The ‘Rock Doc’ Who Prescribed 1.4 Million Pain Pills
The Experiment
The Atlantic and WNYC Studios
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2021
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The patients of the nurse practitioner and aspiring reality star Jeffrey Young say he helped them like nobody else could. Federal prosecutors who charged him in a massive opioid bust say he overprescribed painkillers, often for “money, notoriety, and sexual favors.”
Young’s case provides a rare glimpse into the ways patients wind up addicted to the powerful painkillers fueling the national opioid epidemic.
Branding himself “the Rock Doc” in a self-produced reality-TV pilot, Young would wear band T-shirts and blast music as he met with patients; he sometimes broadcast appointments and medical procedures on the live-streaming app Periscope. Off camera, Young allegedly prescribed 1.4 million addictive pills and had sex with female patients.
Young was indicted on drug-trafficking charges in April 2019. He pleaded not guilty to the charges, and is currently in jail awaiting trial.
“I had a lot of ‘Why on earth?’ questions,” the Atlantic reporter Olga Khazan says. “‘Why would he do this? Why would you go to this doctor? Why didn’t anyone try to put a stop to this?’ I just had a lot of questions about how could this happen.”
Further reading: “The Hard-Partying, Rock-Obsessed Nurse at the Center of a Massive Opioid Bust”
Be part of The Experiment. Use the hashtag #TheExperimentPodcast, or write to us at [email protected].
This episode was reported by Olga Khazan and produced by Alvin Melathe. Editing by Katherine Wells, Julia Longoria, and Denise Wills. Fact-check by Michelle Ciarrocca and Jack Segelstein. Sound design by David Herman.
Music by Parish Council (“Dabbles”), water feature (“ariel”), Arabian Prince in a UK World (“The Feeling of Being on a Diet”), Keyboard (“Being There” and “My Atelier”), and Column (“｢The Art of Fun｣ (Raj)” and “Sensuela”), provided by Tasty Morsels. Additional music by Nelson Bandela (“04 HIDDEN FORCES” and “Auddi Sun 01 131”). Additional audio from Purdue Pharma, The Rock Doc TV Show, @JY2RocDoc, and Bat Pig Pictures.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Once you found the right doctor and have told him or her about your pain, don't be afraid |
| 0:10.6 | to take what they give you. |
| 0:12.4 | Over 20 years ago, pharmaceutical companies began to market the use of a magical pill. |
| 0:18.5 | Often, it will be an opioid medication. |
| 0:22.8 | These drugs, which I repeat, are our best, strongest pain medications should be used |
| 0:27.2 | much more than they are for patients in pain. |
| 0:31.7 | Opioids would be a new kind of pain killer. |
| 0:34.9 | To treat not just acute pain after a event like a surgery, but also pain that was more |
| 0:42.1 | mundane, like chronic back pain that patients would complain about for years, but which doctors |
| 0:49.1 | didn't have a clear cure for. |
| 0:51.6 | Some patients may be afraid of taking opioids because they're perceived as too strong or |
| 0:57.1 | addicted. |
| 0:58.9 | But that is far from actual fact. |
| 1:03.2 | Pharmaceutical companies marketed these drugs aggressively to doctors. |
| 1:08.1 | They don't wear out, they go on working. |
| 1:10.3 | They do not have serious medical side effects. |
| 1:14.0 | At the time, there wasn't a lot of limits on pharmaceutical companies being able to |
| 1:18.1 | tell doctors that Olga Hazan is the staff writer at The Atlantic who's been covering the |
| 1:22.9 | opioid epidemic for the last seven years. |
| 1:25.7 | So doctors were kind of like, okay, a lot of them unfortunately went with it. |
| 1:31.1 | And now we see the result. |
| 1:33.7 | The result is that more than 450,000 people are dead from overdose in the last 20 years. |
... |
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