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Special Report: Deadly Fix

Aired August 30, 2014 - 18:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BEN FERGUSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: In the grand scheme of things, everything is managed when you're running for president. And everything you wear is managed when you're running for president. So when you are president --

MARC LAMONT HILL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I'm president and you can't get rid of me. I'm in my last two years of office, I can wear a tan suit.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Ben, Marc, thank you so much to both of you. This was a very spirited and fun debate.

I'm Brianna Keilar in New York. And our special on the plague of drug addiction, "Deadly Fix," starts right now.

You are in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Brianna Keilar in New York. This hour we're focusing on our special series "Deadly Fix."

But first, this just in. The U.S. has conducted five new air strikes against ISIS militants near the Mosul dam. The U.S. military says the strikes destroyed an ISIS fighting position and armed vehicle, weapons, and significantly damaged an ISIS-held building. The U.S. military has conducted a total of 115 air strikes against is in Iraq.

And this comes as secretary of state John Kerry has written a strongly worded op-ed in the "New York times" calling for more nation nations to help the U.S. fighting ISIS. Kerry writes quote "a much fuller response is demanded from the world. No civilized country should shirk its responsibility to help stamp out this disease."

And as concern over Russia's actions in Ukraine continues to grow, we're also hearing a frightening warning from one of the top European leaders meeting in Belgium today. He says Russia is nearing a, quote, "point of no return in Ukraine."

Meanwhile, a CNN team in the port city of Mariupol saw Ukrainian forces strengthening defense positions on the outskirts of the city, re-enforcing checkpoints, digging trenches along roads leading toward the Russian border. This a day after Russian's foreign minister denied accusations that Russian troops have crossed into Ukraine despite these NATO satellite images that appear to show otherwise.

And in Missouri the fallout continues from questionable police actions in the aftermath of Michael Brown's death. Another officer retired. You may remember St. Louis county police officer Dan Paige from that video that you're watching right now that surfaced showing him ranting about President Obama as well as many other Americans. Paige was also seen pushing CNN's Don Lemon during protests in Ferguson earlier this month.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Standing here all day.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get out of the way. Let's go. Let's go.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: That's what's happening here. So people are here --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's go.

LEMON: You can see what's happening.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got rights.

LEMON: We've been standing here all day. They told us to come here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can't move.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: A lieutenant, you see him here, he threatened and pointed an assault rifle at protesters during the protests. He also retired this week. And the third officer in a nearby city was fired after making what he -- his police chief called very inappropriate Facebook comments about the protests.

For the rest of this hour, we want to focus on a crisis usually not in the headlines, the one that affects millions of American, drug addiction. A disease that has grown into a Deadly Fix for so many addicts.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR (voice-over): Prescription pill killers, America's newest drug epidemic.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hate to say they're as American as apple pie, but they are. They're not going anywhere.

KEILAR: It's growing at an alarming rate, becoming the drug of choice for the younger generation.

When did you first notice a problem with your son?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In junior high school.

KEILAR: Experts say it's leading to an explosion of heroin use across the country.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE REPORTER: How often do you do heroin now?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Several times a day. KEILAR: Over the next hour we'll ride along with police in

Massachusetts who have seen so many overdoses the state has declared a public health emergency.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Got a visual on the guy that's selling.

KEILAR: We'll meet a woman who became so addicted she would meet drug dealers while her grandchildren were in the car.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did you care who was around?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nope.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Never worried?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was thinking about one thing and that was heroin.

KEILAR: And discuss what it takes to beat addiction with former broadcaster and recovering addict, Pat O'Brien.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: This story that you're about to hear shows how addiction can strike anyone. A Denver woman found herself hooked on heroin on a road leading to an early grave. She was a mom and a grandmother and she tells the chilling story of going out to score drugs sometimes with her grandkids.

Here's CNN's Ana Cabrera.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This Park is where you would pick up?

CYNTHIA SCUDO, RECOVERING ADDICT: This is it.

CABRERA: How often?

SCUDO: Probably twice a week.

CABRERA: Cynthia Scudo was an all American mom of eight with a deep, dark secret.

Did you care who was around?

SCUDO: Nope.

CABRERA: Never worried?

SCUDO: I was thinking about one thing, and that was heroin.

CABRERA: Hooked on heroin for nearly a decade.

SCUDO (ph): In the beginning it was a feel good. At the end, it was black. CABRERA: It started innocently enough. She had pain in her hip, scar

tissue perhaps from multiple c-sections. A doctor prescribed oxycontin. But in just two weeks, Scudo was addicted.

SCUDO: By the time I'm I got to my second doctor she said you're taking enough for three adult men.

CABRERA: Are doctors too quick to prescribe a painkiller?

DOCTOR PATRICK FALLING (ph), ADDICTION SPECIALIST: Some of them, definitely.

CABRERA: Addiction specialist Doctor Patrick Falling (ph)says what happened to Scudo is not uncommon and neither is the jump from prescription meds to heroine.

FALLING (ph): It acts on the same parts of the brain that cause re- enforcement, they cause euphoria.

CABRERA: But heroin is much cheaper. One oxycontin can cost $80 on the street. 100 bucks worth of heroin could last Scudo up to three days. Scudo crisscrossed Colorado to meet with drug dealers, at park, strip malls, sometimes with her grandchildren in the car.

SCUDO: So this is a good place to pick up because you've got sides of houses here, fences.

CABRERA: This mom and grand mom in her mid 40s at the time didn't shoot heroin like some addicts do, she smoked it.

SCUDO: And I would drive with my knee, hold the foil in one hand, straw in my mouth, lighter in the other, and I would be driving down i-70 going 65 miles an hour smoking heroin.

CABRERA: Driven by the drugs for nine years. Scudo thought she was destined to die a drug addict until a wake-up call one day when she looked in the mirror.

SCUDO: I was a skeleton. I had this lovely green glow going, so I knew my liver was shutting down. The skin was hanging, literally hanging off my body. Something about that moment when I saw myself triggered something in my head. Home away from home.

CABRERA: What's going through your mind?

SCUDO: Chaos, hope. For the first time in a long time.

CABRERA: That's what was happening when you first got here?

SCUDO: Yes. I knew I couldn't do it by myself and I didn't know how to do it.

CABRERA: Scudo was in rehab for 33 days. This was her in-take picture.

SCUDO: Hel. I threw up every 15 minutes. I would have to live in the shower with the water temperature 120 degrees to burn the skin to not feel the pain in my back.

CABRERA: The physical withdrawal was just the first hurdle. Scudo has worked through a 12-step recovery. It's been over three years. No relapses. And Scudo, now 55 and a grandmother of 18, has a new appreciation for life.

SCUDO: The only way I'm going to stay clean and sober is to remember where I came from.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: Ana Cabrera with that report.

And coming up, broadcaster Pat O'Brien shares his personal struggle with addiction and his remarkable recovery.

Plus, marijuana is often called a gateway drug. But a new study says it may actually keep people from trying more dangerous alternatives.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Every 19 minutes one person dies from a prescription drug overdose here in the United States. In fact, prescription drug abuse in the country has risen so dramatically the CDC now classifies it as an epidemic.

I want to bring in Carl Hart, he is an associate professor of psychology at Columbia University and in Atlanta we're joined by physician and journalist Dr. Ford Vox.

And Carl, I want to start with you. We're seeing that overall drug use is actually down. We were talking about this from the '80s definitely, but you're seeing prescription drug abuse increase. Why is that?

PROF. CARL HART, PSYCHOLOGIST, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: Well, when we think about prescription drug abuse and drug use, the thing that we measure is people who have used the drug in the past 30 days. If you look at 2002 and you look at now, the rates haven't changed that much. But if you start before 2002 it certainly has increased.

One of the reasons that it has increased probably because people were smarter. I mean, the fact is, with prescription drugs, you know what you're getting. Whereas, street drugs you don't know what you're getting. So that's not necessarily a bad thing.

KEILAR: So Dr. Vox, what do you think? He says people are smarter. They're able to know what exactly they're getting maybe they wouldn't know what's in elicit street drug. But what do you think about that?

DOCTOR FORD VOX, PHYSICIAN/JOURNALIST: Well, part of it may be that people are smarter but a large part of the problem is that physicians really have been dumber over recent years. We have seen an explosion in the prescription of opiod pain medications, another addictive medications as part of an overall plan that we're going to stamp out pain all together. There's been a campaign called pain is the fifth vital sign. And we

saw a resurgence of boom really in the prescription of these medications starting in the 1990s, rising to the 2000s. And we have created this problem to a large extent that's often easier to prescribe a pill than to get to some of the root problems of why people want to take these pills.

KEILAR: And how easy is it, Doctor, for people to get their hands on prescription drugs?

VOX: It's extremely easy. And studies indicate that over -- well over half of these medications are coming either directly from the physician's hands or being handed over by one family member to perhaps another friend freely.

Physicians have a large responsibility here to recognize that we are the root cause to a large extent of the prescription pill epidemic. And we are starting to pull back, as we should, but that is creating some problems in and of itself. This has to be treated as part of a comprehensive pain program. And really we got to start out with the right diagnosis. Over 100 million Americans are in some form of chronic pain. I think that drives a lot of this.

HART: I just want to make sure that we understand. Some people say it's extremely easy for some people, not everyone. Obviously, we want our physicians to be responsible, but I don't want us to get hysterical here such that people don't get the medications that they need. And oftentimes when you have these pseudo-crisis, what we have is we have some bad policy that we implement and then we make it more restrictive for people who actually need these medications to control their pain. So I want to make sure that we don't get too crazy here.

KEILAR: Yes. And some physicians I've heard that, anecdotally, some physicians are very carefully, whereas others are not. Hydrocodone, for instance, Carl. When you look at statistics here. It is one of the commonly prescribed drugs. According to the international narcotics control board, Americans are consuming 99 percent of its worldwide. So you look at a statistic like that, why is that?

HART: We probably consume so much of that because other countries or other people around the country -- around the world are consuming other types of opiods. For example, when you go to places like Switzerland, Germany, those places like that, they prescribe things like heroin in some cases. The fact that we prescribe -- we take 99 percent of the hydrocodone is not surprising. But one of the things we are not talking about is that hydrocodone contains acidomethaphine (ph). Acidomethaphine (ph)is the number reason for liver toxin in the world. Whereas some other opiods, you don't have these acidomethaphine (ph). So, that becomes a problem that we fail to talk about.

KEILAR: A major health problem. All right, gentlemen, stick around. We'll talk a little more after the break. We will be examining how more states are seeing a shift from people using costly prescription drugs in favor of cheaper alternative forms of heroin.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Well, no one sets out to become a drug addict but it's a fate that happens to far too many people. Sometimes it starts innocently with the legal prescription for pain pills. But police are seeing firsthand how a doctor's good intentions can lead to a constant craving for one of the most dangerous street drugs, heroin.

Here's CNN's Deb Feyerick.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Coming upside street behind where you are at?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's just after dinner on an ordinary Thursday night in Chelsea, Massachusetts.

Got the guy, the sell (INAUDIBLE).

LT. DAVID BETZ, NARCOTICS: The buyer, the buyer is -- I guess he texted them to say he's on the way.

FEYERICK: Lieutenant David Betz and his narcotics officers are gathering intelligence on a controlled drug deal.

What do you buy? How much is it?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Five bags. Five bags of heroin.

FEYERICK: Chelsea is north of Boston just over the bridge across the Mystic River. Unlike many other cities and towns across America, police here have seen the demand for heroin skyrocket.

BETZ: Drugs are -- you hate to say they're as American as apple pie, but they're here. They are not going anywhere.

FEYERICK: The growing epidemic is fueled in part by people increasingly hooked on prescription painkiller, people looking to heroin as a cheaper way to get high. People like Marie who grew up here and took her first hit two decades ago at age 16. We agreed to protect her identity. How often do you do heroin now?

MARIE, HEROINE ADDICT: Several times a day. Like right now I've already done two 40 packages today.

FEYERICK: Do you have one supplier? Do you have multiple suppliers?

MARIE: Multiple. You always need multiple because sometimes one isn't around so you need your backup dealer.

FEYERICK: Police say the majority drugs at 60 percent are sold in and around the public park by Chelsea town hall. An endless flow of traffickers, suppliers, sellers, and buyers.

How do they find their way here into a place like Chelsea? BETZ: They almost have like a network of runners or suppliers and

they'll send them out, like delivery guys in a pizza store. Say you go to Chelsea for the day. You go to another city for the day. They will basically network like that.

FEYERICK: What's the most number of times somebody has been arrested?

BETZ: That I've seen?

FEYERICK: Yes.

BETZ: Well over 200.

FEYERICK: Back at Chelsea police headquarters the evidence room is nearly filled to capacity.

BETZ: These are all heroin cases and cocaine cases that we've worked on. Twist is it's just the corner of a sandwich bag that they will take.

FEYERICK: Can I hold this up?

BETZ: Go ahead.

FEYERICK: A twist of heroin that costs a fraction of a single prescription painkiller. This batch of heroine is worth $300.

Do you have the same amount of oxycontin or any of these drugs, what would it be?

BETZ: Well over $2,000.

FEYERICK: Police say that about half of the people arrested here in Chelsea for either selling or buying heroin, they're not even from here, they don't live in Chelsea. They're coming from other cities and towns.

BETZ: We know certain communities are a lot more affluent and will ask them, you know, how did you end up here from, you know, a suburb of million dollar homes and they will say they got hooked on opiates, you know, they ran out of money. They're not available there like they are here.

FEYERICK: And though she grew up in Chelsea, Marie says she wants to move first chance she gets hoping to run from the addiction she calls a life sentence.

You OD'd five times. Did you ever once think, why did I wake up?

MARIE: Yes. Every single time. Every time I woke up pissed off. I'm like, I'm such a -- I can't even die right. Like I would rather be in the ground than continue with this.

BETZ: Headed up there now.

FEYERICK: And endless cycle of drugs in small towns trying to stem the tide.

BETZ: I woke up tomorrow and do it all again.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: My panel back with me now. Columbia professor Carl Hart as well as Dr. Ford Vox.

Dr. Vox, we just saw Deb's report there. Do you believe that prescription pills are a gateway to other harder drugs?

VOX: Well, at this point it's not really a matter of belief. We have the statistics. We know that over 80 percent of people who go on to heroin first have their exposure to an opiod, prescription opiod currently, it used to be quite the reverse, well over 80 percent was commonly introduced first to heroin back in the 1960s and '70s. So we have to a large extent medicalized this epidemic.

KEILAR: What do you think? I see you wanting to react to this.

HART: Yes. You know, I'm just trying to hold it together. Whenever I heard the term gateway drug it just -- it's difficult to hold it together because on one hand, the vast majority of people who are using these drugs, the opiates, prescription opiates, do not go on to use heroin. That's a fact. So when we start talking about gateway drug, this is not a gateway --

KEILAR: Well then -- but who is it a gateway for? Someone with a predisposition or they already have a mental illness and they're medicating? Is that what it is?

HART: Yes. You're getting at the real issues here. When we think about someone going on to use heroin, people go on to use heroin for a variety of reasons whether they have some occurring psychiatric illness, whether they are engaged in other sort of petty crimes or other sort of behaviors but there's a variety of reasons. And to blame prescription medications for heroin use, later heroin use, that's overly simplistic. And actually is dangerous because it doesn't allow us to focus on the real issues that people actually might face. And so it concerns me deeply that people are suggesting this simplistic sort of view.

KEILAR: But I want you to respond to that, Dr. Vox. Obviously, some people are self medicating when they have other issues. But I imagine you also think that we need to pay attention to the supply here of these drugs.

VOX: We do. That's what we're hearing now and people enter into drug abuse treatment programs. A large study was done from Washington University in St. Louis surveying the entrance of these programs. This is a select population. People who are getting the ideal treatment for drug addiction, going into a full program. But they are saying their first exposure was to a prescription opiod.

Now, I know Dr. Hart has some contention with the fact that this is not the sole reason that drives anyone to heroin. And that is quite true. In fact, part of the problem is that the medical system is not really reimbursing and supporting some of the correct treatments that we need for some of these patients. People face a large co-pay, for example, for physical therapy, may not have good access to mental healthcare. It's often too easy for the physician just to write a prescription for the pill. And this is sometimes creating part of the problem.

KEILAR: Dr. Hart, I want to get your take on a recent study that's pretty fascinating. It found that states that have legalized marijuana have significantly fewer deaths from prescription painkiller over overdoses. Why is that?

HART: One of the things we have to make sure we clearly understand is that this is correlational study, not causation. So when we talk about determining cause or how confident we are in terms of the causes or the finding, we can be -- our confidence is we're intrigued by these findings. I am.

I think they are findings that should be followed up on. And it makes sense when we think about a basic science level, when you give opiods and cavenoid, which marijuana is the cavenoid, when you give them together, they works synergistically in order decrease pain. So perhaps people are decreasing their opiod intake because they don't need as much.

And so, I think this needs to be followed up on. I think it is extremely encouraging. It and also speaks to this issue of folks who say things like marijuana has no medical potential. This just flies in the face of that sort of nonsense.

KEILAR: And raises a lot of questions that should be answered. Thank you so much.

Well, prescription pills, a potentially Deadly Fix that shows no age discrimination. Here's a story of a boy hooked at the age of 13 and who is still battling addiction more than 12 years later.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: The prescription drug generation has arrived. The Partnership for A Drug-Free America reports one in five teens use prescription drugs to get high because they mistakenly believe that pills are safer than street drugs like heroin and cocaine.

One New York mother knows this reality all too well. Her son became addicted to prescription pills when he was just 13. Now more than a decade later he's still fighting to kick the habit. She shares her story with CNN's Kelly Wallace.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DEBBIE GROSS LONGO, MOTHER OF ADDICT: He loved to make you laugh. That would make him feel really good. He was on Division I soccer. He was on basketball, he was on baseball. This is him and I when we were in a pool and I would be the cautious mother.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What did it feel like when you felt like he was addicted to prescription drugs?

LONGO: Well, at first I didn't realize she was I would find pill bottles with no names on them, so it was just a straight bottle. Sometimes I would find straws. Sometimes I would find spoons.

I would Google everything and started realizing, there's a problem here.

You start questioning yourself, did I fail him in some way? There's such a stigma and such a shame attached to it. The bottom line is it's a disease.

WALLACE: How hard was that stigma for you?

LONGO: So, I really suffered in silence, and it's a horrible place to be because you end up crying yourself to sleep. You start going back in time and looking at how they used to be.

WALLACE: For all mothers who have children who are addicted, it is that balance between supporting your loved one and enabling.

LONGO: His hand was always out. Always out.

WALLACE: How scary was that when you said, done, the enabling stops?

LONGO: I started to think to myself, well, if he's so darn clever to get the drugs, he can be clever enough to find a piece of pizza somewhere, you know? OK, you sleep in your car. Well, that's your choice.

So, I grew a little bit stronger. But I really grew strong with The Addict's Mom. I mean, that group was my saving grace. It truly was. I saw women who were having the same problems that I was having. Only our children's names were different.

WALLACE: What's the number one piece of advice you'd give any mom watching who has an addict as a child?

LONGO: Well, I think try to get them into -- into rehab. Scare them straight almost. But I really think that you have to start talking to your children when they're young. And warn them about everything.

I don't want to hear another mother getting a knock at the door saying their son or daughter is dead. I don't want one mother out there suffering in silence and feel she has nowhere to go.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: It's hard to imagine someone so young developing a life- altering addiction, but my next two guests know the battle all too well. Veteran broadcaster Pat O'Brien almost died from his addictions to drugs and alcohol. And Darren Kavinoky began abusing drugs before he could even drive. They will share their stories with you, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) KEILAR: Just so you know, it's hard enough for an addict and it can also be hard on a parent or a loved one looking on and feeling powerless in the fight against addiction, it may seemn hopeless, but there is help.

With me now, Emmy Award-winning broadcaster, bestselling author and recovering addict, Pat O'Brien. And also, we're joined by Darren Kavinoky, he's a certified interventionist, recovery and addict himself and host of "Deadly Sins" on Investigation Discovery.

Thanks to both of you for being with us.

PAT O'BRIEN, AUTHOR: Thank you.

DARREN KAVINOKY, DEADLY SINS: Thanks, Brianna.

KEILAR: Pat, your struggle with drugs and alcohol was very public, but it began later in life. Does it surprise you to hear that the younger generation referred to as generation RX or the medication generation is out there right now?

O'BRIEN: Well, I mean, our society and this is a great topic to have. Our society is addicted to not suffering as much addicted to the medicines that help you not suffer, and that's become part of our culture, is that we are afraid to suffer.

And so, anything that will make us feel good, that will get rid of anxiety, get rid of fear, depression, resentment, somebody picking on you, a bad day, loss of a job, anything that you can get that helps you, we use that as medicine. Let's erase the people that use it responsibly, by the way.

My alcoholism, I'm sure I was born with it, it's a disease, by the way. I'm sure there's a genetic connection. My name is O'Brien. But, you know, mine hit hard about 55. And then it just got worse and worse and worse.

I didn't miss any days from work and I never drank on air. It was alcohol for me, but I think they're all the same by the way, because you self medicate, you know?

But I worked at it. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty and that's what I did. I stuck to it, finally got it. I had a few rehabs. I know Darren did, too. But I finally listened and got it and now I'm recovering, just coming up on six years.

KEILAR: Yes, and it's inspirational to hear your story about that. It is a struggle that you deal with every day. And, Darren, you know that. You also just heard the story of a boy who began abusing drugs at the age of 13. That's when you began, roughly, abusing drugs.

KAVINOKY: Yes.

KEILAR: It's interesting to hear pat talk about, you know, people dealing with things to stop from suffering. It's not easy being a 13- year-old. Is that what drives some people who are so young to drugs? KAVINOKY: Well, it certainly did in my case. Pat was a late bloomer.

I was on the other side of the aisle there. I, too, began when I was 13 years old and for me, it began with a way to address just being uncomfortable in my own skin. I had a lot of chaos in my upbringing. Not that I blame any of that, but at the time that I was 13, I was living on the outskirts of a very affluent area, although we were not.

I'm in my lousy little one bedroom apartment. A fat kid wearing husky size tough skin jeans who just felt like I was from another planet than these kids that I was in school with that were all doing things I was incapable of doing like showing up to class, studying Latin and just getting along with their fellow human being.

And so, for me, that moment when I was 13 and at a party that all the cool kids were at and when one of them passed a joint my way, there was no "just say no" moment. When the cool kid passes a joint your way you take it and that actually lit the fuse that caused, for me anyway, for the next 20 years, if it was a waking moment for me, I was loaded on something.

KEILAR: I wonder for both of you, pat to you, first. You're talking about -- you're both saying the same thing. Dealing with anxiety or maybe it's a lack of acceptance that causes anxiety, trying to fit in, trying to fix those concerns that you have.

What's the productive way to approach this, do you think, Pat, that you can communicate to younger people?

O'BRIEN: Absolutely. I think that that mother who is -- who had the son that she was Googling the drugs and I'm not criticizing her, but when you find this out you should never go to the Internet for medical news, by the way.

But you should be Googling -- right? You should be Googling behavioral center or addiction doctor or recovery center because there is a choice. There is a way out. You can get out of this. It's just that when you come down from these drugs, everything that you took them for in the first place comes back, the anxiety and fear.

KAVINOKY: Still there.

O'BRIEN: There's a way to maintain that. We're very good in this country of maintaining risk.

People deal with gasoline every day. They fill their cars up. Nobody anymore much smokes around a gas tank or lights a match there. We know how to deal with that.

Medications, for some reason, we're not getting the message. Doctors aren't doing it. The government is not doing it correctly. And you know, you go back and look at the tremendous series CNN is putting on about the '60s. That was my generation. I did drugs with Timothy Leary who discovered LSD. He used to think, Darren, everyone ought to wear a badge that says what you're on at that very moment.

But it was different then. Now, you can't -- you can't afford to take anything off the street.

I have a friend whose son died, very famous friend whose son died. He took one hit of ecstasy, half a hit, and went into a coma. You can't trust street drugs. And the reason they do them is because they're cheaper than prescription drugs. It's not a gateway, it's cheaper.

KEILAR: I want to get both of your perspectives ahead. We're doing to continue our conversation.

Pat, I want to hear more about your personal struggle with addiction, your career, most importantly about your remarkable recovery and your message for people who are battling addiction.

Our conversation continues right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: We are back now with Pat O'Brien.

And, Pat, you just kind of brutally honest memoir on your career and the controversies. It's titled, "I'll Be Back Right After This", and it chronicles your long struggle with addiction, but it's striking because it's also about redemption and it's all about your remarkable recovery. What was the goal of your memoir?

O'BRIEN: Well, the goal -- thank you. The goal was to tell my story with my words. I mean, a lot of people, especially on the Internet and Wikipedia and comments and all this stuff, they think they have your story. And they don't. So, I decided to do the whole thing.

By the way, the book is also about where I grew up, it's about politics. I had a tremendous blessed career in the sports world and news business.

And, you know, like on a day like today, I would be hosting the U.S. Open or college football but I would rather be talking about this because it's more important to me. And I'll be back doing that stuff anyway.

But, you know, I wanted it to be my story and I wanted people to know that there is a way out. There is a choice. You can get well. And you don't have to suffer all that much for it if you want to -- when you're walking through hell, keep walking. That's what Winston Churchill said.

KEILAR: So, to those people you want to send a message to and I should mention, you were very hard on yourself and also many of your former co-workers. It is quite a read. But what was -- for you, what was the "aha" moment where you said, I need to get help or I'm going the die?

O'BRIEN: Right. By the way, I wasn't that hard on most of my co- workers. We're in the business of destroying people's lives. So, when you pin somebody back a little bit they shouldn't jump so high.

I -- at the very end, I -- my last day was in Nantucket and I drank 13 or 14 bottles of wine in one day. Just couldn't stop drinking. That's when finally they found me. I was almost dead. I was airlifted to Hazelton and that's where I got sober. You know why? Because I listen for the first time.

Alcoholics are people who lie to themselves and say, "Well, I can do this. I can drink like this any day." And you can't. You have to understand. And it was the day they said to me, you know what, Pat O'Brien, you're going to die.

I took a good look at myself, as I said and I talk about in the book, and I said, you know, that's the guy I do not want to be. I do not want to be that guy anymore. Pretty cool guy, I thought, but not -- a little different now for me.

KEILAR: What is it like? I wonder how you visualize your struggle. Is it like a mountain that you will never reach the summit of? You never fix yourself, right, completely?

O'BRIEN: Well, no, as I said, that's a good question because what you do is you don't see the mountain, you see the molehill. The molehill is really the mountain. But you think that you can get over -- let's metaphor this to death, OK? You think you can get over that mountain by having a drink.

By the way, if you have one drink, one drink kind of works, settles you down little bit. But 20, 15, I mean, come on.

So I was medicating myself and thinking, well, I've got good hair and makeup people tomorrow. I'll be fine. You know? And -- but at the end of the day it just catches up with you. And I wouldn't go my route.

I write, don't try -- actually Michael J. Fox wrote on the back of the book, don't try this at home. I don't suggest you do.

KEILAR: Yes. No, good advice. OK, stick around with us, Pat. We're going to talk a little bit.

What's the solution? How do we end America's drug addiction, including the abuse of prescription drugs? We'll be discussing, right ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Abuse of prescription pills, the deadly fix that is growing so fast. It's now an epidemic.

So what can be done to keep people from misusing these and other potentially deadly drugs?

Let's bring back our entire panel for their final thoughts here.

Dr. Carl Hart of Columbia University, also the author of "High Price." We have physician and journalist, Dr. Ford Vox, and we have certified interventionist Darren Kavinoky, and last but not least, we have Pat O'Brien. I want some quick, final thoughts, gentlemen.

And, Darren, I want to start with you.

KAVINOKY: Sure. Well, first thought is, there's always hope. When I do interventions or speak publicly I hear from parents all the time who express a great deal of frustration about their loved ones and what they have to learn to appreciate is it's no longer their loved ones. It's disease of addiction that is expressing themselves through the person that they formerly knew.

And as long as that person is drawing breath, then it's still worth fighting the fight. And I encourage people never give up hope.

KEILAR: Carl, your final thought?

PROF. CARL HART, PSYCHOLOGIST, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: What I'd like people to understand is that the vast majority of people who use these drugs are not addicts. Only about 10 percent to 20 percent of people who use these drugs become addicted. In the press, we sometimes focus on the people who have problems and then we act as if that's the majority and that's the typical drug users. That's not the case. That's one.

And, two, just because one has had an addiction, please understand that does not qualify people to become treatment providers. It requires training.

KEILAR: It requires training.

Dr. Vox, your thoughts?

DR. FORD VOX, PHYSICIAN/JOURNALIST: Well, I'm going to temper that a little bit with the fact that at this time, prescription drugs are becoming a leading cause of car accidents, right behind alcohol. Prescription drugs are now a number two cause of accidental deaths, as well, in this country in terms of overdoses.

I do am heartened somewhat about the fact that we have the affordable care act and perhaps we have more tools to treat people more holistically rather than just prescribe pills, that we can get people the appropriate mental health care, the appropriate other tools such as physical therapy, more holistic treatments, rather than just prescribing the pills.

KEILAR: There are other things that can be done.

And, Pat, what do you think? What's the final thing you want to communicate?

O'BRIEN: First of all, we kind of look like a frightening version of "The Brady Bunch" right now. Anyway, the fact --

(LAUGHTER)

KEILAR: I agree. O'BRIEN: The professor is right. There are 26 million people --

alcoholics who probably aren't in recovery. My thought always is that it's better to be in recovery knowing that you're an addict or alcoholic or being out there wondering if you are.

And there is help. There is a way out. And it's -- doctors have to be more vigilant. Pharmacists have to be more vigilant.

Obamacare has to notch it up a little bit. I know it would make a lot of advances in getting treatment for people. But people should realize that if they get put in this prison, the door can be opened and they can be set free.

KEILAR: The door can be opened and they can be set free. We've recovered a myriad of subjects here. You all have very different perspectives. I really appreciate you all being here. Dr. Vox, thank you so much. Dr. Hart, and Darren and Pat, for sharing your personal stories.

We certainly appreciate it. And you can find out much more about the fight against addiction. Just go to CNN.com/DeadlyFix.

KEILAR: You are in the "CNN NEWSROOM". I'm Brianna Keilar.

We are watching two big international stories this hour. ISIS militants on the move in Iraq in fears Ukraine has reached the breaking point. European leaders meeting today, warning that if a political solution isn't found soon, the country could reach the, quote, "point of no return". This as the Ukraine port city of Mariupol braces for the worst.

And we have new developments in the U.S. push to defeat ISIS in Iraq.