On Nov. 21, 2012, Sheila Bartels walked out of the Sunshine Medical
Center in Oklahoma with a prescription for a "horrifyingly excessive"
cocktail of drugs capable of killing her several times over.
A short time later, she was at a pharmacy, receiving what drug addicts
call "the holy trinity" of prescription drugs: the powerful painkiller
Hydrocodone, the anti-anxiety medication Xanax and a muscle relaxant
known as Soma.
In total, pharmacists handed her 510 pills that day - all legal,
because she had a prescription with the signature of her doctor, Regan
Ganoung Nichols, scrawled at the bottom, according to a probable cause
affidavit.
[continues 761 words] |