 30 or 40 just to
make sure he'd have enough. Even though it may only be 4 or 5 days until the
appointment. It was impossible for his wife to know what was going on
because it wasn't unusual for the pharmacist to deliver 4 or 5 or even six
times a week and his wife couldn't track the 30 plus pills he was prescribed
daily anyway.

After this continued for I'm not sure, but I believe around a year or so,
the pharmacist told my brother she needed to get all the medicine back that
he owed her because she needed to have her books and count right for some
audit or something like that. Somehow I don't think he seen that coming.
With all the medications he was taking plus the additional medication on top
of that, I know his thinking and sense of judgment was pretty impaired.

The pharmacist told him she would deliver his pain medicine each day and
that she could only bring him two doses a day until she was paid back. God
only knows how many he owed her but I do know that his already terrible
situation immediately got worse. He was suddenly taken from as many as 10 to
15 doses a day down to two doses a day. Although I don't have a way to get a
precise figure on what his daily average really was, he has told me that he
has taken as many as 45 - 50 40 mg tablets in less than three days.

The turmoil he's going through now is quite a bit over my head. I don't
condone his abuse of the drugs in any manner. However, I feel that I
understand because the pain he's suffered coupled with the depression etc,
has made his situation very desperate. The doctors have said the medicine is
his only course of treatment left for him. So whether he's abusing the drugs
to cope or whether he's abusing them to self destruct, I don't know. I
believe his pharmacist may have had good intentions in the beginning, by
helping him get through until his next doctors appointment. But now it seems
very apparent that she didn't do him any favors what so ever. It seems she
has worsened his already addicted state ten fold, then yanked the drugs away
and left him in a completely helpless situation. A drug treatment program is
not an option because people with similar type situations have almost a 100%
failure rate. That is explained by the fact that their drug use began as a
legit medical issue. In his circumstance the issue that started his drug use
is still present, only it's much more advanced and worse since the
beginning.

I guess to sum it up, I'm open to any advice, comments, feedback and / or
ideas concerning this matter. So, thank you very much in advance for your
time and feedback, etc.


Take care and thanks again, Axe.





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