"I look at my situation as something that started with a legitimate medical problem," he explained of the OxyContin ordeal. "I was given a drug I should not have been given. It was designed for cancer patients. I should not have received it. I got addicted to the drug and was smart enough to get off it." As I look back, I think I was addicted from the beginning." — Russell Ginsberg

Russell Ginsberg was on the road to fabulous financial success. But his hopes and dreams collapsed after a physician recommended OxyContin to relieve the pain in Ginsberg's wrist.

The Fort Lauderdale resident was once the life of the party and head of a very successful "head hunting" business in South Florida. OxyContin forced him to sell the recruitment firm and turned him into an edgy recluse.

"Unless I was on the drug, I could not socialize with people," Ginsberg said of his days in an Oxy haze. "I blew off a wedding that I made my wife go to alone. Holiday dinners, Passover dinners, I'd blow them off. Friends would invite us to dinner and movies, but I did not want to do that. I became anti-social.

"Before OxyContin, I was the life of the party — I love getting together with people."

Problems began when he sought doctor's help for wrist pain

Life was good for Ginsberg until he woke one evening in 1995 with a searing pain in his hand. It felt as if a bug had attacked him in the night.

No one could figure out what was wrong with his left hand. "The pain was like an ice pick was shoved between my fingernails," he said.

Half a dozen doctors checked him out. One concluded he suffered from RSD (Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy) which is a fancy way of saying the nerves in his wrist had short-circuited. A year of doctor-approved Benadryl and Vicodin followed, but nothing cut down his pain.

Then came the fateful day every OxyContin victim knows so well: the day a doctor told him about a wonder pill that would make the hurting stop. "My doctor said it was a new drug on the market," Ginsberg said of the moment in 1997. "He said it was for people with severe pain and you only have to take it once every 12 hours."

It sounded perfect.

Steadily increased dosage under doctor's supervision

He started out taking 10mgs twice a day. Of course, the dosage increased. "In only a few weeks, I had to take more to conquer the pain," he said.

Soon he was on 30mgs a day. A doctor bumped it up when Ginsberg said the old amount was no longer cutting it. "I told the doctor that 30mgs was not really completely getting rid of the pain," he said. "He did not see any harm in increasing it to 40mgs. So I started taking 40mgs twice a day."

Addiction sets in

Ginsberg feared he was hooked. He worried that if his physician discovered the addiction, the doctor would cut off the Oxy supply. So Ginsberg got proactive. He searched the Internet for Oxy and bought pills from Mexico to fatten his supply.

"I did this because I was afraid the doctor would take me off it," he explained. "I was starting to live for the drug. But I did not care, because I needed the comfort of knowing I always had enough pills. I told myself I did not want the wrist pain, but also I did not want to not have the euphoric state [that Oxy gave]."

He got Oxy through the Internet for more than a year. "It was expensive, but I was nervous about the doctor taking me off this," he said.

Attempts to detoxify were futile; withdrawal symptoms were overwhelming

He tried to detox himself in 1999. The plan did not work.

"I saw that that was not going to be possible, because the withdrawals were more than I could handle," he said. "I'd get very anxious, start to sweat — cold sweats, then hot sweats — and diarrhea. All this happened within two days of stopping."

He got back on Oxy immediately and began to find other sources for the drug, just in case his doctor got wise to the addiction.

"I kept getting my prescription from the doctor," he said. "I did not want him to know I was addicted to it. So I backed it up by getting Oxy on my own." He found a friend who could get some through some senior citizen pals. "That was good news," Ginsberg said. "Because now I getting some extra 40mgs."

Ginsberg was aware his entire life was in play over a drug. But he could not halt the addiction. "Before thinking about my family and my young daughter, my concern was getting the drug," he said. "Making sure I had ample supplies of the drug and not letting anyone know that I was really addicted to this."

His Oxy intake went off the charts.

"I got wild. I was taking a 40mg when I wake up, a 30mg at lunch, a 40 at 4 p.m." he said. "I'd back it up with a 20mg after work and a 20 before going to bed." He thought he was sly. But friends saw changes.

"People realized I had a problem," he said. "My wife said, 'I am like a single parent.' She thought I was being inattentive. She told me I was not involved with our daughter or with her."

Ginsberg only thought of Oxy.

"I was just concerned about feeling good and staying normal [by taking Oxy]. I was completely ineffective if I did not have the drug," he said.

Once, when his Mexico supply was late, Ginsberg even chased down the mailman to make sure the goods were on the way.

Oxy became more important than the recruiting/head-hunting company he founded. "It spiraled out of control," he said. "I was too busy getting drugs to deal with the business, so I sold it in October 2001. Depression took hold. He remained in bed for weeks, then confessed all to his wife.

Determined to free himself of OxyContin's grip

"It clicked in my mind that this was the drug," he said. "The more drugs I took, the worse I felt physically. But if I stopped taking the drugs, I'd have a bad reaction. I was damned if I did and damned if I didn't."

The moment of reckoning came just before Thanksgiving 2001. "That is the day I went to my wife and cried and said I can't believe I have gotten to this point in my life," he said. "I can't live without the drugs or live with the drugs." He underwent a 30-day rehabilitation and lived among addicts hooked on heroin and free base cocaine.

"To this day, I do not look at myself that way," he said of the street addicts he met in rehab. "Those people did drugs for recreation, but I was here for a medical problem."

Ginsberg left the treatment center completely clean. "It took a good six months before I could say I was back to normal," he said. "I have never had cravings to get back on Oxy." Today, Ginsberg takes an anti-depressant to sleep, but otherwise is drug free.

"I look at my situation as something that started with a legitimate medical problem," he explained of the OxyContin ordeal. "I was given a drug I should not have been given. It was designed for cancer patients. I should not have received it. I got addicted to the drug and was smart enough to get off it. As I look back, I think I was addicted from the beginning."