Buprenorphine is commonly used to ease heroin addicts off the drug, and is prevalent in Baltimore and other cities as an alternative to methadone. A 2007 Baltimore Sun series described the growing use of "bupe" but noted that it too can be addictive and, while helping some addicts, could create another group of drug dependents.
Jasinski said doctors "who you think would know better" sometimes like to experiment like everyone else. "How many people try to quit smoking and know that it's bad for them and want to quit but can't?" he said.
Woessner drove from High Point, N.C., to Baltimore early Monday and spent Tuesday talking to her daughter's friends and co-workers. She toured the place where John worked and gathered her personal belongings.
She said she was angry to discover that lab workers, despite being around controlled drugs and narcotics that would be illegal on the street, were not tested for drug use. Such testing, she said, could have alerted authorities and helped her daughter get treatment before she died.
Karen A. Buckelew, a spokeswoman for the medical school, said drug tests are administered to "certain employees as required by law," but she confirmed that workers in the lab where John and McCrecken worked were not monitored regularly.
Woessner described her daughter as a "superstar" and said "everything she did, she did well." She started playing softball at age 7 and continued on a team in Baltimore. She played the clarinet in her high school band and embraced the Native American heritage of her father's family. She graduated from high school early and enrolled in Cornell University at the age of 17, majoring in biology.
She met McCracken at Wake Forest University as they worked toward doctorates in their shared field of interest, drug addiction. She earned a doctorate in physiology and pharmacology.
She moved to Baltimore in 2006. McCracken left the University of Pittsburgh three months ago to join her. John worked on projects involving schizophrenia and drug use, and last year led a neuroscience discussion on "This is your brain on drugs."
Woessner said she met McCracken several times and that she regarded him as "polite, intelligent, articulate" and someone "who loved my daughter." They planned to live together for a year before marriage, and, she said, McCracken would have made "a perfect son-in-law."
