A Fox in the Henhouse

November 7, 2009 | Lexington, Kentucky | Vetting explained

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A Fox in the Hen House

Most folks find it surprising that a person of my background could be a drug addict.

My parents neither drank nor abused drugs, and raised me in the Baptist church. I made excellent grades in school and enjoyed a host of friends. I was a happy kid who had everything he needed.

The biggest shock? I am a pharmacist. Shouldn't a pharmacist know better? Shouldn't I have enough knowledge from my pharmacy schooling to protect me from falling prey to addiction? How could I risk my career by getting high on the job? The statistical fact is that 12 to 15% of pharmacists will struggle with addiction at some point in their careers. Addiction knows no boundaries. My intense professional education offers me no immunity; perhaps it's even a liability.

That fated day for me came shortly after I was handed the keys to the candy store. With an established fondness for alcohol and its ability to transform my state of being, it didn't take me long to discover the potential that lay before me in my daily work. I remember the day well when I took a Lortab at work for the first time, only weeks into my first job as a pharmacist. Patients can sometimes be rude, thankless, demanding, and quite self-centered when awaiting prescriptions to be filled. Doctors can be challenging as well. An hour after I swallowed the tablet, I was the essence of brotherly love. With my opiate receptors innervated, I was more patient, loving, and caring. I was smarter, happier, and better looking. I was whole. I knew at once that I had found my fountain of youth. It was an instant love affair that would become a fatal attraction.

Convinced that all pharmacists took whatever they need from the shelves, I continued to treat the pharmacy as my very own medicine cabinet. I continued to grow more and more dependent upon narcotics to function daily. I continued to self-medicate, although I didn't know that was what I was doing then. In a matter of weeks, I was completely addicted to the very substances I was supposed to safeguard. My hard-earned PharmD degree had failed to protect me.

Eventually it was brought to my attention that there was a problem with this behavior. If I could have just stopped, I would have. I could not. I never set out to be a convicted felon. It was never my goal to have the board of pharmacy relieve me of my license. Nor was I out to embarrass and humiliate my family by getting arrested in my small hometown. Believe me. I tried on numerous occasions to simply stop. Morning after morning I would swear by my very soul that I was not going to get high that day. I would promise God in desperate prayer that I was going to start being a good boy, I would go to church more, and I'd stop stealing from my employer.

Numerous attempts at quitting failed. I began my days with my head aching and feeling like death. Making my way to the pharmacy where a plethora of narcotics awaited my arrival, I mentally battled the desire to use to no avail. For the first sixty-five of my seventy-three mile journey to work, I truly believed I just might be able to do it. Although my craving body begged me to surrender and use, my heart longed to stay clean. But the monster in my head controlled me like a puppet. I was no match for its manipulative authority. As I neared the pharmacy, a new notion was forced upon me as if by remote control; Yes you are going to use today. And I would.

It was both a defeat and a relief. While I was forced to my knees by the compelling order from somewhere in the back of my broken brain, the surrender promised relief from the battle going on in my head. That relief would soon be followed by the familiar euphoria, peace, and escape I desperately sought. Instantly I felt better, just knowing that I had relinquished my perceived control and that help was on the way. The game was over and I had lost, even before pulling in the parking lot. Tomorrow I'll do better, or so I thought. I lived this day over and over for months. Desperate attempt after desperate attempt; failure after failure; my addiction taunted and manipulated me while I continued to fill patients' prescriptions in a dangerous, intoxicated stupor.

Finally, in the fall of 2000, something changed. After intense, desperate prayer and some constructive consequences, I received the gift of willingness which, in turn, bore hope. A night out on the town turned into a night in jail. I awoke to a familiar scene of block walls and stainless steel toilets with no recollection of how I had gotten there. A moment of clarity followed by an epiphany found me saying aloud, "I'm an alcoholic and an addict and I don't have to keep living this way."

That was over nine years ago. By the grace of God, I am still clean and sober today.

Jared Combs is a pharmacist at the University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center in Lexington Kentucky and author of Incomprehensible Demoralization- An Addict Pharmacist's Journey to Recovery.

Posted in Assignment:
Overcoming addiction

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