Pubdate: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 Source: Bristol Herald Courier (VA) Copyright: 2001 Bristol Herald Courier Contact: http://www.bristolnews.com/contact.html Website: http://www.bristolnews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1211 Author: Marshall Tobelmann CLARK TRIAL CONTINUES ABINGDON -- A former minister and recovering drug addict told a federal jury Tuesday he worked as a volunteer for Dr. Freeman Lowell Clark at the same time he was receiving narcotics prescriptions from him. Harold Underwood, 66, of Wytheville said he worked for several months at Clark's clinic, sometimes taking patients' vital statistics and medical histories despite a lack of medical training. "I was just trying to help out," said Underwood, who also was an alcoholic. "I didn't have anything else to do." Underwood said he "tried" to take readings of patients' blood pressure when asked by the doctor to do so and sometimes would talk to patients about their personal lives while taking down their histories. All the while, Underwood said, he was abusing narcotic OxyContin, Darvocet, Percodan, Tylox and Lorcet pills Clark was prescribing for his back and neck pain. "When I get on something, I have to be locked up to get off it," he said. It was the fifth day of trial for Clark, 43, who is charged with 298 counts of prescribing narcotic painkillers without a legitimate medical purpose. If convicted on all counts, he faces hundreds of years in prison and millions of dollars in fines. More than a third of the counts involve morphine-like OxyContin, which has been linked to more than 120 overdose deaths nationwide. Abuse of the drug has reached epidemic levels in the region, and more than three dozen Southwest Virginians have died of overdoses, authorities say. Clark's alleged offenses occurred in 1999 and 2000 at his clinic, which first was in Bluefield and later moved to Wytheville, then Bland. Underwood, who said he now is free of narcotics and taking nonaddictive Celebrex for his pain, said he volunteered while the clinic was in Bluefield and Wytheville. At one point, he said, he was taking as many as 12 narcotic pain pills a day but claimed the doctor knew nothing of his addiction. "He had no way of knowing that," Underwood said. "I never got to the point where I was completely out of it." But the former minister said he met the doctor in a 12-step program for recovering alcoholics, so Clark at least was aware of Underwood's alcoholism, he said. Underwood defended the doctor, saying Clark conducted thorough examinations before prescribing narcotic painkillers. "He always examined me," Underwood said. "It was never just ask for medicine and get it." Another patient, Edward Stamper, 44, of Bluefield said the OxyContin pills Clark prescribed allowed him to keep working after hurting his back in a mining accident. "I'm feeling a whole lot better than I ever have ... in the last four to five years," he said. But Stamper also said he sometimes had to wait up to 12 hours to see the doctor. "He would keep putting you off, telling you, `It'll be a minute,'" Stamper said. He added that he rarely talked to other patients waiting with him for hours at the clinic. "They were just not my type of people -- shady-looking characters," he said. Connie Hatfield, 46, of Princeton, W.Va., said she began seeing Clark because no other doctor in the area would take her as a patient. "I had called several different doctor's offices," Hatfield testified. "As soon as I told them I had chronic pain they would say they weren't taking anymore patients." Clark was willing to prescribe OxyContin, which Hatfield said she continues to take for back pain. "I can't function without my pain medication," she said, adding that she didn't abuse the drugs. Prosecutors are expected to rest their case when the trial resumes at 9 a.m. today. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart