Timothy Fazio, a former Marine who suffers from PTSD, has struggled with addiction to prescription painkillers after tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq.M. Scott Brauer for The Wall Street Journal
The threat of addiction to opium-like prescription painkillers is heightened with mental illness. It was around midnight in Newport, N.H. when a desperate former Marine named Timothy Fazio showed up at a veterans' hospital outside of Boston. His post-traumatic stress disorder was causing blackouts and flashbacks- he has leapt from a balcony.
In fact he had overdosed, twice before, on painkillers originally prescribed for a hand injury suffered in Iraq.
"I want detox," Mr. Fazio told doctors that evening in 2008, his medical files say.
One week after his withdrawals had passed, Mr. Fazio checked himself out of the Veterans Health Administration hospital- and was given 168 more painkillers which we was already addicted to.
The next day, the hospital gave him another 168 pills.
PTSD and painkillers are the twin pillars of a new mental-health crisis in America. Many of the more than two million Americans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan suffer, as Mr. Fazio does, from a mixture of pain and PTSD.
The VA treats many of them with powerful opioid painkillers. But opioids can be a combustible mix with mental illness because of a heightened addiction risk.
Effectively, some critics say, it amounts to treating mental illness with addictive narcotics.
"I was always a tough kid, but I feel like this has been the toughest fight of my life," Mr. Fazio said in March, after a spell of homelessness that saw him sleeping in an ATM lobby. "I don't know if I'm going to win it."
The VA declined to comment on Mr. Fazio's treatment and said it would review his records. It said it follows uniform guidelines and procedures for veterans' pain care, adding that those are being reinforced with further training of doctors and patients in safe opioid use. "The Veterans Health Administration has worked aggressively to promote the safe and effective use of opioid therapy for veterans," it said.
The number of vets with both PTSD and pain isn't known. But some 30% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans under VA care have PTSD, VA figures show, and more than half suffer chronic pain.
Posted by: Shirley Coenen
Posted by: Shirley Coenen
Originally posted on the WallStreet, Journal, To read the full article click below
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304672404579181840055583388?KEYWORDS=mental+health
