I am not having a peaceful holiday

    December 25, 2014

   I Am Not Having A Peaceful Holiday

    Alen J Salerian MD

   I still hear their voices. The despair, the agony of entrapment. The moans  of torture.

    They were not just patients they were friends and I was their trusted physician.

    MS a retired surgeon, a gentle  soul  -who had over nine months tried Betty Ford  and a few other fancy rehab centers- had stopped by my office for her farewell.

   MS had casually mentioned her anticipated move to New York City. She had euthanized her pets. This was a red flag which should have alerted me to her underlying message . She said,” sooner or later they are going to take you down. I don't have a life now, I only have perpetual misery. You had given me life . And you will never get your DEA license back.

   It is equally difficult to block out the restrained fury in NJ’s voice when he had called from Aspen Colorado . He was pleading with me to find a new psychiatrist . He was attending a methadone clinic yet his mood had plummeted.

   His roommate would later tell me that the change in NG was dramatic. The day of his death in a small cave on the mountains they had gone to a local emergency room. NG was desperate and suicidal. He requested hospitalization. He was sent back to his methadone clinic.

   I will not forget the eulogies expressing the extraordinary kindness of DS an African-American woman aged 57 who had been my patient for over a decade.  She  had suffered from severe depression and pain and had done well.

  A week before her death we spoke by phone Her voice was frantic interrupted by sighs and sobs. She was calling  from the Washington Hospital  Center. She wanted to know whether I could visit her.  I asked her to trust her doctors . I let her know  that I did not have privileges at the hospital center.

   Paul Mullins called my office hours before his self-inflicted death on the anniversary of the loss of my DEA license. A year is a long time to wait for someone in severe pain he had said. No one would prescribe appropriate pain relief for this retired coal miner.

 I'm not  at peace this Christmas. Their voices coming through Christmas carols and Hannaka lyrics. Echoes of man-made atrocities.  The voices of collateral damage from the war on drugs.