Thursday 7th August 2008
When Sarah Roisman was 11 years old, her doctors prescribed Klonopin, a muscle relaxant, for a psychiatric disorder that caused her to have seizures. She liked how the drug made her feel. Her seizures went away.
But that's where her trouble with addiction began.
By age 14, the teen from an upper middle-class Philadelphia suburb led a dangerous double life. Editor of her school paper, strong student and popular athlete, Roisman was also hooked on painkillers and other drugs in an addiction that illustrates the rapid expansion in prescription drug abuse in America.
"My friends and I would take a bunch of different pills and break them up and put them all together and call it confetti. It could be any combination of anything. We could learn from it, and continue to take it," said Roisman, who is now 17.
The issue of prescription drug abuse shot to prominence with January's death of 28-year-old Hollywood actor Heath Ledger after he took six different prescriptions. The death of Ledger, who plays the Joker in the new Batman film "The Dark Night," adds to a growing list of prescription drug overdoses that includes Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith in 2007.
Other deaths are less celebrated. In the 45-54 age group, overdose deaths fueled by prescription drugs now surpass motor vehicle deaths as the nation's No. 1 cause of accidental death, federal data show.