When McIver was closed down, Ben was lucky enough to have a family physician he knew well who took over his case. But the new doctor took a very different approach. Ben now gets three 80-milligram pills of OxyContin a day, plus some breakthrough Roxicodone and 800 milligrams of Advil every four to six hours. “That’s it and I’m very, very lucky to have it,” he said. “My doctor is afraid they will say it’s over the limit. I now get about three hours’ sleep a night. I can stand for 30 minutes, maybe.” He can no longer handle ranching and has sold his cattle. He considers himself retired.
With Ben’s permission I talked to his current doctor, who said Ben was a good patient but had been taking way too much. “I thought Ben made an error,” he said. “He had been taking five or six times the recommended dosage. There are well-recognized levels, and you don’t step across the line. You may have to live with some pain.”
Opioids have immense power — both to harm and to heal. They can be life-destroying, but high doses allowed Ben to work, to be with his family, to be who he is. In its prosecutions of pain doctors, the government fails to recognize the duality of these drugs. Ben’s wife told me: “When Ben first went to Dr. McIver and filled out the form on what he used to be able to do and what he could do now, he cried. McIver said to him, ‘I’m going to get you back to doing what you used to do.’ And he did.”
