A Mother’s Story of Loss and Strength to Inspire Change
In a recent episode of “The Rehab” podcast, host Dr. Mark Leeds engages in an emotional and enlightening conversation with Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD., who shares her harrowing journey through the landscape of addiction and the healthcare system’s labyrinth. Herrick, an embodiment of resilience and dedication, discusses the poignant story of her son, Luke, whose life was tragically cut short by an opioid overdose, as detailed in her book, “Slow Dancing With the Devil”.
The episode uncovers the raw and often untold recovery stories of addiction, shedding light on the myriad struggles families face when dealing with this crisis. Herrick’s narrative is a testament to the devastating impact of the opioid epidemic, the challenges of navigating treatment for addiction and mental health issues, and the dire need for systemic change.
Read more: 4 Easy Ways to Improve Your Mental Health Today
Susan Bartz Herrick, a steadfast mother and advocate, recounts the nightmare that unfolded when Luke became addicted to narcotics, following a prescription for OxyContin. This ordeal was compounded by the family’s personal challenges, including Herrick’s divorce and Luke’s diagnosis with bipolar disorder. These complexities added significant obstacles to their battle with Luke’s addiction, leading to a tumultuous journey through treatments and relapses.
Despite facing seemingly insurmountable challenges, including Luke’s near-fatal car accident which saw him clinically die twice, Herrick’s resolve never wavered. She stood as an unwavering pillar of support, tirelessly advocating for Luke and seeking the best possible care for his needs. Her journey is not just a story of a mother’s love and dedication but also a powerful call to action for improved healthcare policies and addiction treatment programs.
The conversation with Dr. Leeds highlights the critical importance of education, advocacy, and systemic reform in addressing the opioid crisis and addiction. It brings to the forefront the urgent need for increased access to quality care and the dismantling of stigma surrounding addiction, emphasizing that real change is necessary to prevent more tragedies like Luke’s.
Susan Bartz Herrick’s story, as shared on “The Rehab,” is a compelling reminder of the human cost of addiction and the profound impact it has on families. It serves as a rallying cry for change, urging listeners to recognize the importance of compassion, understanding, and action in the fight against the opioid epidemic and in support of those struggling with addiction.
Transcript
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:00:03]:
Susan Herrick, welcome to the podcast.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:00:05]:
Well, thank you so much. I so appreciate your time.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:00:10]:
So, Yeah. I’m really excited about this your new book. And, you know, I got a chance to to read a, a preview of it, and, It it’s a, it’s an incredible story. I mean, of course, it’s it’s heartbreaking, and, and and it’s real. I mean, it’s not, like, fictional or anything. So, You know, it’s very real for a lot of people. Yeah. So yeah.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:00:34]:
And I was imagining, you know, like, in a meeting of, know, maybe at, like, a Naranon meeting or a meeting where people are sitting around talking, it it almost seems like, you know, everyone could I imagine, like, what if everyone had a book, You know, the the book of their story. And, you know, instead of opening up and sharing just little bits and pieces, what if we could all pass around each other’s books and Know the full story. And, you know, but it really it was really engaging and and, you You know, of course, there’s there’s a personal story and a much bigger story of of, you know, what was happening in our in our society and big business and government. So, yeah, tell please tell tell us a little bit about, like, how did this come about? What made you decide to write the book?
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:01:16]:
Well, My son, lived through a nightmare and being his mother, we walked through it together. He, got addicted to narcotics before his major accident. It happened to me at the time, when Purdue was out passing OxyContin out like Pez. And, his father and I had gone through a terrible divorce so it was primarily Luke and I He was 14 years old He had a pilonidal cyst And, they operated and years later he told me he said, mom, that nurse gave me this one little white pill and made all my pain go away and after that it was on his radar but he was also given it The next year for a sprained thumb, after the thumb surgery and interestingly enough, the nurse was more concerned about the amount of Tylenol that he was taking Then the Oxycodone that was mixed in with it, they gave it to him for a sliver in his foot I was very fortunate at that time, I did go see a psychiatrist who Instantly diagnosed him as being bipolar. We had quite a round with, Depakote, Seroquel, Lithia, which made him just loony as all get out. And I went to see a psychologist who said, Ma’am, you have a very creative heartbroken son who is addicted to drugs and I suggest you find Suboxone so I asked him where I could get it and he said therein lies the problem uh-uh at that time and this is the early 2000s There were only 3 doctors in the country in our state of, North Carolina that, had taken the class, had the X waiver that could, give him the drug and he did wonderfully well on it. Unfortunately, about 9 months later, he was almost killed in a near fatal car accident. And, and what I mean, He technically died twice.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:03:39]:
They brought him back. He was crushed. 27 broken bones, first teeth fracture. He ended up with rods down his back and screws, and they had his pain medication. I I knew standing at the hospital bed when I saw the bag Morphine delighted that we were in for a much bigger fight than just getting his bones healed and we were right! After 2 months They let them, let him out of the hospital. We were not in North Carolina. We were down in Fayetteville. He had driven down to see, my mother.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:04:23]:
So we were in a different state, and they let him out of the hospital after being up to about two To 300, milligrams of OxyContin a day to, 2 weeks Anne told us to go find a doctor and somebody else to manage it. Well, nobody wanted to take us on. We found this split doctors who wanted nothing to do anymore with any, narcotics and the doctors who were, prescribing to the pain levels Well, my son had an incredibly high tolerance, and I do believe it was, inherited from, his his dad who was an alcoholic and, could sing, sitting, drinking, an inordinate amount of alcohol, walk and talk. Well, Luke’s tolerance kept getting higher and higher And he was with a doctor who, adhered to the Portnoy School of Pain that you just treat up to the pain and they had him up to 6 even 800 mg a day and then dropped him so we were on our own trying to figure out what we were dealing with they said we needed a treatment center. At first, we couldn’t go to 1 because he still needed some medication for pain and then when that was over, We didn’t know how to go about getting help. Really went through 18 months of insanity. I did send them to a treatment center, and I thought 30 days would be enough. Learned a lot about denial on that aspect for me, because The treatment center said no.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:06:19]:
He needs a lot more. In the meantime, other doctors had him on, Xanax for the PTSD. He remembered his entire accident. It wasn’t blocked out. So he had PTSD from that. He was a pharmaceutical mess, tried to get off everything his way by drinking alcohol. Well, You know, that was a mess too. Finally, I found a needle in his car.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:06:50]:
Not that I hadn’t seen Other things. I did. My jewelry was disappearing. His bike went away and, I had the courage Well, actually, I knew at that point in time I was that he would not make it, that I would walk in his room and I’d find him there and I couldn’t bear that. I thought I could bear getting the phone call but not me finding him because that did happen to a friend of mine about 3 years earlier. So I very, by the grace of God, I walked in his room with The needle 1 morning and said, listen. I know what’s going on here. I’m giving you the 2 choices.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:07:35]:
1 Is, I’m kicking you out in the street. No car, no money, no credit cards. You are on your own. I will get a restraining order Or 2, you are gonna go to a 1 year program as far away from here as we can find so you get the help you need and I walked in my office. I was expecting Another war to erupt but 10 minutes later he just came in my office with tears in his eyes and he said, Mom, I tried everything. I don’t know how to stop. I want to stop. I’m such a bad person.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:08:13]:
I mean, just he took that It was a moral failing on his part that he couldn’t walk away from these drugs and he said I need help So in 48 hours, we did get him on an airplane. We had to, this is in The book we had a very, interesting little trip that we had to take to try and find him some Suboxone to get him from keep from detoxing to get him on the airplane from North Carolina out to, California and, A very gracious, pharmacist made sure I got 2 tablets, but it was not legal. How we had to he was out the birdie here, did, wonderfully well, and came back. And thanks to the AA program, the, Men that he connected with, he really turned his entire life around. That’s not to say he didn’t, Have a couple relapses. But with us, our story turned, even More, complicated is he had to have surgery again, and this was to remove A, medical filter that had failed, so he had to go back into surgery Nineteen in scar down his front because they had to dig it out at, his aorta and put back on HUGE amount of narcotics again and that’s when we really came in trouble at surgery Nobody knew how to treat a patient who needed surgery, who needed, medical paying intervention and yet who was who had substance use disorder? And, That’s when I really started to figure out that the medical community We’re still treating this as it was, not the individual’s fault. Excuse me that that they were treating, it as well, we’re dealing with an addict, and it’s their fault! I mean they did not know what to do! The hospitals, the emergency rooms, they did not know what Suboxone was! A lot of the doctors we talked to did not know what Kratom T was. My son had to walk himself off a couple times, with that because we could not get, any help and they didn’t seem to care.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:11:09]:
Yeah. Eventually, yeah. I I mean, he, something else had happened with it also is After we had the surgery, I’m very grateful to, the Duke Pain Management Clinic. There were no protocols on how to walk somebody down There was no detox unit there so the pain clinic created their own protocol of walking him down on Methadone and and a few other drugs. I mean, we were chopping pills in half and quarters giving it Special time to walk him down. And, but he got addicted to the Methadone So he did go into a 30 day treatment center. He thrived again, came out as strong as he was. Matter of fact, he was leading a lot of the groups there but 3 weeks after that, he had a blockage.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:12:10]:
They took him to the hospital and Instantly shot him up with morphine. I called my insurance company and said, listen. We have had a problem. He needs to go back in in an environment that could help him physically get off of the drugs. Mentally, he’s okay, but physically Get him off and they simply stated, no. He only gets 1 treatment a year. I explained everything. So we, you know, we were really on our own trying to get everything straightened out.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:12:41]:
I mean, I went in debt probably over $200,000 having to pay out of pocket to get him back in. And, after the 3rd blockage, everything settled down. He had been studying on his own. You’re a very bright man. He was in his late twenties at this time and got into the University of Pennsylvania. There is a special online class for students that had a break and, extra Circumstances. So he got in there. At the same time, he was finishing up his associate’s degree in political science.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:13:24]:
He wanted to take, public policy on, and, he was doing fabulous Thanks. COVID hit. We had a perfect storm. One of the screws in his Neck was starting to impinge upon the spinal cord, so he was back in pain trying to manage his pain, trying to manage a few other things going on. A doctor had put him back, on Klonopin in order just to try to settle him. He was, I think metabolically dependent on him. He said it was much Harder to walk off of that but I will tell you a heartbreaking thing that happened here is he came home for 3 months to detox, to get off of everything and at this time only Zoom meetings for, AA, any groups we’re on. And he brought home a bottle of Suboxone.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:14:31]:
He had an addictionologist in California, But he didn’t feel he could use it or walk off on it or use it afterwards because the members of his group Would not accept him as being one of them and it was so important to him that he have his comrades, his tribe So I watched him just suffer and go through dopamine depletion he managed to get off everything EXCEPT The Klonopin, he went back out to California to pack up his things. He was going to move home, Ran out, asked a friend for Klonopin, and it was Fentanyl. So within 26 hours After he left to pack up to come home, he was gone. He was gone.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:15:24]:
Oh, wow. So so that’s that’s what happened. It was a fake clonopin. It was actually fentanyl.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:15:30]:
Yes. As as as much as I could tell, seeing that it was out at Los Angeles, they only mark that. On, his death certificate, they never did any Top screens, I know who gave it to him because, you know, and that they said, well, we’re sorry that we don’t prosecute.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:15:52]:
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s happening a lot with the fake pills. I I know of, someone who their son went through a, An issue where where he was dependent on on, Xanax, and and he, you know, he was but but he wasn’t getting it from a doctor, so he was getting it from whoever on the streets. And one day, I guess, got some fake Xanax. It was actually Fentanyl, and these pills are pressed to look just like the real one. So you can’t tell the difference. Yes, ma’am.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:16:17]:
So he went to the hospital in both, Benzodiazepine withdraw and, opioid overdose simultaneously. So, yeah, it’s really an a nightmare with I I I was wondering, you had throughout the book, you, A few times, you mentioned the statistic that Purdue not a statistic, but what Purdue claimed that the addiction rate was 1%. And and I remember them, and and I’ve kind of This has been part of my career that I Purdue like, early on, I went to work, at one of my father’s clinics in in the late nineties, Early 2000. And one of the doctors there was prescribing OxyContin, and he believed in it. He believed he was helping people. He wasn’t this is a doctor in his eighties who had been a surgeon, and now he’s doing family practice. And people would come in in pain, and he’d prescribe it. And the Purdue rep was there every month.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:17:07]:
This, nice woman who looked like she’s probably in her fifties. You know, he’s in his eighties, and Maybe they targeted him that she appealed to him or something. And, I mean and and he believed it was safe. I mean, he even had Bottles of pills in in his drawer that, you know, someone said, well, these forties aren’t working. I need eighties. He’s like, okay. Give me that, and I’ll give you the other one. And and so Just I remember once opening his drawer and there’s, like, 3 or 4 bottles full of OxyContin, and nobody cared because everyone thought there’s no addiction potential.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:17:34]:
It’s not. There’s no abuse potential, really, which is crazy because I’m thinking, like, well, that isn’t oxycodone kind of like heroin? I mean, it is it is addicting, but somehow Being in this hard little shell, it they they’re claiming it’s not. But, yeah. I re so, anyway, I remember, Purdue took us to, like, a steak dinner at one point, and, he gave a lecture. And, I remember the the number being, like, a lot less than one. The the number the percentage of the likelihood of becoming an addict from getting a prescription of OxyContin that it was, like, something like 0 point 0 zero one. I don’t remember the exact number, but it was a tiny little fraction of 1 and which is of course, we know is not true. I was wondering, do you know, like, what is What do we think now is, like, the real number? What what is the real percentage if if, you know, I guess it might be different if a person is predisposed, if they Are genetically, or family history predisposed to addiction, but, is it maybe, like, 5 to 15%? I would imagine it’s somewhere in there, maybe.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:18:35]:
Yes, you know, I I, I did a lot of research after Luke passed away. It’s it’s how I grieved, how how I coped and what surprised me is to find out that there are precursors to addiction Rose et al. Published in 2019 in, Frontier Psychiatry A wonderful paper which lists all of the precursors and I went through that and I said my husband, my son had 2 thirds of these precursors if only I would have known! The, Also, too, that 2 out of 4 people, roughly, will become addicted to this substance because of these Precursors! 8 people will take and say, Ugh, I hate it! I have to get off of it! I know it’s supposed to help me, but I I can’t take it until I say, oh, wow. I like this. It’s great. My son fell into that category. You know, we’re, we’re spending, at Purdue. I I have Ben, to, I don’t know if it was a Purdue’s party but I have been to one of these pharmaceutical parties.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:19:59]:
They are lavish! I mean champagne, lobster they get these doctors very well, in the en enjoyment mode and they sell them, all all of the drugs With Oxycodone, I know that, in the in 2001, the average sales rep at Purdue was making 55,000 annual, bonuses, kinda averaged 71,000, to add up to 240,000. At Purdue, paid 40,000,000 in Sales incentives, bonuses to its reps. Knowing that their data was bogus, they squished the graph, And the FDA did not catch it. But, you know, the the FDA at this time, they had 39 staff members that were responsible for roughly viewing 34,000 pieces of promotional material So they intentionally snuck it in and they’re supposed to have, responsibility, you know, the RA, the Regulatory affairs department, is responsible for approving everything, and yet, The n a the the NIH has stated that, over these 20 years, the part pharmaceutical companies were forced to pay 19.8 $1,000,000,000 in penalties, with the dramatic upswing from the mid 2000 and the largest category of the penalty was for off label promotion. That that particular violation was just The visible face of this far reaching scandal and, I mean, they had kickbacks. They bullied academics, produced faked medical journals, and I think probably one of their most Recent scams was, the FDA’s approval of, gabapentin. It’s it was originally approved only as an adjunct therapy procedures but Parq Davis, which is Now, of course, in Pfizer, deployed a breathtaking array of covert material tactics to persuade doctors to prescribe the drug for all matters of conditions for which there was no evidence of efficacy from migraines to bipolar, and they even had a tactical plan, to encourage, titration in higher Dosage, they created a, the child neurology advisory board and recruited neurologists to to present case studies. I I have a quote here which is interesting.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:23:09]:
A Parke Davis executive told his staff That’s where we need to be holding your hand and whispering in your ear and rotten for pain, rotten for monotherapy, for bipolar, rotten for EVERY Thanks. So who can we try? I mean, it it Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:23:28]:
Well and and Purdue I mean, I think the pharmaceutical reps were, like, just the tip of the iceberg, like like you said. But I, you know, I saw in my early career, you know, the They they were everywhere. You know, they there was a an organization, Partners Against Pain, where they distributed paperwork, these fancy, pain assessments that doctors could put on their charts to To be, you know, to to look like they’re doing the right thing, you know, that we’re asking these patients all these questions and the patients will go through and fill out what what they thought What’s expected of them. And so you have these monthly pain assessments, you know, which is probably a good thing, I mean, realistically. But but Partners Against Pain, I think, was was was Purdue’s company. I I think they came from Purdue. There’s the American Academy of Pain Management, And at one point, doctors thought that they were board certified if they took their test and got credentialed with them. And then the, the academy had to tell the doctors, we are not really board You can call yourself a a CPP, a credentialed pain practitioner.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:24:28]:
And I know that Purdue was very much involved that that there was know, if a doctor got in trouble, they would help him with with legal advice and legal support. And, and there, you know, there was people In the the Academy of Pain Management that that worked for Purdue directly, and they were there to to advise the academy, I think, and doctors. I mean, I I I don’t know how precise I am being with this, but I know that they were everywhere. I know that that I would go to my norm not just that organization, but just going to, like, Conventions at the Osteopathic, Medical Society in Florida. I we’d go to their conventions, and this nice elderly doctor that was very well respected would get up and tell us that OxyContin is safe. He he would say he said something like my doctor just gave me a 20 milligram OxyContin for 10 days for my shoulder, and I Took it for 10 days and stopped taking it. I was fine, and all of you should feel comfortable with that. And,
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:25:20]:
And it it it’s interesting because where they got that information, They had hired Russell, Portnoy, who later was nicknamed the King of Pain and he is the one, just as it As you said, that got pain to be considered the 5th vital sign and still when patients Go in. They still are asked on that pain scale. We still use the pain scale that Portnoy started, then and His information and, he he quoted a study by Porter and Jake in the New England Journal of Medicine That stated only 1% of the patients treated with narcotics became addicted and you’re right, it was Less than that, but they rounded it off and TIME magazine, described Their work is a landmark study. The problem was that it was not a landmark study. It consisted of a short 101 word paragraph Letter to the editor. I mean, the Oh, wow. That’s where that came from.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:26:31]:
So it wasn’t a study It
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:26:33]:
was not a study at all. Wow. It was just a bit all.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:26:38]:
Even real real studies, you know, like, actual, Like, whatever, you know, double blind study you know, studies that are in peer reviewed journals that that are respectable. Some some of these studies when you really read the details of it I mean, actually, Luckily, now we have AI to look at some of these studies because I’ve and I’ve done that. I’ve gone and asked CHAT g p t, can you look at the study with me and, you know, can you find and it says, well, that’s a good study. Well, can you find any problems with it? Yeah. They only had 30 people in the study, and, and and it was for This one study was for a device and, like, they also gave him medication and but all the stuff that it was finding was buried in, like, 10 to 20 pages of of data. And it’s, you know, not easy to For 1 person to go through and take you know, when you barely have any time to read through all that stuff and,
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:27:20]:
you
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:27:20]:
know and, of course, we have the drug reps, like, holding these fancy color graphs up and saying, you know, look How safe this is. But, but, yeah, they’re they can easily hide a lot of stuff in what looks like legitimate science, and it’s not.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:27:32]:
It is not. It’s not I mean, the pharmaceutical companies now are required to publish every single study. 20, 25 years ago, if they didn’t like it, they didn’t have to publish it. However, in doing research for a friend who had cancer and they wanted to give her a chemo and I I went online I found one study That said, it its efficacy was maybe 3 to 7%, but I thought, just one study? I’m sure there’s gotta be more, but I couldn’t find any. I had to go into the pharmaceutical company’s website and, I mean, I dug down in the basement of that site until I found 6 other studies. Most of them not only said it it doesn’t work, but it’ll kill you. You know? So there there are so many ways around and what are p I mean, you’re a position. I’m a professor or retired, but this is not my field.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:28:41]:
You know, How is Joe Public like me? How are we going to find this out? Our children are dying because of drug overdoses, some of the drugs that are coming out are not safe and they can help one become Dependent, how do we know? It’s it’s it’s a scary world. Scary time.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:29:05]:
Yeah. And that and that’s a whole other, drug epidemic that we’re dealing with, the psychiatric drugs, antidepressants, and especially the Benzodiazepines. And for a long time, doctors felt like the these benzos are very safe because they don’t kill people. You know, when they’re taken by themselves, assuming they’re not combined with Opioids and alcohol and other things, by themselves, they tend not to kill. But a significant percentage of people become very dependent and then develop long term protracted withdrawal with, Like, really severe consequences. And, you know, the med the benzos are not meant for long term use. And patients, you know, they get them for a couple weeks and they back to the doctor and say, wow. That really helped me.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:29:42]:
And prescription after prescription, then over years, problems come up and, You know, and and it’s it’s something that nobody’s really talking about. And, you know, a lot of people in that community are saying, you know, when are we gonna have our moment? You know, our Purdue moment when somebody is held accountable for this. And, if you know, just because people aren’t dying at the same rate they do from Fentanyl and opioids, I mean, they’re kind of In a living hell. I mean, that there’s no way out really, of some of these people living with this. So, and that’s a that’s a major issue, informed consent. You know, Doctors being aware. I mean, that’s the first thing is, like, you know, doctors are already being, kinda guess of themselves by these companies of, you know, this is safe. We want you to do this.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:30:24]:
You know, at one point, the medical societies are saying, if you don’t treat pain, you’re gonna be disciplined. We could we could, take your pull your license if you don’t treat pain. 10, 15, 20 years later, they’re telling us the exact exact opposite. If you treat pain in the wrong way, we’ll pull your license and maybe throw you in jail. And so, you know, we’re all, like, thinking, like, hold on a second. You’re pretty you sounded pretty confident, 15 years ago when you told us the opposite. And, No. It’s it’s just you know, of course, doctors are like, I don’t want anything to do with it.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:30:55]:
I’m gonna either retire, never write those prescriptions again. But as far as, like, you know, when we say Purdue was deeply entrenched in the medical education, medical, you know, medical, system, the health care system, the Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, the 12 step programs are deeply entrenched in addiction treatment. And like you said, Narcotics Anonymous specifically has an official position against, using medication to treat addiction. If you can yeah. You can use medication for anything else, and they say and they have a pamphlet, a 42 page pamphlet. What do they call it? In time in times of, I I forgot the name of the pamphlet, but there’s a pamphlet that says medical treatment is fine. It’s not our problem. If you take opioids for pain, You’re clean.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:31:44]:
That’s between you and your doctor. But if you take something for addiction, whether it’s Methadone, Suboxone, maybe even Naltrexone. I’m not sure about that one. But They have a there’s a pamphlet that says, NA does not approve medications. You know, we treat addiction with recovery.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:31:59]:
Uh-huh. I I can understand where that came from. When you go back in history, Prior to the Harrison Act in, 1914, opium addiction Was treated as a disease. I mean, Freud, treated heroin addiction with cocaine but they were treating a disease when the HARRISON Act came out. You know, it was verboten to treat Any, narcotic with another narcotic and somehow that set. And a a, yes. A a started in the, 1919 36, 35. Well, they were dealing with the science that they knew at the time, but they did not know about neurobiology.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:32:54]:
So at that time, With the Harrison Act, it made sense, but as we’ve learned more about science, We have still been criminalizing the doctors for treating those until, you know, this last, act in, June of 2003 where they did away with the waiver but doctors are still very Hesitant, because in their mind, and this is the stigma, is they’re still using the science of About a 100 years ago and when you look at a lot of the counselors, in order to be certified as a drug and alcohol counselor, in most states, the minimal requirement is, a GED. How can you understand the science and understand these, Findings that medical science is coming up with with the midbrain, changes If you don’t look into it, you know, so that there there’s there’s this huge gap and they’re treating everybody’s addiction like theirs and it’s interesting. AANA, they do not publish their, rates of Recovery. Some estimate it’s only 23, 25%. I think I read that in in a, Harvard Journal. So, you know, it’s it’s quiet. They say, well, it’s because people don’t come forward. I’ve known people who, got sober, got clean and Went on, to do great things.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:34:50]:
I also know that 3 of Luke’s sponsors, Died of, unintentional overdose. They had a trigger happen and because of what is out on the street These days, you can go down in a heartbeat.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:35:11]:
Yeah. Yes. Kinda, Yeah. If you walk into a, a meeting and, you know, you sit for the meeting and you hear, you know, people announcing, you know, I guess, at at some point, say, Talk about how much clean time they have, and or maybe meet with people after the meeting and, you know, 1 person has I I think, like, in NA, I think it’s it’s great if you have, like, 20 years plus. That’s, like, really super impressive. And then AA is probably, like, you hear people with 40, 50 years sober and, But but, yeah, 20 years of of being cleaned from drugs in NA, you know, is super impressive. And you you might go to a meeting, and it’s filled with people with Tons of clean time. You don’t have a year, 5 years, 10, 15, 20 years.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:35:51]:
But it’s a, a survivorship bias, you know, because The the people that it works for, they they stick. You know, the room holds on to those people that it works for, you know, that they have for whatever reason, They happen to you know, maybe they like to talk. Maybe they like to do steps. They for some reason you know, maybe there’s people that were physically dependent on opioids and thought they were addicted, but they were But they were only physically dependent. You know, there’s all kinds of reasons why a person might stick in a an NA or AA and say, wow. This really worked well for me. And it it can work for you too if you just do what I do. And it’s kinda like you go to the gym and everyone’s got big muscles, and you’re like, wow.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:36:26]:
If I go here, I could have big muscles. But for whatever reason, the people The gym is full over the the success stories, and you don’t see the 1,000 that came and went to that’s just not for me. And,
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:36:37]:
they don’t understanding, dual diagnostic aspect. My son definitely was dual diagnostic. And There are some medications that are needed. You can’t pray away a general anxiety disorder. You can’t pray away a panic attack when the body just goes in into an overload I, met, someone through through the writing of my book His name is, Doctor. Arun Gupta And he is the author of The Preventable Epidemic. He’s a practitioner much like you. He started off, Family medicine and then went to be certified and that’s all he does is, addiction Medicine Now he claims that he has got 85% of his patients doing wonderfully well, having fabulous lives! But he manages them! They come in and see him just how are they doing.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:37:47]:
He adjusts the Suboxone Accordingly, sometimes, if there’s a big, catastrophe, he’ll tirit them up a little bit, but bring them down. And, of course, they have The counseling, diet, exercise, everything, it it’s a full and integrated program. And, he is just claiming wonderful, results. I wish I would have known him when my son, was still here because he he knows all the drugs, how how to manage them. We were guessing And there’s a lot of information out there in studies, but the general population understands the information at the 6th grade level. This is something that I taught. I taught in the Department of communication. I mean, I I had to call on my, medical friends to get dictionaries out to go through some of these papers to try to break it down into an understandable form and I tried to put a lot of that in the book to, Break it down for people to understand I’m I’m now, on a lot of Facebook sites of other parents who have lost Children and the stigma, the lack of information that they have, the guilt, They blame themselves.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:39:16]:
They blame why couldn’t he just stop? He was just an addict. I mean, you know, and it breaks my heart because you would not say that to somebody who had cancer. You’re not praying hard enough. You’re not doing the work Hard enough. No. You can’t have any chemo. I’m sorry. You know, we don’t treat cancer like that.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:39:37]:
We do not treat heart disease. We do not treat diabetes, which is another chronic illness Those with diabetes, they have 20 plus drugs to deal with We only have free And only 1% of the huge millions that go to the war on drugs goes to research and development.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:40:00]:
Yeah.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:40:00]:
1%.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:40:03]:
And that’s that’s another you know, as far as another, Company that that’s deeply entrenched in in the, medical system. And and I think, you know, maybe, more problematically, In law enforcement, you know, some of these these companies, you know, like the company that makes VIVITROL, they apparently decided instead of going to market to doctors, they thought, let’s market to, law enforcement and Prison wardens and tell people, like, everyone’s you know, Suboxone is like like legal heroin. You need you need Vivitrol. Vivitrol is like the good one. And, Yeah. And and then the company that makes Suboxone, Indivior, when you know, I guess, when they were having issues with their patent, you know, with Subutex, which is a pure Buprenorphine, which works of course, works very well. They said, oh, there’s a problem. Everyone’s shooting up their their Subutex.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:40:50]:
We need to add, Yeah. Naloxone. There’s never been a study that demonstrated the Naloxone was an effective abuse deterrent when added to any kind of opioid. But Everybody out there says, if doctors don’t if if doctors prescribe Subutex over Suboxone without a good reason, you know, they’re They’re supporting, you know, drug abuse and diversion and all these things. They tried to make that same argument with SUBLOCADE, the monthly injection. I went to one of the first lectures on that, And the lecturer said, you know, you doctors in this room, if you don’t immediately switch all your patients to SUBLOCADE like I did, you know, you’re We found out now that they can chew up Suboxone and and get through that Naloxone, reaction. So, you know, they They’ve been like gaslighting and playing games with us for years. You know, they they didn’t want the generics of Voxelon film to come out.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:41:38]:
It took an Indian company, doctor Reddy, to fight for that, and They won finally a few years ago. The same month that they won, the doctor Reddy won, and Indivior lost that fight. And and we had the generic Suboxone film that same month. And if you’re cut off the Here to Help program where they were giving people up to a year free Suboxone, that same month they said, everybody on the program loses the program whether they still have time in it or not. And they sent it as a plain text fax, you know, not even you know? Oh my god. Nobody even put their name on it or anything. Yeah. So, I mean, there’s a but we know that buprenorphine you know, we can call it Suboxone because it’s like a genericized name.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:42:15]:
Right.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:42:15]:
But that’s that’s what I do. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:42:17]:
They should really lose they should lose their rights the name anyway. Yeah. I I I think they would. But, yeah. Anyway, so we know it works, and it’s it’s not like any other opioid. It has a, It it has a higher affinity for the receptor, the new opioid receptor, a higher affinity than other opioids. It has an effect on the kappa receptors. It’s An antagonist.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:42:37]:
It has all these other things. So to say it’s switching 1 opioid for another, it’s is, you know, o o way, way oversimplifying. Right. And and finally now, there’s experts that are saying, you know, this could just be over the counter. And and over the counter doesn’t mean that the checkout line, it doesn’t mean, know, you pick up your your Advil and your Suboxone. You know, it means that you go up to the pharmacy counter and say, you know, I’m I’m addicted to opioids. I’m taking Fentanyl on the streets, and I and I can’t Find a Suboxone doctor, and the pharmacist could say, here, sign this form, and here’s your Suboxone.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:43:11]:
Yeah. There’s, Doctor, I see Daniel Snyder of The Pharmacist, Netflix Sarris. He is still fighting this down. He has started a group called EMMC, which is Enhanced Main streaming, MOUD Coalition and his whole goal is to get it available to absolutely everyone, and they’re starting some, Study groups down where he lives, just to try to make this a, Well, their their goal is to take it to Congress, that they would have it totally available to everyone just as you said. Interestingly enough, I’m hearing and feeling a lot of pushback from a lot of the, Counselors. Because they say too, well, it can be abused, but everything can be abused. You go out, get Sunshine, it can be abused. You we but smart decisions have to be made based on science all during the COVID epidemic, you know, we’re we’re just stating, you know, follow the science! Why Addiction medicine, you know, it’s there.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:44:42]:
We have information, but it is not getting out there.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:44:47]:
Yeah.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:44:47]:
It’s not getting to the right people. I think stigma is the main thing which is holding it it back. We’re gradually getting rid of some of the laws but the word has to get has to get out there and I I really do want to thank you for these podcasts Gass, because it’s when people listen to all of these different topics, knowledge is power! And what one of the things that I was hoping to do in my book, yes, it’s a memoir, but I have a lot of these, facts and figures in there written in a whole play and understanding way that people, can can learn and help stop the stigma and then take more positive steps this is an incredible crisis, and just going after fentanyl over the border is not gonna stop it.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:45:45]:
Yeah. But I I heard a thing on a radio show the other day. They said I don’t know how accurate this was. They said that a, polls show that half of Americans are in favor of the military invading Mexico and going after the cartel people. And And, you know, of course, doctors are and, pharmacists are a lot easier to go after because they you know, they’re not armed most of the time. But, but yeah. I mean, you know, because it it’s like I mean, it’s a major problem. Fentanyl, it shouldn’t these people shouldn’t be able but those people are scary too.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:46:17]:
The cartel, they’re like the army. They’re not. Don’t think they’re like they portray them in the TV shows where they look like mafia people. I think they’re more like like a paramilitary army organization and, You know, they’re they’re deep of course, deeply entrenched also in government and everywhere. So maybe it’s not that easy to go after them. But, but, yeah, the this medication I mean, and and pharmacies are a big part of the problem today. I mean, One one solution that that we thought was gonna work out, I think, was the these telemedicine companies during COVID. All these, like, tech companies kinda disrupting the The addiction treatment field saying, you know, we’re gonna we’re gonna have, like, 1 central company that that has all these nurse practitioners or doctors working under us.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:46:59]:
And we we can treat like entire states or huge regions of the country or even every state. You know, you can call 1 company and they’ll put you on the phone with a practitioner for 5 minutes and your prescription gets sent to the pharmacy. And the problem is that now pharmacists are are very edgy about that, you know, and and pharmacists Get visited by inspectors every month that say why you’re filling these prescriptions from a doctor 50 miles away and whatever. You know, they they were, like, they were they eased up on that during COVID, but COVID’s over as far as they say now. But, yeah. So so I’m actually I’m seeing that myself personally, like, having to have conversations with pharmacists. Like, you know, I don’t work for a telemedicine company. You know, this is my patient who is here with me here in Fort Lauderdale and it got Put on a job in Orlando for 3 months, and he’s coming back.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:47:45]:
But can you please take care of him for these few months? And, you know, stuff like that. But, yeah, they’re very edgy about that. They There may I’ve heard and sometimes pharmacists make up fake laws. Let’s say, like, there’s this law on the DEA website that says I can’t do it. And And I’ve even I’ve asked them. I’ve said, you know, like, where is this law? I’m on I’m on their website right now. What is this DEA law? And they’re like, will you go look for it? You know, we were told that that’s a law, but, you know, but, yeah, it’s just pharmacies are a big part of the problem these days of you can get the prescription really easily, but it’s sometimes hard to fill it.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:48:17]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, we we need education. When you look at the number of physicians who like you who know what they’re doing when they’re treating someone with substance use disorder, opioid use disorder. The, Was the ASAM, claimed that there’s, like, 7,000 only to treat 1,000,000? I wanna get my stats right for you on that. Okay, ASHAM, the American Society of Addiction Medicine 41,000,000 are at risk from dying from SUD There’s about 7,000 specialists only to treat them. And in 2020, 41, 1000000 people aged 12 or older needed the treatment, but only 6.5% got it. Those, you know but Yeah.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:49:34]:
I’m I’m told Maybe you get 1 hour in medical school nursing schools 2, 3 years ago did not have any training in it I think every single emergency department needs to have Suboxone And yet when we went, they did not even know what that was. We need mandatory education and more than just an hour. I mean, this is an incredible chronic Disease that very few people know how to treat.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:50:17]:
Well, this is this is the year that We’ll kinda see a test of what happens. This is a year that every doctor who has a DEA registration, which is probably most doctors, almost everybody. Every doctor required to do the full 8 hour course for treating. I don’t know if you’re aware of that.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:50:32]:
Yeah. Not aware of that. Yes.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:50:35]:
Yeah.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:50:36]:
Makes me happy. I did not know.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:50:39]:
So you may have heard they did away with the x number. You know? You don’t need the the the x number anymore, but the The DEA solution to that was, no more x number, but every single doctor that we allowed to have a registration must do the 8 hour course. So Every convention now is part of your our live, training. Our live CME includes it’s either 6 to 8 hours. I think it’s it might be 8. I’m not sure. But, but, yeah, they’re they have to do the full training now, every doctor.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:51:04]:
How how are they going to reinforce that just out of curiosity?
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:51:08]:
It’s required to To maintain well, there’s gonna be a a box to check off on on renewing your DEA registration. So when a doctor replies, it you’ll check off a box attesting that you did the training. And if you didn’t and you check that box off, that’s probably a very scary thing because you you never wanna do anything against them. Alright. Okay. If they tell you something, I still put my x number on even though it’s not required now. I did the training in 2006. I was once told by a, an inspector, Every time you don’t put the x number in a prescription, that’s possibly a $20,000 fine per, per infraction per prescription.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:51:44]:
Someone told me that wasn’t true. He was just trying to scare me. I I don’t know. But, ever ever since then, I thought even if they’ve done away with it, Until someone tells me I’m not allowed to put it on, I’m still gonna write it in. But, yeah, it’s, they’ve opened it up now, so we’ll we’ll see. I think probably Maybe by next year, you know, how how doctors respond to that that they’ve been kind of forced to do the training.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:52:08]:
No. I’m I’m I’m very pleased to hear that. My son passed away too a little over 2 years ago and about 3 3 weeks after I I went in to see my doctor and I told her what happened and of course she expressed her condolences and then said to me. You know, Susan, we are doing so much not to create any more addicts. And I looked at her and I said, yeah. But what are you doing to help the ones who already are, and the look on her face was priceless. She had it’s like she hadn’t even thought of that and all and, you know, it was a sad day. It was a sad I’m I’m very I’m very glad to hear this and I’m very glad for doctors like you who know, who understand, and who are advocating and putting things, putting this information out there.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:53:05]:
Knowledge is power, and we have to get the word out. So I never want 1 more person to get the phone call that I did.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:53:13]:
Oh, definitely. It’s yeah. It’s it’s really horrible to, and and, you know, for a doctor to get that phone call, and then, I mean, of course, it’s not the same, but but, yeah, I remember a patient that had been coming and doing really well, and he was just always busy running in and out and, you know, had a had a Really successful career and, but he his wife wasn’t wasn’t with him anymore, but he, and, anyway so at one point, I guess he stopped coming in. I didn’t know what had happened to him. Then I found I got a call later on that they had found him with a, You know, in his home with a a syringe in his arm, and the wife called me and she said, was there anything I could have done? You know? If I had been with my husband, is there anything I could have done to have saved him or Prevented that and yeah. It’s horrible. And, and I don’t know that she could’ve even if she had been there with Tons of of Narcan to try to reverse an overdose. Who’s to say she would have been in the room at that moment? The within that short period few minutes that she would have had to be there.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:54:16]:
But, but yeah. So so as far as the, I I did an interview with doctor Nelson from, Rutgers University. And it he’s very nice to to do it. He did actually did 2 podcast interviews with me. And we talked about the the last interview we did was actually, he came on the 1st time to talk about over the counter, Naloxone, which is now a thing that Apparently because it had been out there for a while that you could go to the pharmacy and get a Narcan prescription get Narcan without a doctor’s prescription in most states. But, apparently, the way they did it was there is a standing prescription from, like, 1 public health doctor that made that possible. And so now it’s like, Yeah. Now it’s officially over the counter, but not over the counter where you can just pick it up on a shelf.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:55:01]:
You still have to go to the pharmacist and fill out paperwork and whatever. But it was it’s the 1st step towards making it fully over the counter and and competitive and better prices. And, But yeah. So we did a we did a episode about that. Then we did another interview where we talked about treating about induction of Suboxone, which is Kind of tricky. You know, that’s something the doctors have to learn about when they do the training, that you can’t just give someone Suboxone and say, I know you’ve been taking Fentanyl every day. Here, take the Suboxone now. Because they get sick from it, and then they never wanna take it again.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:55:32]:
Yeah. They get precipitated withdrawal. And we went over a couple of approaches because things are different now. Fentanyl gets Sequestered in the fat cells when you take it for a long time. You can’t you with other opioids, even like heroin, oxycodone, You you can usually give Suboxone 12, 18, 24 hours later after the last dose of opioid. With Fentanyl, it’s sometimes a waiting period of 3, 4, 5 days. It can be a long time. And so there’s different approaches now.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:55:59]:
There’s a microdose approach, which is called the Bernice method, where you start with a The person can still keep using you know, you you don’t want them to. But if they can’t stop, they can start the Suboxone at a very low dose and gradually increase it. And when it gets to a certain threshold, They don’t Yeah. Yeah. The receptors are blocked and they can drop the other opioid. And another approach is called macrodosing, which is very Should be very interesting to every single ER doctor in the country. In most cases, you can give a a fairly large dose upfront, Sixteen to 24 milligrams, even 32 milligrams. And the, based on the the pharmacokinetics, the, The way that the drug works because of the high affinity, the receptor, and the partial agonist effect, you you can get just enough partial agonist effect with the Buprenorphine sitting on the receptor long enough that the person will probably either not have precipitated withdrawal or have very little of it.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:56:54]:
And so ER doctors are probably thinking, how can I give Suboxone? Because if they just came in and overdosed and they just took Fentanyl, how can I give Suboxone? Because they need to wait At least 24 hours or more.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:57:07]:
The who knows?
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:57:08]:
So, yeah, they they can give it. They can they can give a large dose, which is Counterintuitive. It’s a little bit scary, you know, thinking like, I’m gonna give 16 milligrams. Now they’re gonna hate me. They’re gonna get really sick. But it it actually works. I’ve Done it with a few patients, since having that conversation. And, you know, we’re all in a shock, like, wow, that actually works.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:57:26]:
There’s no precipitated withdrawal. There is a he did say there are there is a small percentage of patients that will have an issue, but these are ER doctors in a hospital. They have All the resources of the whole hospital to deal with any issues that come up, but most people will respond very well to a very large dose upfront. He said the old way of doing it of giving 2 milligrams and testing it testing the waters and waiting a little bit longer and giving a little bit more. That doesn’t really work with Fentanyl. So People that need to look at the micro and the macro approaches, and, hopefully, they’re teaching all this stuff in the in the new 8 hour course.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:58:00]:
This this is what I’m hoping too because, you know, with us, we had, surgery. They Tried to take the the filter out through his neck first Didn’t work so they scheduled him 2 weeks afterwards Well, they just shot him up you know, with narcotics. Told him he had to wait 2 weeks. So What should he do? What could he take to get him off of that high that they put him on and then get him ready that he could go back under, you know, and Once again, no protocol. It it was horrific hearing information like this. Anesthesiologists need this information. How do you take a patient who needs surgery and get them off of what they’re taking to be able to put them under, walk them back on. When we were going through it, They looked at us like we were crazy.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [00:59:06]:
Oh, he doesn’t need anything different. And I, his mother, kept no screaming. Because because it does drop me. You know? And now I hear it’s finally coming. These are very needed protocols, and I’m so happy to hear that they’re coming, in this new, course that has to be taken.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [00:59:28]:
One one thing that That I I kinda related to in your book was, the rock when you’re rocking your baby. You know, he’s a little baby. You’re trying to rock him to sleep, and probably a lot of us go through that. You know, you come up with all these routines. It’s like, you know, ours is like jumping on the bed with the baby and just to get just the right rhythm for the baby So, you know, and playing certain music. You know, there were some songs work, some didn’t work. And, you know, there there was another, guest on the podcast that he told me about a, there’s a billboard in Frederick, Maryland where they they have an an ongoing overdose count, and they keep At it, they keep raising the number. The number every time you go by the billboard.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [01:00:07]:
And every every one of those numbers is a is someone’s baby. I mean, it’s it’s, It’s some baby that someone was rocking to sleep and, you know, these aren’t just, like, numbers or nameless people or or junkies. I mean, these are, You know, real people. Your your son had a genius IQ, and then he went to Harvard also. Right?
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [01:00:25]:
He got into the Harvard Continuing Education Program about 3 weeks before he passed away, he, he was in the BAAS program at You’ve been but he couldn’t take the classes that he wanted there so he was trying to, port it over. These are the online, Extension Schools. But yeah. I mean, he he was he was brilliant. I finally got Apple to give me his papers off his computer. That was hard getting into, but, you know, so I can Still have a little piece to come back. Yeah.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [01:01:08]:
You know, a lot of people who have have the worst time getting, over an addiction are brilliant, creative, intelligent people. And, I I kinda see it as that they’re like like superheroes, but, the drugs are like kryptonite and, you know, we need to Do do whatever we can to to help. You know, that’s why that’s like, an analogy I I use a lot that I think of it. That if you saw Superman with a with kryptonite around his neck in a dark alley. He’d say, look at that junky over there. And, all you need to do is take that kryptonite off of him, and he’s Superman.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [01:01:40]:
Yeah. I Luke wanted nothing more than to to be sober. I did not know the term dopamine depletion at the time but I was just watching him spiral and fight and spiral and fight and here I Had the Suboxone and I said take it take it. Said I can’t be in my groups if I take And he was a man of integrity. I said, why? And he said, I can’t do that. That’s not the program. He was a leader in These programs but he had been, for lack of a better word, brainwashed that he couldn’t, You know? So, Yes.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [01:02:22]:
Suboxone stabilizes dopamine. Other opioids don’t do that. Other opioids give us up and down dopamine levels, and Suboxone actually keeps it steady. So it actually does treat that. And, people yeah. They don’t the programs don’t don’t acknowledge that or understand that
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [01:02:37]:
You’re welcome. Need to. Yeah. And one thing I am happy about embarking, Going back to Purdue, some of the monies are coming out now to be spent here in, North Carolina in The county, they are only giving it to organizations who practice, m a t m o u d d who use the medical aspect. There’s a couple treatment centers That won’t, and they’ve already cut them out. They said, no. We have to move forward going.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [01:03:15]:
Yeah. Oh, oh, that’s something yeah. If you, if you ever have have any, places in North Carolina North Carolina recommend that That do, free or low cost your sliding scale Suboxone treatment. I I had a, listing on my podcast website of whenever I Became aware of, like, a free program. I would list it by state. And North Carolina I I get the most traffic from people looking for programs in North Carolina, And it’s the one place where I was never able to identify a single program other than in jails or prisons, where a person can get free or or low cost a box on treatment.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [01:03:51]:
I’ll check.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [01:03:52]:
Yeah. Yeah. Apparently, yeah, North Carolina, for some reason, it’s like a every other state I’ve been most other states I’ve been able to find programs in. But, yeah, It’s apparently, there’s an issue with the the governor. Someone told me something like that, but but may hopefully, that’s changing now.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [01:04:07]:
I mean, we’re we are making progress, but I’ll I’ll I’ll look into that. I will. It is needed desperately.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [01:04:18]:
Yeah. Definitely. Okay, Susan, Eric. Tell me the the title of the the book again coming out soon.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [01:04:25]:
It’s called Slow Dancing with the Devil.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [01:04:27]:
Slow Dancing
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [01:04:28]:
with to press. Yes.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [01:04:30]:
Slow Dancing with the Devil. Yeah. And definitely Fentanyl is definitely the devil. So, and and, yeah,
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [01:04:39]:
it’s cover of the book, Has a prescription bottle on it because it started with oxycodone.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [01:04:50]:
Yeah. Yeah. I oh, I was gonna just say the, I have a thing I’ve saved for I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this or if you if your son or anyone that you know is on the Purdue patient assistance program where they get free OxyContin for a year, they get a letter the patient gets a letter saying, You’re now approved to get up to 300 tablets a month of OxyContin of any strength. And I have a copy of that letter because it’s unbelievable because people Would take that letter and come into their doctor and say, you need to give me 10 a day now, which is as much as 800 milligrams a day. Even if they were only getting Forty or 80 milligrams a day total. And they get this letter from Purdue saying, we’re authorizing you to get you know, save up, get as much as you can. Don’t say that, but they’re saying you’re authorized for 300 tablets a month, which is Criminal.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [01:05:36]:
Absolutely criminal.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [01:05:38]:
Yeah.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [01:05:39]:
They have The blood of so many young people on their hands. They really do. Yeah. Anyway.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [01:05:49]:
So thank you. Thank you for and and and I definitely recommend everybody listening, look out. When when is the book gonna be available? When can people get it?
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [01:05:58]:
November It can be pre ordered right now on Amazon and, McFarland’s Website, they they are taking, preorders. They’re thinking November 3rd. So
Mark Leeds, D.O. [01:06:11]:
Oh, wow. Wow. It’s, everybody preorder. Let’s make it a best her before it comes out.
Susan Bartz Herrick, MFA, EdD. [01:06:16]:
Thank you, sir, and thank you for all that you do. It’s so needed. I appreciate that.
Mark Leeds, D.O. [01:06:22]:
Thank you for joining me.
