Former pharmacist warns students about occupational hazard

“Hi, everybody. My name is Chris, and I’m a long-term recovering addict.”

Former pharmacist Chris Hart is talking to current pharmacy students at the Medical University of South Carolina about what he calls an occupational hazard.

“When it came to the disease of chemical dependency, I was a relatively late bloomer. I didn’t start my journey until about 10 years into my practice.”

He remembers the night it began. “I was working retail. It was a Monday. Mondays in the world of pharmacy are just nuts.”

Hart was restocking the pharmacy shelves and nursing a headache when he picked up a bottle of Percocet. “I’m thinking, ‘Boy, I bet a couple of these would fix this headache.’ It’s that simple. I didn’t think about it being addictive. I didn’t think about it being a schedule 2 drug. Didn’t think about the fact that I’d be breaking the law. I just figured, ‘A couple of these – what’s it going to hurt?’”

About 15 minutes later, the headache was gone. “It was amazing. It was a warm fuzzy soft glow. Very mellow. I’d become super pharmacist. I could fix anybody’s problem.”

About a month later, he had another stressful Monday. “This time, I remembered how the Percocet made me feel. With that, I’m off and running. I would practice this disease, this curse if you will, for the next six years – till I got caught. Intervention. That’s a fancy word for getting caught.”

An agent from the state pharmacy board showed up and asked Hart if he knew anything about some drugs that were missing. Hart got fired, lost his license and went into treatment. And for several years, he stayed clean. He got his license back.

“Unfortunately, when it comes to this disease, I’m a slow learner,” he tells the pharmacy students. “About 2000, I quit treating my disease. I wasn’t being monitored anymore. When you do that with chemical dependency, the drugs start talking to you. They did with me. They started saying, ‘Maybe you’re not that bad.’”

In 2004, he was caught for a second time. He asked if he could talk to his wife before going to jail, then went to a hotel room and attempted suicide. “I was missing for 24 hours before they found me in the hotel room still alive.”

Hart went back into treatment, and his license was revoked.

He’s far from alone. Research suggests about one in seven pharmacists will become addicted to drugs. They have access to controlled substances, and stress on the job and shame may keep them from getting treatment. Hart said he was like a kid in a candy store who just couldn’t resist.

MUSC’s College of Pharmacy is trying to prepare its students to work safely around medications that could put them at risk of addiction through talks such as Hart’s and a required service learning project called Generation Rx, which encourages pharmacy students to start conversations about prescription drug abuse.

“We can easily understand why pharmacists are at risk for chemical dependence, but the information that Mr. Hart presented really drove this issue home,” said Kristy Brittain, associate professor of clinical pharmacy and outcomes sciences in the College of Pharmacy. “We need to equip our students and practitioners with the understanding that even we are not immune.”

Hart showed the pharmacy students not only the consequences of addiction, including personal and professional humiliation and legal trouble, but also how he is using his experience to try to keep them from making the same mistakes.

After Hart lost his license and finished treatment, friends encouraged him to try to do some good with something that had gone so badly for him. So he went to his alma mater, Ohio Northern University, and proposed that the pharmacy school add a course in chemical dependency. Leaders agreed, and he now teaches in several schools across the state.

Hart says he takes sobriety one day at a time. “It has been a remarkable journey.”