News Anchor: 0:03

First, a big step in taking drugs off our streets. Tomorrow, a man behind a deadly pill mill is going to get a sentence of up to life in federal prison. Yeah, and this doctor wrote more pain medicine prescriptions than any other doctor in America for three years running.

Angela Kennecke: 0:26

Today on Grieving Out Loud, he's one of the most notorious pill mill doctors. Dr. Paul Volkman was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences in for unlawfully prescribing pain medications that resulted in deaths.

Philip Eli: 0:43

Volkman was a doctor twice over, right? He had a Ph. D. and an MD Ph. D. And it's this kind of the highest level of accreditation and qualification

Angela Kennecke: 0:53

we have. How did this brilliant doctor who spent three decades as a pediatrician and emergency room physician wind up flooding Southern Ohio with prescription drugs? Today on the podcast, we sit down with Philip Eil, who has spent the past 15 years researching and writing a book about Volkman. Well, I'd like to welcome Phil Eil to Grieving Out Loud. I so enjoyed it. Reading your book. I enjoyed it. I also found myself very angry at times, but prescription for pain and it really is an interesting take, maybe a perspective that I haven't heard before on the opioid crisis and a doctor's role in it all.

Philip Eli: 1:43

Yeah. Well, first off, thank you so much for having me, Angela. And. One of the things I learned in the course of this research is that there were dozens of doctors charged and convicted of prescription drug dealing during, let's say, the last 25 years. As it happens, one of those doctors, Paul Volkman, who's serving four consecutive life terms in federal prison, which happens to be the longest sentence of any of those doctors, Paul Volkman went to college and medical school with my dad. Now, I didn't know Paul Volkman growing up. He wasn't someone who came to our house for dinners. We didn't go on vacation together. I learned about him about 15 years ago when I was just starting out as a journalist, my dad had fallen out of touch with him and then they reconnected. And when they reconnected, my dad learned that he was facing these really horrifying charges of prescription drug dealing that prosecutors alleged had led to the deaths of a number of his patients. And you know this from being a journalist, we always have our antenna out for stories. And this just seemed like an astonishing story and a mystery of what happened to this guy.

Angela Kennecke: 2:56

After finding out about Volkman, Philip decided to start researching the doctor's story. What better place to start than asking the doctor himself for an interview?

Philip Eli: 3:10

A few months after I, I heard about his story, he hadn't gone to trial yet. It was in the few years between his indictment and his trial. And I sent him a letter asking if I could speak to him, I was entering a graduate writing program, and somewhat to my surprise, and probably, surely without the input of his lawyers who would have said, don't talk to anybody, don't talk to a young journalist with a tape recorder, he agreed to speak with me. And so I heard his story at length before his trial, we spoke for more than 12 hours in person, and then I continued to correspond with him in the years afterward when he was in county prison and in federal prison, and he will tell you that he's, first of all, innocent of the crimes he was charged and convicted of, that he was a law abiding, conscientious, sympathetic doctor.

Angela Kennecke: 4:02

Philip says Volkman also claimed he was innocent in the malpractice cases that first caused his fall from medical grace. After those lawsuits, court documents show that Volkman couldn't get malpractice insurance and that made it difficult to find a job. I thought it was interesting he always saw himself as a victim. And I also thought some narcissism may be in there, but let's talk about that. So he, he worked as a physician, as a pediatrician. He faced some malpractice suits, which some of them are really tragic. And you went into some of that detail in your book. And then he's sort of unemployable, like you said. So talk about how he ended up at a pill mill.

Philip Eli: 4:43

So I couldn't get a straight answer as to how exactly he lost his ability to get insurance. He gave conflicting accounts at one time. He said the costs became too high that he was priced out at other times. He said that he was essentially blacklisted from the malpractice insurance industry, but this was well into his career. He was in his fifties when he, you know, found himself at this desperate crossroads. He was living in Chicago. He had an apartment on Lakeshore Drive overlooking the lake and Belmont Harbor. Anyone who's been to Chicago knows that's a glitzy part of town. He was paying in the early 2000s, 4, 500 a month to live in this building and basically couldn't find a job and was looking around online and saw an ad posted by a woman who he would at least come to learn at some point, had no medical training, didn't even have a college degree, but who had started this clinic that was unaffiliated with any local hospitals. In a part of Ohio, Appalachian, Southern Ohio, right in the Kentucky border near West Virginia, that even then, in the early 2000s, had a reputation for really out of control drug abuse. I found a newspaper clipping from the year that Volkman started in Portsmouth, Ohio, working at one of these clinics. This town was already being called the Oxycontin capital of the world. So, whether that was true or not, it gives you a sense of these kind of sketchy clinics and loose hands writing prescriptions and the flow of opiates on the black market were really pronounced problems by the time he arrived there. And he really didn't apparently show much caution when he arrived. He started prescribing opiates and other controlled substances. It was at a tremendous clip. So much that local pharmacies pretty quickly said, hey, we're going to stop filling these scripts. That didn't stop him. He and his clinic owner applied to the Ohio Board of Pharmacy to establish an on site pharmacy and that's what they did. They got the green light and things just continued from there.

Angela Kennecke: 6:58

For three years, Volkman illegally prescribed and dispensed millions of pain pills operating far outside the scope of a legitimate medical practice. In fact, he became one of the nation's largest physician dispensers of oxycodone. Patients paid between 125 to 200 in cash for brief clinic visits. While Volkman cashed in on the opioid epidemic, some of his patients tragically lost their lives. It's really sad when you think about it, but also all of the things that were not in place, all the protections that were not in place, to protect patients like the people who own the clinic, having no real medical background, no real education at all. Right. And also being able to open their own pharmacy like that. I mean, Ohio has since created some new laws.

Philip Eli: 7:57

That's right. So I mean, I didn't expect when I entered this story that I would be working on it for more than a decade. I want your listeners and viewers to know that I did do other things along the way. I worked a lot as a journalist at a newspaper in my home state of Rhode Island and as a freelancer. One of the benefits of following a story for that long is you can follow the context of it. And one of the contexts Was Volkman's crimes took place between 2003 and 2006. His trial takes place in federal court in 2011. He's sentenced in 2012. And along this period of time, continuing afterward, I saw, One, the opiate and overdose problem down in this part of the state of Ohio get worse and worse. Sam Quinones has written about it in his excellent book, Dreamland. He calls it, you know, ground zero for America's pill problem. But I also saw the city of Portsmouth and the state of Ohio kind of scramble to fill in some of the loopholes that these clinics were exploiting. So by the time I was done writing, you couldn't be out of the medical world and open a clinic like this. You needed to be a physician. You needed to have an affiliation with a local hospital or university. And I believe the rules for on site dispensaries were much stricter. So, I'm thankful that the state of Ohio, you know, filled some of those gaps, but this is a story about what happened before they found those legislative solutions. And, of course, it's a story about this kind of mass movement in the 90s and 2000s to expand access to opiates, to treat pain more aggressively. And that allowed, unfortunately, for a number of bad actors to move in on the individual level, on the corporate level, and claim they were treating pain while they were really lining their pockets.

Angela Kennecke: 9:46

And really becoming drug dealers. Drug dealers is really what they were. I mean, how could they not know that their patients were suffering from substance use disorder, right? How could a doctor not understand that?

Philip Eli: 9:57

Not only how could they not know, I mean, one of the things that fascinated me about this case is Paul Volkman and my dad. weren't just classmates in medical school, they both had M. D. and Ph. D. s, this prestigious program at the University of Chicago. And Volkman's Ph. D. was in the subject of pharmacology, which is, you know, the study of prescription drugs. So I say, of all the people who ought to have known the consequences of what he was doing, it's a guy not just with an M. D., but a Ph. D. in pharmacology.

Angela Kennecke: 10:27

And must just not have cared, that's what we have to assume, that he just didn't care because people were dying. Can you talk about What was happening at his clinic, the deaths that resulted and the clinic was shut down at some point, but he went on. I think that's what is even more sickening.

Philip Eli: 10:45

It's an astonishing story of stubbornness, arrogance, belligerence, and really, A lack of empathy. I mean, there were so many warning signs and so many things that happened that ought to have given him pause, ought to have told him to hang it up, but he didn't. Could have been when local pharmacies stopped filling his scripts. It could have been when patients, many of whom were in their 30s and 40s, died. And he certainly would have known about this. It could have been when law enforcement raided his clinics multiple times. There was a DEA raid at one clinic. There was a local police raid at another clinic. There was testimony at his trial about family members, either calling the clinic and saying, you know, you can't give this to my loved one. If you do, they're going to die. And then calling again after the loved one did die. And there was also testimony about desperate family members who knew that their family members were struggling with addiction going to the doctor and in one case pleading with him to stop prescribing and in another case threatening him with bodily harm if he didn't stop prescribing. And nevertheless, he kept going and would have kept going if the DEA didn't finally shut him down.

Angela Kennecke: 11:58

But he was shut down. Wasn't one clinic shut down and then he opened another one?

Philip Eli: 12:02

Yes.

Angela Kennecke: 12:03

I mean, I couldn't get over that. I was like, What? I mean, you would think the first time that you're shut down that you would go, okay, I'm going to go home now. I mean, he wasn't even from the area. I think that's what was also interesting.

Philip Eli: 12:16

Yeah. I mean, so many things about this story fascinated me. And by the way, I started out knowing virtually none of it. I started out just like my dad didn't know what happened with basically two facts that Paul Volkman and my dad graduated from the university of Chicago in 1974. And that they lost touch, and that Paul Volkman was indicted in 2007 and charged with these really horrifying crimes. So I, you know, set out to fill in the gaps and find out what happened. And that involved hearing Volkman's side of the story, and in his version of the story, pain patients are discriminated against, and the DEA is corrupt, and all of the law enforcement down in Ohio were corrupt, and everyone's out to screw him over. But then I went down to Southern Ohio, where his crimes took place, And I kept going down there. I went there a total of 10 times and you get down there and you ask people the very straightforward question of, is it possible this guy was actually helping patients? And they all say no, because The pain clinics down there, and the prescription drug abuse were just so out of control that it really is impossible for anyone to believe, because they were familiar with it, they lived with it, and they knew people, you know, you don't have to ask around to find people who are touched by the opiate

Angela Kennecke: 13:36

epidemic in some way. All of the country. Really now, I mean, the way it has morphed, obviously it started with these pills, but it's because that is the root of our opiate crisis that we're in now, right? So you can't put that in a box and say, Oh, this happened in the early 2000s. And well, now we're here. We are with fentanyl. It's all related, right?

Philip Eli: 13:55

Yeah. And in that sense, you know, when I first started working on it in 2009, I was writing about, you know, what was going on at the time it was prescription drugs. Yeah. and over time, and I think as a result of the successful crackdown on some of that drug diversion, we have unfortunately seen this problem change its shape. It became a heroin problem and then it became a fentanyl problem. And this book then becomes a sliver of history that I'm writing about a particular place, a particular time that I think is important, I mean, just as a human story, but also as a kind of prologue to how we wound up where we are now.

Angela Kennecke: 14:34

What also amazed me was this guy's, like you said, stubbornness, determination, pulse to go on, to keep prescribing, even when he was shut down, he comes back. But then not only that, even his personal life was so fascinating to me because his wife had died, but while he's facing all of these charges, and I would like for you to go through what the charges were, he even remarries. Which is, it's like, who marries this guy facing all these federal charges? I just thought he must be very convincing. When you sat down with him, was he very convincing of his view of the world?

Philip Eli: 15:10

In a way, yes. And I talk about how convincing he is. And this was another reason why it took me 15 years to finish this book. Well, a big reason was when I began this story, I was 24 years old. I was just starting out as a journalist. I don't have an MD. I don't have a PhD. And I'm hearing the story of this guy who's so much older than me. Who's without question, extremely bright. and extremely qualified. And, you know, as a journalist, you want to have all your facts before you can really feel emboldened to push back strongly on someone. And in this case, it meant studying up on pain and opiates, but it also meant going down to this part of Ohio, which was 400 miles away from where he lived in Chicago, to see what was what down there. And I think that distance is really key. Because I did meet a number of people from his personal life, at least a few. His kids, notably, were both estranged from him by the time I finished writing the book. But I did meet a few people from his kind of personal circle in Chicago who did believe him. And I think the main reason, or, well, there are a couple reasons. One, he was quite persuasive and had an answer for everything and was extremely confident. On the other hand, or in addition, they couldn't just drive across town to see what this clinic looked like. You know, they would have had to have gone hours away to this out of the way part of the country that they had no reason to go to. Even family members of his hadn't been down there. I found myself in the peculiar position of having gone to both places, Paul's world in Chicago and this, what I describe as an area where Appalachia and the Rust Belt overlap in Southern Ohio. And I tried to convey what it felt like to go to both places to my readers in the book.

Angela Kennecke: 16:55

Well, I thought you did a good job. Did feel like two very distinct. and separate worlds. And you mentioned Paul Volkman's arrogance, never really showing any remorse. How many people died? I know there were probably more than he was just charged with. But in the criminal case, how many deaths was he responsible for?

Philip Eli: 17:15

So everything in this case is contested, and I will answer your question. But if you ask Paul Volkmann, he's responsible for zero patient deaths. He and his lawyers attempted to argue that the patients who died in this case died as a result of other ailments, heart disease mainly, or because they weren't taking medications as prescribed, or because they were taking other medications that they didn't tell him about. The highest estimate for the number of deaths that investigators looked into, it goes as high as into the 30s. It's really an astonishing number, over 35 patients deaths they looked into. They wound up having enough evidence, enough material to charge him with having a direct role in 14, 14 patients were listed in the indictment.

Angela Kennecke: 18:04

Prosecutors would ultimately link Volkman to the overdose deaths of 13 patients. He wasn't charged with murder or manslaughter, but instead unlawful distribution of a controlled substance resulting in death.

Philip Eli: 18:20

After an eight week trial, and you talk about the belligerence. In some ways, I, as a journalist, benefited from Volkman's arrogance because, unlike many doctors who were similarly charged, he didn't take a plea deal, so this case did go to trial. And then the government called 70 witnesses and there was a lot of material for me to dig into.

Angela Kennecke: 18:44

A jury convicted Volkman of 18 crimes, including four counts of illegal drug distribution that resulted in death. He received a life sentence for each of those four counts. Philip was in the courtroom as Volkman learned his fate. He never showed any remorse. He never apologized. He never apologized to any of the victims. He's never, ever done any of that.

Philip Eli: 19:08

Far, far from it. To give you an idea, by the time his sentence rolled around in 2012, he had kind of broken things off with his attorney and was representing himself. When the judge gave him an opportunity to say a few words, he said, I have no apologies to make. And he even called the judge herself a heinous criminal. He said, you're the criminal in this room. Later in an open letter from prison that was published in a blog in 2018, I think he said, and I'm only lightly paraphrasing, I'm the victim here. So he has never shown any remorse. For as long as I knew him, he was absolutely adamant that he was innocent and that he was a victim.

Angela Kennecke: 19:50

Well, I got that impression throughout the book that he saw himself as a victim, and at some point he did stop talking to you, correct? Correct.

Philip Eli: 19:58

Yes, I should note that in the book, I don't take his claims of victimhood at face value, I include them because it's important to include the views and quotes from a subject of a story like this, and it is important to look closely when a highly qualified man is sentenced to life in prison and claims he's innocent. But I think there are real victims in this story, and those are patients who died tragically, who went to a doctor they hoped and perhaps believed they could trust, and the pain and sorrow that was left in the wake of all that, from spouses, from parents, from children, from grandchildren. To your point, Yes, he did stop speaking to me after I published a magazine article in Cincinnati Magazine in 2017. He didn't like the way that that was framed, essentially because I didn't take up his cause of the innocent man. And we reconnected briefly after my book deal, but then that ended again when he tried to get me to do some research for him for one of his attempts to argue his way out of prison, and I refused to do that. I mean, he's a really arrogant guy. He's a really bitter and angry guy. who doesn't like people who really can't apologize or admit he's wrong.

Angela Kennecke: 21:14

Have you lost a loved one to overdose or fentanyl poisoning? I'd like to invite you to share their story on our new Emily's Hope Memorial website called more than just a number. They were our children, siblings, cousins, husbands, wives, aunts, uncles, So much more than just a number. You can submit a memorial today on morethanjustanumber. org Of course, Volkmann wasn't the only doctor who made devastating choices after OxyContin hit the market. In fact, we've interviewed a doctor on Grieving Out Loud whose life was featured in the Hulu series, Dope Sick. Dr. Stephen Lloyd once struggled with a hundred pill a day addiction and went as far as stealing pain pills

Stephen Loyd: 22:10

When I picked that thing up, did I realize that within a matter of months that I would have to have that over everything else in my life, including my wife, my children, my career? No, I didn't have any appreciation for that at all. I just thought it was weak minded people.

Angela Kennecke: 22:27

And so the first time you took an opioid, what did it do for you? Was it something? I ask this because I personally don't suffer from substance use disorder. But I have shared a stage with many people who have suffered from opioid use disorder, who told me like the first time or the second time they did something like this, they found their answer in life. I find that to be so interesting.

Stephen Loyd: 22:50

No question. That's what I was going to tell you. I came from a background of a lot of addiction in my family and of trauma. I'm a survivor of physical and sexual abuse, and I had no idea that those things put me at increased risk. And so the first time that I took pain pill, it was a Vicodin. was 2. 5 mg. It made me feel normal. It made me feel like I had found the answer to what I had been looking for to relieve this thing I had inside of me my whole life. And I, I was successful. I mean, I did pretty good, right? I mean, I did well in school and had an MD degree and I'm getting ready to, you know, step out into a career that I've trained for for a long time. Really financially, I probably wasn't going to have to really worry a whole lot until, you know, the day I lied, unless I somehow messed it up, but it felt like it completed me. And so I would agree with those people wholeheartedly. I know exactly what that feels like. Within three years, I was using 500 milligrams of Oxy's a day. And so if you think about that, I went from one half of a Vicodin, five milligrams to 500. So that's a hundred pills a day. That accelerated pretty quick. I got there in about two and a half years. And you know, I wasn't living underneath the bridge. I was seeing your friends and family and relatives in the hospital. I'm a hospitalist, internal medicine physician. So I'm working in the ICU medical step down units, you know, taking care of patients every day.

Angela Kennecke: 24:16

Addiction among these high stress fields in the medical profession. It's really not unusual whether people are turning to alcohol or pills, whether it's a doctor or a nurse. It's not unusual.

Stephen Loyd: 24:28

It's not. It's actually higher than the general population. The lifetime prevalence is about 18 to 20 percent, which is, think about it, it's about 1 in 5. And point prevalence is around 2 percent, so just think about that in the community you live in. For every hundred medical providers out there you have, two of them are in active addiction right now.

Angela Kennecke: 24:47

While Lloyd's motivation for his wrongdoing was obvious, he struggled with substance use disorder. Phillip says it's much harder to wrap his head around why Volkman made such devastating choices.

Philip Eli: 25:06

And looking at what happened to other doctors who found themselves charged with these things, you see a lot of drug or alcohol abuse, you see addictions of various kinds, you see sexual misconduct, you know, kind of classic vices, and I think if this had been the case with Volkman, if the story traced back to one of those, it might have been a shorter book, and maybe a less complex book. But really, I never found any hint that he was doing drugs, that he was trading sex, that he was drinking. It was a story of a guy who circumstances of his life and the consequences of his actions and a deeply kind of dark set of personality traits led him to be where he was committing these crimes and ultimately to be sentenced. So, I think that's one of the reasons the book ended up being 400 pages.

Angela Kennecke: 25:56

When you spoke to some of the families involved, I can imagine how They must carry around so much anger and just feeling really devastated by all this. And the fact that no one says, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done this, has to be so difficult on the families.

Philip Eli: 26:15

Yes, I think some of them were maybe partially insulated from some of the feelings you described, certainly not all, because they Didn't really even know who the doctor was. Some weren't even aware of the trial was happening. They weren't all called to testify by any means, only a small number of them. But the ones who knew about the case, it was, you know, pain upon pain, you know, it was the pain of losing a loved one. abruptly. And it was the pain of having this doctor acts in ways and say things that are so horrifying. And it was also the pain of, you know, I spoke with the spouse of a deceased patient who inquired as to whether there was a chance to sue to get any of the money that was made. And at that point, he didn't have insurance. And so there was really no financial compensation either. So I don't certainly claim that I solved any of that pain or soothed any of that pain with this story. Although because of the role I had, I could introduce myself to those people and to the folks who did agree to speak to me, to whom I'm so grateful. I could offer a sympathetic ear who understood the situation, who knew the facts, and who could at least from a place of understanding, you know, offer my condolences in addition to offering this public story of facts and accountability from a guy who basically rejects those at every chance. Yeah.

Angela Kennecke: 27:43

Well, we're all taught to respect our doctors. If the doctor says you need this, if the doctor gives it to you, it's okay. It's safe. I think that idea was especially prevalent and had to be a cultural thing for even this opioid crisis to escalate the way it did, that we all believed the pharmaceutical companies and the doctors. And Even today, you know, I've got relatives who will say, Oh, well, the doctor prescribed this for me, so it must be okay. We don't always question doctors. We're taught not to question doctors.

Philip Eli: 28:12

Yeah, it's this ultimate position of trust. And look, I, I have no particular acts to grind with doctors. My dad's a doctor, right?

Angela Kennecke: 28:20

And there are good ones. We don't want to say, Of course, there are wonderful doctors out there. Yeah.

Philip Eli: 28:24

Right. You know, Volkman was a doctor twice over, right? He had a PhD And it's this kind of the highest level of accreditation and qualification we have. There was this fascinating, in a dark way, moment in his sentencing where, again, he was acting as his own lawyer and at that time the people in the room, prosecutors and the judge, were referring to him as Mr. Volkman. And he being who he is, spoke up and tried to get the judge to call him Dr. Volkman. And she said, basically, at this point after your conviction, you know, lost your license, I think that would be an honorary title and I don't choose to call you that. And that was the end of that conversation. But it's really scary. Even I, having written this book, don't like to think about when you're going to a doctor, you're so vulnerable, even if you're just going for a checkup, let alone if you're really suffering from an illness or an ailment. It's such a vulnerable position. And there is such a power dynamic. And it's really horrifying to think of a doctor who you can't trust or who doesn't have your best interests at heart and who will then later on not even admit to what he did. It's, it's really thoroughly scary stuff.

Angela Kennecke: 29:38

Could he be up for parole anytime?

Philip Eli: 29:41

He has tried. So he was sentenced in 2012. Four consecutive life sentences is about as sturdy as a sentence gets. He has tried every which way to appeal, to argue that he was elderly and Unhealthy enough that he should merit, you know, the circumstance of being let out. He's tried everything so far, nothing has worked. I don't think he's eligible for parole, and I fully expect that he will spend the rest of his days in prison. It would take something truly unexpected and extraordinary for him to get out.

Angela Kennecke: 30:14

How old is he now?

Philip Eli: 30:15

He's 77.

Angela Kennecke: 30:17

77. So I could see your book, Prescription for Pain, being turned into a documentary or something like that. Have you had anybody contact you about that?

Philip Eli: 30:26

I've had a few nibbles of interest, nothing substantial yet. I didn't write it with the idea of it being on the screen, but it did occur to me. I mean, one of the very first images that I heard from the story that was part of what hooked me, was the fact that he had been arrested at his apartment on Lakeshore Drive in Chicago, you know, fancy building, DEA agents going in, arresting him, hauling him away. That happened. That's a cinematic scene, a dramatic scene. So, I would be, you know, excited if it were to get picked up for that, but so far, no major movement, but I will let you know if it does happen.

Angela Kennecke: 31:07

I could totally, that's why I asked, especially that scene. I was thinking, Oh my gosh, this could be a mini series or a movie or a documentary or something along those lines, you know, just very visual. The whole thing is actually very visual, even just thinking about. what was going on at the pain clinic at the time. At those pain clinics, armed guards patrolled the crowds. A prosecutor described one of Volkman's clinics as looking like a Led Zeppelin concert, with six to ten cars already lined up at 6 a. m.

Philip Eli: 31:43

We don't necessarily decide when the big story is going to fall into our lap. It just so happened that a story that fell into my lap when I was Less than a year into this career turned out to be the story of a lifetime, a just remarkable story with depth and complexity and characters and issues that remained urgent, even through those 15 years. You know, I've had a lot of book ideas over that time that have come and gone, but this one never did. Lost its urgency, and it was a remarkable opportunity to, I think, hold a guy who's deeply dishonest and deeply unlikable to account, but most importantly, and this is the reason why I feel so grateful to have had this opportunity, is I got to tell the stories of these patients who went to him and lost their lives so tragically, people who were in their 30s and 40s, people who had, you know, careers and hobbies and children. And although Volkman tries to, you know, suck up a lot of the oxygen in the room, I try to keep the focus as often as possible on those people. And more broadly on this community that was already down, you know, because of de industrialization and poverty before these pill clinics, pill mills arrived. And then folks like Volkman made it worse. So I'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to tell the story and to bring it to completion.

Angela Kennecke: 33:15

I'm so glad that you told the human suffering part of the story that Paul Volkman caused all of these people. There was one younger woman that really stood out to me, I guess, because my daughter, she Also died and she was young and beautiful with so much potential and certainly it's not a unique story in this crisis that we've seen unfold over the last more than a decade. So, I was really glad to read those.

Philip Eli: 33:39

Well, thank you for that. I mean, as I'm sure you well know, both in your capacity with the non profit and the podcast and as a journalist, When a problem like the opiate epidemic persists for this long, I think we can As a society becomes somewhat numb or desensitized to the statistics, year in and year out, we just hear these staggering numbers of lives lost, and I think it's one of the jobs of a journalist, particularly a long form journalist. to resensitize us to the things that we've become numb to. I'm not saying, of course, you haven't become numb, but I think the general public, we have that tendency. There's so many stories vying for our attention. So it was really important to me to convey some of the humanity and some of the tragedy involved in this story that we've all just been living with for, for over a decade now.

Angela Kennecke: 34:26

Yeah. Well, I really appreciate you telling the story and in the way that you told it. And it's hard to imagine that a Paul Volkman exists, but of course they do. It's just really hard, I think, to understand and to get into the mind. And you did try to do that, to get into the mind of someone who would do something like this and then continue to, well, just be fine with it, right? Not ever admit that they'd ever done anything wrong. So it's just really no conscious on his part. And there have to be those kinds of people to exist for this kind of thing to happen, right? And then there has to be all the other perfect storm things in place in terms of the lack of oversight and accountability. to allow that to happen as well. So it was just a really interesting period of history, our history now, but how it could come about.

Philip Eli: 35:13

Yeah. I mean, there's a reason I write nonfiction is I'm no good at coming up with stories. And there was just so much that kept. My attention on this story for so long, you know, you don't work on something for 15 years if you find it boring But there was his personal story. There was the story of the victims. There was the story of the town There was the story of an eight week federal criminal trial, which doesn't happen too often There was the context of the opiate epidemic. There was the legitimate in theory counter argument that he was treating pain I always go out of my way to say this isn't an anti pain patient book. It's not even necessarily an anti You Opiate pain medication book because those things have their place and I believe in the treatment of pain But there was just so much to dig into there that it took me quite a while to sort it out But it remains I think as urgent as ever

Angela Kennecke: 36:07

it does It's as urgent as ever and you had mentioned a little bit ago your dad and your dad being in the same You know med school class as this guy and what did your dad think of all this that happened?

Philip Eli: 36:19

Well, I should note that my dad, so they graduated in 1974. He and my mom just went to Chicago for his 50th anniversary of graduating. He thought, well, first he was mystified. He had no idea what happened to this guy for him to get into that position, as were many of his other classmates. Almost all of whom had fallen out of touch with Paul. And I think that's part of the story too, that he didn't maintain friendships with a lot of people along the way. He was always really encouraging of me, my dad, he supported this project in so many ways, and I appreciated that. And when he learned more, I think he was just saddened. He just thought it was a tragedy and a waste. of a bright guy, and I think it, it makes him sad. He's proud of me, he's told me that, for writing the book. But I interviewed him a bunch of times for this. He was helpful in remembering what Paul used to be like, but his ability to add anything to the story through no fault of his own kind of ended in the 70s, because he lost track of him. He knew him as a, a bright guy, a little bit of a nerdy guy, a little bit awkward, didn't have the best people skills. But nobody from the folks who knew him in medical school could have predicted that he would wind up a criminal, convicted, spending life in prison.

Angela Kennecke: 37:35

Well, and I was thinking another reason I'm really glad that you wrote this book is because I missed this case somehow. But if I had seen it, it would have just been a headline in the news, right? It'd be a headline in the news and then it would be gone. So this does really keep that story of Paul Volkman, what he did, what he was convicted of. You know, relevant and also in the forefront of people's minds where it's not just another passing story about a doctor and a pill mill.

Philip Eli: 38:04

And there are those stories where it is just a headline. I mean, you know, in the New York Times, when he was convicted, it's like 150 word little blurb. The coverage in Ohio was a little bit more in depth, but unfortunately not that much. So it was remarkable, and I think this is also a symptom of the era in which it took place when newspapers have kind of been decimated, but when I came to reporting on this trial of a big doctor, you know, big case, there really wasn't a lot of reporting. It felt like I was kind of covering uncharted territory, and so it felt all the more important that, you know, the conversations that took place in that courtroom for eight weeks in Cincinnati, and the debate and the evidence. This is really important stuff. And I was glad to have an opportunity to kind of enter it into the record formally.

Angela Kennecke: 38:49

Yeah. Well, it's all here in this book, Prescription for Pain, and thank you for writing it. And I, I wish you the best of luck on your book tour as well. Thank you so much, Angela. If you'd like to check out Philip's book, we posted a link in the show notes of this podcast. While you're there, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave a positive review. And don't forget to share this episode with your friends and family. It is such an interesting, tragic, and unbelievable story. Together we can make a difference in the fight against the opioid crisis. And I want to thank you for listening. Until next time, wishing you faith, hope, and courage. This podcast is produced by Casey Wundenberg King and Michael Garron.