So the tox results are in, and it appears that DJ AM, a celebrity who died last month, died from acute intoxication secondary to a combination of Ativan, Klonopin, coke, Benadryl, oxy, hydrocodone, Xanax and Levamisole (which is apparently a drug used to cut cocaine).

This kind of thing makes me so sad.

I can't tell you how many patients came in to detox after some PCP prescribed them benzos they didn't need. Hell, a pro athlete came to the unit after the team's shrink had prescribed him benzos to cut down the anxiety he felt that led him to use oxy...so then he came to us not only addicted to oxy, but to benzos, too. It's like, do these people think of what they are doing? How much power they have in being able to adversely impact someone's life forever?

I know that all of this has been the topic of controversy in recent years, what with the deaths of celebrities like Anna Nicole Smith and Michael Jackson making headlines. There is thought that while a person like Mr. Jackson may have doctor-shopped (going to someone who was going to prescribe meds to him, and not letting other docs in on what he was getting from someone else), it is the MD's responsibility ethically to protect the patient from harm. The healthcare system needs to be ameliorated so that doctors can access patient records in some sort of universal fashion. This would be costly, but the impact could be staggering...imagine, people coming into the ER, on the brink of death...you could pull up charts and see a patient's history, what medications they were allergic to, so that though they can't speak for themselves, they are out of harm's way. And the script shopping would be helped, I think. Doctors could catch the patients who needed counseling, not just allow them to fall through the cracks of the system and fuel the fire so to speak.

This is so sad to me. I saw so many older patients, patients who would tell me they didn't belong in detox, that they felt sorry "for the kids doing heroin and cocaine"--but that wasn't their issue. A Vietnam vet told me he made it through the war without touching anything, and yet when his doc prescribed oxy and other drugs for pain relief post-op and didn't question the continued scripts, the prelonged need for these drugs, the man found himself an addict. That is so sad to me. These people don't realize that prescription drug use is every bit as dangerous as illicit drug use. In this country, the sale of alcohol is legalized. I can't tell you how frustrated I could be at BC, when I would see these kids partying till they puked three, four nights a week, and then these same kids would look down on heroin addicts and coke heads. It's all the same, it's the same struggle, and it can have an equally horrifying, sad outcome.