From the Baltimore Sun, by Peter Hermann.
Marianne Woessner is a North Carolina nurse and midwife who sees drug addicts with good jobs and from good families nearly every day. They occupy a hidden world that belies the stereotype of rail-thin junkies stumbling from one street corner to the next in search of a fix.
Woessner was the mother of one such drug addict. She made the discovery Sunday night, when a Baltimore police officer called to tell her that her daughter, Carrie Elisabeth John, died that evening after apparently injecting herself with buprenorphine while trying to get high with her boyfriend, Clinton Blaine McCracken, in their rented rowhouse near downtown.
The couple were postdoctoral fellows at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, working in labs on the same floor, studying the effects of drug addiction even as, police said, they grew marijuana inside their home and used narcotics purchased over the Internet from a Philippine pharmacy that shipped pills hidden inside stuffed animals.
“These are two brilliant people who made a stupid error in judgment,” Woessner said in a telephone interview Wednesday, as she prepared to bury her 29-year-old daughter in the town where she grew up. Woessner said she doesn’t think McCracken either injected her daughter or forced her to do drugs.
“He loved her and she loved him,” she said. “I know this. They’re humans, just like all of us. We all have our faults. Just because drugs is what they studied doesn’t mean anything. Addiction is addiction, no matter what we do, what race we are, what occupation we have.”
… McCracken told police, according to court documents, that he and John “thought they could control the morphine and buprenorphine” and that he thought marijuana should be legalized.
Dr. Donald Jasinski, chief of the center for chemical dependency at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, said it should come as no shock to see doctors or other medical professionals addicted to drugs, especially those who study narcotics and are around the chemicals daily.
“Anybody who handles drugs think they know how to control it,” he said. “Perhaps the highest risk group for opiate dependency is doctors.”
… Woessner drove from High Point, N.C., to Baltimore early Monday and spent Tuesday talking to her daughter’s friends and co-workers. She toured the place where John worked and gathered her personal belongings.
She said she was angry to discover that lab workers, despite being around controlled drugs and narcotics that would be illegal on the street, were not tested for drug use. Such testing, she said, could have alerted authorities and helped her daughter get treatment before she died.
Karen A. Buckelew, a spokeswoman for the medical school, said drug tests are administered to “certain employees as required by law,” but she confirmed that workers in the lab where John and McCracken worked were not monitored regularly.
Woessner described her daughter as a “superstar” and said “everything she did, she did well.” She started playing softball at age 7 and continued on a team in Baltimore. She played the clarinet in her high school band and embraced the Native American heritage of her father’s family. She graduated from high school early and enrolled in Cornell University at the age of 17, majoring in biology.
She met McCracken at Wake Forest University as they worked toward doctorates in their shared field of interest, drug addiction. She earned a doctorate in physiology and pharmacology.
She moved to Baltimore in 2006. McCracken left the University of Pittsburgh three months ago to join her. John worked on projects involving schizophrenia and drug use, and last year led a neuroscience discussion on “This is your brain on drugs.”
… John and McCracken led a life that the young woman’s mother never saw. McCracken told authorities that he and John injected themselves with buprenorphine and morphine. Police said they had turned their unkempt house into an indoor marijuana farm, with grow lights and fans vented with aluminum dryer hoses. Police said they found pills in bags, at least 20 bongs, 30 marijuana plants growing up to two feet high and more packed and stored in Mason jars.
According to court documents, McCracken gave police a detailed account of what happened Sunday, saying he and John soaked two buprenorphine pills in water before filtering them and filling two syringes each with 1 mg doses of the drug. He said John, who has asthma, injected first and immediately had trouble breathing. He helped her use her inhaler, and then dialed 911.
She got to the hospital at 6 p.m. and died 49 minutes later. McCracken said he didn’t get a chance to shoot up because John had already gone into distress. Police found her syringe in the living room of the house.
McCracken told police that he didn’t think John overdosed, but instead injected a bad batch of drugs. Police said results of toxicology tests to determine how John died are pending.
Woessner said she met with McCracken on Tuesday and described him as “very upset, because they were playing, they were doing what couples do. This was not an intentional thing.” …
October 1st, 2009 at 7:10AM
Very sad, but my God, I hope that mom Woessner does not really think that shooting up is what normal couples do. Talk about defining deviance down!
October 1st, 2009 at 8:22AM
There is a book called, I think, The Economics of Public Choice. One of the authors is Douglass North. As I recall, in one chapter, they look at the option of legalizing drugs, not just marijuana, but cocaine, meth, etc. My recollection is that their conclusion is that there would be fewer drug deaths if drugs were legalized.
This is not in my area, but I’ve read that Portugal is trying this option and early results are good.
October 1st, 2009 at 10:20AM
Since one of the side effects of buprenorphine is respiratory depression, it seems like a very stupid thing to do for an asthmatic to inject it "bad batch" or otherwise. If the boyfriend is also someone with training in pharmacology, he too ought to have been aware of something a non-medical person such as myself can find in a couple of clicks online.
I grieve for Ms. Woessner’s loss, but if she feels this was "just playing" and a "stupid error in judgment" I fear she may be deep in denial.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:23PM
It seems even worse than that to me, Brett…
So you smuggle drugs in from the Phillipines and self-inject them after making a water extract. What the hell? How do you know what is really in there? You’re really not in a position to complain to the FDA.
Of course this could be said for just about any off the street dope that people ingest or inject, sometimes with fatal consequences.
These folks, though, should have known better – a lot better.
October 5th, 2009 at 11:19AM
[...] More info…From the Baltimore Sun , by Peter Hermann. Marianne Woessner is a North Carolina nurse and midwife who sees drug addicts with good jobs and from good families nearly every day. They occupy a hidden world that belies the stereotype of rail-thin junkies stumbling from one street corner to the next in search of a fix. Woessner was the mother of one such drug addict. She made the discovery Sunday night, when a Baltimore police officer called to tell her that her daughter, Carrie Elisabeth Joh [...]
October 13th, 2009 at 11:53AM
[...] More info…From the Baltimore Sun , by Peter Hermann. Marianne Woessner is a North Carolina nurse and midwife who sees drug addicts with good jobs and from good families nearly every day. They occupy a hidden world that belies the stereotype of rail-thin junkies stumbling from one street corner to the next in search of a fix. Woessner was the mother of one such drug addict. She made the discovery Sunday night, when a Baltimore police officer called to tell her that her daughter, Carrie Elisabeth Joh [...]
October 18th, 2009 at 12:04PM
[...] More info…From the Baltimore Sun , by Peter Hermann. Marianne Woessner is a North Carolina nurse and midwife who sees drug addicts with good jobs and from good families nearly every day. They occupy a hidden world that belies the stereotype of rail-thin junkies stumbling from one street corner to the next in search of a fix. Woessner was the mother of one such drug addict. She made the discovery Sunday night, when a Baltimore police officer called to tell her that her daughter, Carrie Elisabeth Joh [...]
October 18th, 2009 at 5:42PM
[...] More info…From the Baltimore Sun , by Peter Hermann. Marianne Woessner is a North Carolina nurse and midwife who sees drug addicts with good jobs and from good families nearly every day. They occupy a hidden world that belies the stereotype of rail-thin junkies stumbling from one street corner to the next in search of a fix. Woessner was the mother of one such drug addict. She made the discovery Sunday night, when a Baltimore police officer called to tell her that her daughter, Carrie Elisabeth Joh [...]
October 23rd, 2009 at 11:51AM
[...] More info…From the Baltimore Sun , by Peter Hermann. Marianne Woessner is a North Carolina nurse and midwife who sees drug addicts with good jobs and from good families nearly every day. They occupy a hidden world that belies the stereotype of rail-thin junkies stumbling from one street corner to the next in search of a fix. Woessner was the mother of one such drug addict. She made the discovery Sunday night, when a Baltimore police officer called to tell her that her daughter, Carrie Elisabeth Joh [...]