Examining an addict
Dr. Michael Stein treats ordinary ailments such as heart failure and headaches, and cares for people in the throes of addiction. Stein is also a novelist and Brown University professor of medicine and community health. His latest work combines those pursuits in the true story of one woman's fight to live the life she lost to addiction.
Lucy Fields is the name he gives to a 29-year-old patient addicted to the painkiller Vicodin. The drug is the most-prescribed medication in the United States, 20 times more common than Prozac or penicillin. "The Addict: One Patient, One Doctor, One Year" is a portrait of her battle to kick the drug.
Here is an edited version of a recent conversation with Stein.
ELIZABETH COONEY
Q. Why do you treat addicts?
A. People who are addicted in general are young and physically healthy, so if you can help them, the satisfaction is a rarity for an internist. I typically deal with chronic illnesses that are slow to get better or never get better, whereas people who are addicts can really dramatically change.
Q. Does that make you an optimist?
A. All doctors are optimists. We want our patients to get better. With addicts, you are literally trying to change someone's mind. Their brains need to be helped to rid themselves of this problem. That is a difficult, long-lasting process that requires patience and optimism.
Q. Why write about addiction?
A. Addicts trade in lies and secrets, things that are of interest to a writer like me. The emotions that are central to addiction are big and dramatic: shame and humiliation, desire and fear. Addicts I have met over the years are intelligent, stubborn, inventive, and entrepreneurial, very organized and methodical. You have to be, in order to keep using and hiding an illegal habit.
Q. Why Lucy?
A. She comes from a middle-class, professional family and has basically lost her 20s to opiate use and then comes in looking for help. She has a very powerful story that I think is both representative of drug addiction but also speaks to the heterogeneity of drug use in America.
Q. What can readers learn from her?
A. I try to help families understand what their loved one is going through, to understand why their loved one would pick up one of these pills. Often the person who started these addictions didn't know they were yearning for relief or solace or well-being. Most people don't start it as a way to get high.
Q. What does the real Lucy think of the book? And how is she now?
A. I think it was painful for her to read parts of it. She is excellent and I am extremely proud of her. 