Dying for a fix: Oklahoma experiences increase in painkiller deaths

Then the opiates became so much fun, he started gulping them down with alcohol, he said.

Before long, the 33-year-old musician and former bartender felt compelled to feed his drug addiction by faking injuries before a string of doctors and even buying Lortab (hydrocodone) from a crack cocaine addict who looked like somebody's grandmother.

�It was fun at first,� said Wayne, a recovering addict who asked to remain anonymous.

But soon he began snorting cocaine to try to increase the high and pull out of the hydrocodone-induced depression. He got sick when he tried to eat. His mother told him he looked thin and pale.

One day, the depression led him on a feverish search for a rope, a sharp knife, something, anything, he could use to kill himself.

�All I could find was a butter knife,� he said.

Wayne made it out of his self-made prison with his life.

But 130 Oklahomans didn't survive their hydrocodone use in 2009, according to the state's most recent autopsy figures. Hydrocodone � also known as Vicodin or Lorcet � caused more overdose deaths in 2009 than methamphetamine and cocaine combined.

Along with the rising death rate from painkillers is the rising prescribing rate. Oklahomans were prescribed more hydrocodone than were Californians, on a per-capita basis. Only Nevada, Tennessee, West Virginia, Kentucky and Alabama exceeded Oklahoma in hydrocodone prescriptions per capita in 2008, according to recent Drug Enforcement Administration figures.