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FORCED TO FIGHT Opioid data puts local addiction in context BY CORY VAILLANCOURT STAFF WRITER t was finally moving day, and that empty little Greensboro apartment must have seemed like a mansion to 29-year-old Clayton Suggs. Fitting, the lack of furnishings; the whole thing was a blank slate, a new start. It had taken Clay a while to work his way up to living on his own again, without any supervision, so he accordingly spent the day engaged in the mundane — folding clothes, shopping for groceries, figuring out where he was going to put the television his mom had placed on order for him to pick up at the Walmart the next day. He sent her a Snapchat of him and his girlfriend, who he met at church. The caption read, “My new life begins.” His old life had been a desperate struggle with the opioid addiction he’d developed after a routine surgery. He’d been in and out of rehab time and time again, but this time, this time it would be different. He’d been clean a year. He’d graduated a program. He’d found a job, found his faith, found his future. Clay’s story isn’t much different from that of hundreds of thousands of others who, through no fault of their own, found themselves hooked on powerful prescription painkillers, most of which come in pill form. Seven years is what it took for the star student to hit bottom and then fight his way back to moving day, the first day of his new life, unpacking boxes mindful of the furniture his grandparents would next week bring from storage. As his mom Michele Rogers traveled that road with him, she was left with just one question. “Where are all these pills coming from?” she asked. “I don’t know where these pill dealers get all these pills.” On a local level, answers to that question have been little more than supposition until the July 16 Washington Post publication of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration data that tracks the distribution “of every single pain pill sold in the United States.” In stunning fashion, The Post’s report maps the size and scope of prescription pill distribution fueling the ongoing opioid crisis that ensnared Clayton Suggs, and thousands like him.
Smoky Mountain News
July 31-August 6, 2019
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hile unpacking, Clay told his girlfriend he had to run an errand, and that he would be right back. Greensboro, located just east of WinstonSalem, is in the north-central part of the state and more than 200 miles east of where he was raised in Haywood County, but he was there for good reason — another attempt at recovery. What it took to get Clay to that moment, his first alone in his new place, was impressive considering he probably should’ve never been there at all. “Clay was born an adult, I always said. He 6
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was my first child, our family’s first grandchild,” said Rogers. “He was so easy I thought, ‘Wow, I could have 10 of these. He’s a breeze.’” Smart. Athletic. Outdoorsy. Baseball and fishing were his thing. Trouble was not. After graduating from Tuscola High School in Waynesville, Clay was working full-time, going to community college and had actually purchased a home of his own, all by his early 20s. He transferred to Western Carolina University and pursued a business degree, and thought of becoming involved in the region’s flourishing sport fishing industry before he instead found himself hooked. “He was living the dream. He owned a home, he had a girlfriend of five or six years. They were talking about getting married and having a family,” she said. “But he also had sinus infection after sinus infection.” Following a routine 2011 surgery during which his nose was intentionally broken and his sinuses were scraped Clay was sent home with a prescription of Percocet, an opioid analgesic necessary for the incredible pain he’d have to endure for a few days, or weeks. Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, he quickly exhausted his supply and called in for a refill. And then for another. “He became addicted,” Rogers said. “He bought a house, he was going to school, he was making his mortgage payments, but he was what I now refer to as a functioning drug addict. His girlfriend didn’t even know it.” Rogers didn’t know it either, until one day about two years later Clay shot off a bright red flare into the clear blue sky. “He came to me for money,” she said. “I just thought, something’s going on because he’s always supported himself, he’s always made really good money. He came to me for money. And then again. And then again.” Clay began buying pills on the street and the more he bought the more he needed to buy, just to get by. “When it started affecting his finances, we — meaning his girlfriend, me, his dad, his stepdad, his stepmom — we said, ‘Something is going on with Clay,’” Rogers remembered. “He asked me if we could go for ride, and talk.” The parking lot of a supermarket is where they ended up after he asked her to stop the car. “I can’t pay my mortgage, mom. I spend all my money on pills,” he told her. “I’m a drug addict and I need help.” Rogers said she was gutted. They sent him to rehab on the coast, in Wilmington. He came back. Then he went again. Then he came back again. Six months of sobriety was about the limit. In. Out. Sick. Straight. “And every time he relapsed,” she said, “it got worse.” Asheville. Morganton. Greenville. Starting over, on one side of the cycle or the other. For years. He tried for years.
Clayton Suggs
“We kept thinking, ‘If we could just get [Clay] out of here. If we could just get him out of Haywood County.’ You can’t. You can’t move away from addiction.” — Michele Rogers, mother
“He suffered,” said Rogers. “I saw him break down and say, ‘Mom why did this happen to me? I don’t want this. I’m trying so hard.’” Once, while in treatment, he sent his mom a link to a music video. It was American rapper Macklemore’s 2016 song Drug Dealer, which is highly critical of the pharmaceutical industry’s role in the opioid crisis. My drug dealer was a doctor, doctor Had the plug from Big Pharma, Pharma He said that he would heal me, heal me But he only gave me problems, problems My drug dealer was a doctor, doctor Had the plug from Big Pharma, Pharma I think he trying to kill me, kill me He tried to kill me for a dollar, dollar “This has happened to so many people,” he told her. “Not just me.” ver the course of seven short years, 2006 to 2012, more than 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pills were manufactured and distributed in the United States — about 230 pills for every person in the country. That’s just one of the disturbing facts The
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Washington Post uncovered after a court battle with the DEA over ARCOS, the Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System. Waged in conjunction with HD Media, publisher of the West Virginiabased Charleston Gazette-Mail, The Post’s litigation took a year, but eventually an Ohio federal court directed the DEA to release tracking data for nearly 380 million pill transactions over that time. The Post filtered through those transactions and re-presented them in a fully searchable database that’s available online for free with a trial account, or with a paid subscription. “The Post is making this data available at the county and state levels in order to help the public understand the impact of years of prescription pill shipments on their communities,” reads the story. “The Post believes this is a critically important set of data, which is why we are making it public and accessible to readers and other journalists. We think there are hundreds of stories within this data set and need your help to understand what it means to you and your community.” Clayton Suggs’ story is just one of those stories, and although he really didn’t start abusing prescription opiates until the tail end of The Post’s data set, he was undoubtedly affected by the uptick in pill production. According to The Post, distribution “surged” 51 percent from 8.4 billion pills in 2006 to 12.6 billion in 2012. Almost 100,000 people died from prescription opiate abuse in the U.S. during that time frame. The Post’s analysis shows that nearly 88 percent of those pills were manufactured by three companies — SpecGx, Actavis Pharma and Par Pharmaceutical. From there, 75 percent of those pills were distributed by just six entities — McKesson Corp., Walgreens, Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen, CVS and Walmart. Maps generated by The Post’s data set show an “opioid belt” consisting of more than 90 counties spanning Appalachia, from central West Virginia through southeastern Kentucky. The belt contains 12 of the top 20 counties for pills per capita, and 18 of the top 20 counties for prescription opioid deaths per capita. The buckle of that belt is the two-county Hatfield-McCoy feud region straddling the West Virginia-Kentucky line — Pike County in the latter, and Mingo County in the former. More than 5.5 million pills were distributed each year in Mingo County from 2006 through 2012, to a county population of only 24,000 people. Likewise in Pike County, where 9.5 million pills a year were distributed to a population of 59,000 people. As with all data, there are some important caveats. The Post only tracked hydrocodone and oxycodone, because they’re the ones most likely to be abused and as such account
