Last week, in regards to Patrick Kennedy’s revelation that he had been addicted to OxyContin, I asked, “Wonder which doctor he had? Or was there more than one? Could he have been doctor shopping?”
Well, WPRO’s Colleen Lima attempted to ferret out of Rep. Kennedy the who, where and how he got enough OxyContin to sustain his addiction. Here’s a paraphrase of that conversation (as heard on WPRO’s Dan Yorke Show):
Colleen Lima asked, “where were you getting the OxyContin?” and Kennedy replied that, “With respect to the substances, it really doesn’t matter what substance it is, the fact remains as an addict you can replace any given substance with any other given substance. It’s not material to the disease…There’s a prurient interest in the type of drug…and that’s part of the stigmatizing of the disease…”
Lima tried to put her question in context as to why it was important to know where he was getting it, pointing out that “There have been national investigations into doctor shopping” (ie; Rush Limbaugh–hey, didn’t I mention that before?) and “somebody helped you, somebody enabled you” with this. To this line of questioning, Kennedy replied, “I’m not going to go into it.”
OK, but maybe somebody should…and I suspect they will.