NEWS
By Nick Madigan | September 30, 2009
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.
NEWS
January 13, 2006
A man suspected of posing as a physician and stealing a morphine-administering patch from a patient at a Northwest Baltimore medical facility has been arrested on charges of assault and robbery, city police said yesterday. Aleksandr Dzhanashvili, 31, of the first block of Stonehenge Circle in Pikesville was charged in a warrant with assault and robbery. He was arrested Wednesday by members of the Regional Warrant Apprehension Task Force shortly after he entered Harbor Hospital in South Baltimore, police said.
NEWS
By Tonya Maxwell | May 27, 2005
In a tiny laboratory in Germany, an obscure young pharmacist's apprentice managed to concentrate the power of poppies into crystals that could control coughs, ease pain and tease users into a pleasant slumber. Friedrich Sertuerner, 22, published a paper announcing his discovery in 1805. He was ignored. So he went back to his experiments, injecting dogs with the drug he had extracted from opium and doping himself and his buddies. A dozen years later he published again, this time naming his discovery after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams.
NEWS
By Joe Graedon and Teresa Graedon | January 9, 2005
I go to the pain center at our local hospital, and a few times a year we are given a urine test. Last week my urine test came out positive for morphine, and since I don't take morphine, I was wondering what could cause this result. I have a lemon poppy-seed muffin and a cup of coffee for breakfast, a cheese sandwich for lunch with fruit and a normal dinner. I don't take illegal drugs! Your poppy-seed muffin is the most likely culprit. Sensitive drug tests can pick up traces of opium in the poppy seeds, even though you can't get high on a muffin or bagel.
NEWS
October 5, 2003
William Steig, 95, a prolific illustrator for The New Yorker known as the "King of Cartoons" for his award-winning, best-selling children's books including Shrek, died of natural causes of Friday at his home in Boston. Mr. Steig combined a child's innocent eye with idiosyncratic line to create a wonderful world of animal characters for his books and Edwardian-era dandies in his drawings. His 1990 book about a green monster, Shrek, was made into the hit film that in 2002 became the first winner of an Oscar in the new category of best animated feature.
NEWS
October 29, 2002
THE WHOLE unhappy episode in Moscow involving Chechens and hostages and knockout gas and the bodies of 116 innocent people was so dispiriting in part because it seemed each side was fatally playing the role long ago assigned to it. First, Chechen gunmen (and gunwomen, in this case) launch a brazen and intolerable attack, one that fully justifies a strong Russian response. But then that response, when it comes, is outrageously violent and indiscriminate, and most of those who suffer from it are completely blameless.
NEWS
By Andrea F. Siegel | September 20, 2002
As angry officials of a Crownsville drug and alcohol treatment center for poor people looked on, their once-trusted ex-bookkeeper and her husband were ordered yesterday to spend a weekend in jail and to repay the nearly $60,000 they stole. County Circuit Judge Joseph P. Manck also sentenced Sherry Ann and Charles Trabing of Arnold to six months of house arrest and five years of probation in lieu of 18 months in jail for their theft from Hope House. The couple used Hope House credit cards to make thousands of dollars in personal purchases from Home Depot, Staples and Texaco.
NEWS
February 26, 2002
The Baltimore metropolitan area ranks second in the nation for heroin and morphine abuse, with 227 emergency department visits per 100,000 residents. Figures are from 2000. Heroin/morphine emergency visits Metro area per 100,000 population Rank Newark, N.J. 238 1 Baltimore 227 2 Chicago 208 3 San Francisco 170 4 New York 128 5 Seattle 103 6 Boston 97 7 Philadelphia 81 8 New Orleans 77 9 Detroit 75 10 SOURCE: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
NEWS
By Phil Perrier | June 17, 2001
LOS ANGELES - It was the last thing I had to do before leaving. Earlier that day I had walked into my parents' bedroom to get something out of their closet. Dad had said "Hiya, Philly!" It stopped me in my tracks. It was the clearest thing he had said in weeks. By that time the cancer had so ravaged his brain that clear speech, much less thought, was all but impossible. But there it was, "Hiya, Philly!" Just like when I was a little kid. Dad slurred the "Ph" sound a little, but aside from that, and his obvious ill appearance - bald head, beard, swollen features - it was pure Dad. Even then, after nearly a year of Hell - chemotherapy, feeling awful all the time, pain, morphine, moaning for hours some nights - even then, Dad was being strong for me. The part of him that always had to be positive, chipper, upbeat, the part of him that came from his mother, was still alive, somewhere, somehow.
NEWS
By Richard M. Cohen | January 21, 2001
IT WAS LIKE WAITING for a bus. The holding area for surgery, which doubles as the recovery room, was packed. Family members were sprawled on plastic chairs as stretchers moved in and out. A sea of green scrub suits rushed around directing traffic. "Hello. I'm from pain control." I was startled as this doctor pulled back the curtain. "I am an anesthesiologist, and I'm here to discuss your options for handling the pain after surgery." So began my most extraordinary drug trip, the most intense since controlled substances carried a generation of goofballs like me into the darkness or light or wherever it was we were traveling in any given moment so long ago. My choices this time: an epidural block, familiar to anyone who has spent time in labor and delivery rooms, or a peculiar device for self-administering a liberal dose of morphine every six minutes.