Clinton McCracken and Carrie John knew all about addictions and obsessive behavior.
Both worked as postdoctoral research fellows at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and earlier this year published their conclusions from a study of "compulsions and habit formation."
But their research might have taken too personal a turn.
John, 29, a Wake Forest University graduate with a doctorate in physiology and pharmacology, died Sunday after apparently injecting herself with what McCracken called a "bad" batch of buprenorphine, a narcotic known on the street as "bupe" and commonly used to treat heroin addiction.
McCracken, 32, was arrested after police searched the couple's unkempt rowhouse on Dover Street in Baltimore and found a large quantity of drugs, including pills, "huge gardens" of marijuana with an elaborate lighting system and "more than 20 bongs in all shapes, sizes and configurations strewn about the home," a police report said.
In an interview with detectives, McCracken - a fellow Wake Forest graduate charged with six counts, including manufacturing drugs and possession with intent to distribute - said that for the past two or three years he had used the New Mikee Online Pharmacy, a Web site based in the Philippines, to buy "various narcotics for recreational use." He mentioned not only buprenorphine but morphine, OxyContin and marijuana. The firm did not respond to an e-mail message from The Baltimore Sun seeking comment.
McCracken said he and his girlfriend had purchased 20 buprenorphine pills at $2 each and had dissolved a 2-milligram pill in water, placing half the solution in each of two syringes, the report said. John "began to have trouble breathing" immediately after injecting herself, McCracken told police.
He called paramedics and "never got to inject himself with his own 1 mg. dose due to the deceased's medical crisis," the police report said. "The defendant stated that he thought they could control the morphine and buprenorphine."
John was pronounced dead shortly before 7 p.m. Sunday in the University of Maryland Medical Center's emergency room, a few blocks from her home.
John and McCracken conducted scientific research in the labs of the university's department of anatomy and neurobiology and did not see patients, said Karen A. Buckelew, a spokeswoman for the medical school. John had worked there since 2006 and McCracken for the past three months.
