POLL: Addicted pharmacists find road back behind the counter

HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF) -

Pharmacists can rattle them off the top of their heads, familiar polysyllabic terms, Phendimetrazine, Adder, Hydrocarbon, Boycotting, Dilaudid, Morphine, Methadone, Codeine, drugs frequently abused by the public - and by their colleagues, fellow pharmacists.

"It could happen to anybody and nobody's immune," said Huntsville pharmacist Darden Heritage. "It's especially disturbing when it's somebody who's working in that environment, which makes it so much easier to get, as opposed to having to go out and buy it on the street."

Heritage is CEO of Star Market and Pharmacy and he reports seeing pharmacists that work for him slip into the trap of drug dependency.

"You become a different person," he said. "They're out of it, basically.They're in a euphoric state, so they're not really making good sense. They talk slow, slurred speech - that type of thing."

The Alabama Board of Pharmacy reports that, out of almost 18,000 pharmacists and pharmacy technicians in the state, it has 104 pharmacists and 27 technicians who are at some level of officially approved recovery for substance abuse.

Pharmacists or techs found to be filching pills for the purpose of selling them can be permanently banned from the industry. But for those found to have a real clinical dependency, a drug problem may not be a career killer. They can get their licenses back, and get back into the business of dispensing drugs, if, and this is a big "if," they sign on for the Board of Pharmacy's wellness program and follow it.

"We believe that it shouldn't be a death sentence and that everyone deserves a second chance," said Donnie Calhoun, president of the Board of Pharmacy. "When someone in pharmacy who has gone through six or eight years of pharmacy school, that's a health care professional, we don't want them to lose the ability to practice their profession forever."

Pharmacy practitioners with dependency issues must surrender their licenses and, at their own expense, check into inpatient rehab at an approved facility like Bradford Health Services or University of Alabama Birmingham, then go into intensive outpatient treatment too.

They can then get their licenses back on a probationary basis for a period of 5 years during which they must:

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POLL: Addicted pharmacists find road back behind the counter