{"id":6217,"date":"2015-03-16T23:25:50","date_gmt":"2015-03-17T03:25:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lcpllutzlivetotell.org\/?p=6217"},"modified":"2019-08-08T12:59:09","modified_gmt":"2019-08-08T16:59:09","slug":"devastating-effects-candy-land-reach-beyond-veterans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/?p=6217","title":{"rendered":"Devastating effects of \u2018Candy Land\u2019 reach beyond veterans"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 class=\"headline\">Devastating effects of \u2018Candy Land\u2019 reach beyond veterans<\/h1>\n<div class=\"meta\">\n<ul class=\"list-inline\">\n<li>Aaron Glantz Center for Investigative Reporting<\/li>\n<li><time class=\"asset-date text-muted\" datetime=\"2015-03-16T00:00:00-05:00\">Mar 16, 2015<\/time><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"asset-content p402_premium subscriber-premium\">\n<div class=\"subscriber-preview\">\n<p class=\"\">On a clear August morning, Amish carpenter William Miller and his family climbed into their black horse-drawn buggy and headed out to the nearest big-box store, a 16-mile journey from their central Wisconsin farm that takes them two hours.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com\/chippewa.com\/content\/tncms\/assets\/v3\/editorial\/7\/4c\/74c357f6-a923-508c-b90b-92191151bd58\/553858661dcf8.image.jpg?resize=1200%2C800\" alt=\"Candy Man Impact 3\" \/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-preview\">\n<p class=\"\">They never made it. Less than a mile from their destination, the buggy was rear-ended by a 1997 Dodge Caravan. The van wasn\u2019t moving fast, but as it passed by, it suddenly swerved, knocking the carriage on its side. Miller and his son, John, were fine. But his wife, Elizabeth, who was cradling 6-week-old Ada Mae, was thrown from the carriage and landed on top of her daughter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Ada Mae stopped breathing. An autopsy would list the cause of death as \u201ccrush injury to the chest.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"tncms-region-article_instory_top\" class=\"tncms-region hidden-print\">A year later, after the driver pleaded guilty to homicide, William\u00a0<a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/1687009-miller-letter-to-court-tomah-va-amish-buggy-baby.html\">Miller wrote to the sentencing judge<\/a>. \u201cWords like grief, helplessness, anxiety, fear and lonesomeness come to mind,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI would have scarcely thought it possible such a small infant could have left such a void. And the consequences and results have been far reaching and long lasting.\u201d<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">At first glance, the 2009 crash that killed Ada Mae would seem to have nothing to do with problems at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Tomah 60 miles away, which earned the nickname \u201cCandy Land\u201d for its skyrocketing rate of opiate prescriptions. Some veterans called its chief of staff, psychiatrist Dr. David Houlihan, the \u201cCandy Man.\u201d He was in charge for nearly a decade\u00a0\u2014 and was one of the hospital\u2019s top prescribers.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com\/chippewa.com\/content\/tncms\/assets\/v3\/editorial\/a\/b4\/ab4ddb48-adee-5625-9f90-35f9263224db\/5538586143219.image.jpg?resize=1200%2C800\" alt=\"Candy Man Impact 2\" \/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">But the man behind the wheel of the Dodge van that day was a Marine Corps veteran, and he was stoned on painkillers and tranquilizers from the Tomah VA. Brian Witkus was a known addict who \u201cwould fall or injure himself,\u201d\u00a0<a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/1686990-brian-witkus-sentencing-excerpt-amish-buggy.html\">court records say<\/a>, to get \u201cmore pills or a higher dose of medication.\u201d His doctor, Witkus says, was Houlihan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Ada Mae\u2019s death is one of dozens of tragedies that begin to hint at how the flood of narcotics from the VA scarred this region.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">It begins with the veterans themselves, who have become addled and addicted and who have overdosed. The collateral damage ranges from distraught sisters to fatherless children and dead girlfriends.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">The ripples do not stop there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Patients of the Tomah VA have been arrested for dealing drugs, brandishing firearms in bars and passing out in the middle of the street. One totaled her truck and her car on her way to the VA.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Out in the community, police and prosecutors know these men and women so well that they refer to them by street names like \u201cTurtle,\u201d \u201cAirman,\u201d \u201cBlack Mark\u201d and \u201cDetroit.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Inside the hospital\u2019s brick walls, psychologists, nurses, social workers and the VA police just call them \u201cHoulihan\u2019s Hooligans.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">In recent years, hospital staff have discovered younger veterans stealing from elderly patients and others dealing VA-prescribed painkillers and shooting OxyContin and heroin on hospital grounds. Inside the hospital, VA police reports document the fallout: strung-out veterans tossing wheelchairs across rooms and a trash can out of a window, setting fire to magazines, wielding a meat cleaver.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">A search of Tomah police records by The Center for Investigative Reporting and the La Crosse Tribune found that employees at the Tomah VA had\u00a0<a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/1686993-911-calls-from-tomah-va-2010-2015.html\">called 911 more than 2,000 times<\/a>\u00a0in the past five years, seeking local law enforcement help with cases of battery and burglary, an attempted kidnapping and 24 unexpected deaths.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Dr. G. Caleb Alexander, co-director of the Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has studied the widespread damage caused by opiates, which he attributes to their addictive potential and their ability to impair judgment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">\u201cWhen these drugs are over-prescribed, it\u2019s a problem with both direct consequences and direct potential risks, but also for the broader ripple effects that this overuse has on friends and family members and the broader communities of which they are a part,\u201d Alexander said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">In January,\u00a0<a class=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.revealnews.org\/article-legacy\/opiates-handed-out-like-candy-to-doped-up-veterans-at-wisconsin-va\/\">CIR disclosed<\/a>\u00a0that the number of opiate prescriptions at the Tomah VA had more than quintupled from 2004, the year before Houlihan became chief of staff, to 2012\u00a0\u2014 and that the federal government had all but ignored the problem for years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Reached on his cellphone, Houlihan said he has been told not to talk while investigations into his prescription practices and management style are underway. This week, he was placed on administrative leave after\u00a0<a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/1686994-va-preliminary-report-on-tomah-va.html\">a preliminary review<\/a>\u00a0by the VA found that Tomah patients were 2.5 times more likely than the national average to receive high doses of opiates.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">The internal investigation also found that veterans\u2019 medications were not changed even \u201cin the face of aberrant behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Yet neither the VA\u2019s internal investigation nor any of the five other federal and state government inquiries launched in the past two months will begin to trace the insidious way the lack of VA oversight harmed a swath of Wisconsin, reaching from Tomah to Milwaukee, nearly 200 miles away.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<h3 class=\"\"><strong class=\"\">Opiates\u2019 collateral damage<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Angela Colby died eight years ago after she overdosed on oxycodone. The pills were not hers; they were prescribed to her boyfriend, an Afghanistan War veteran, by Houlihan. She was 23.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Police arrived at the couple\u2019s studio apartment in Wausau before dawn to find Colby\u2019s boyfriend, Matthew Schuster, crying hysterically. He had called 911, he said, after finding Colby cold, without a pulse. He told the officers that the two had fallen asleep watching television and he hadn\u2019t noticed anything out of the ordinary until he returned to bed after grabbing a middle-of-the-night snack.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">But when officers looked around the apartment, they quickly spotted signs of something amiss. The trash can was full of pill bottles from the VA. There were also tubes from ballpoint pens, minus the ink, used to snort the pills.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">When police took Schuster back to the station, he told them that Colby had been snorting his medication.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">\u201cMatthew saw Angela cutting up a pen and he told her not to do that,\u201d Detective Kay Hansen\u00a0<a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/1686997-angela-colby-death-investigation-tomah-va.html\">wrote in her report<\/a>. He admitted to sharing his oxycodone with his girlfriend, the officer said, but said he \u201ctold her not to use the medications in that manner and that they should be taken orally because it was dangerous to snort.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">When police interrogated Schuster, he confessed to being an addict but said he had been to rehab and no longer abused the oxycodone Houlihan prescribed; nor, he said, did he abuse any of the other opiates, tranquilizers, antidepressants or antipsychotics officers had found at the scene.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Over the next few weeks, police in Wausau continued to investigate Colby\u2019s death and eventually referred the case to the district attorney, who declined to prosecute.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">The rub, the local police chief says today, is that the drugs were obtained legally.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">\u201cWe have a major problem with prescription drug abuse, but I don\u2019t think we have a handle on it like we do with heroin and meth,\u201d said Wausau police Chief Jeff Hardel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">If heroin had been in the apartment, arresting Schuster would have been the logical course of action, Hardel said. But the VA had prescribed all of the drugs that officers found in his apartment. Investigating Houlihan, Hardel said, never occurred to him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Court records and police reports contain four phone numbers for Schuster. All were disconnected.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Colby\u2019s death is one of at least five fatal overdoses with direct links to the Tomah VA while Houlihan was in charge. Some, like Colby, overdosed primarily on prescription medications. That was true for Jason Simcakoski, a 35-year-old former Marine who died in the Tomah VA\u2019s psychiatric ward in August after Houlihan suggested the opiate Suboxone be added to a prescribed mixture of 14 medications.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Others happened when prescription abuse accelerated into heroin addiction. This progression, seen around the country, contributes to a fatal overdose rate among VA patients that the agency\u2019s researchers have pegged at\u00a0<a class=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.revealnews.org\/episodes\/pilot-1-09-28-2013\/#segment-the-vas-pain-pill-habit\">twice the national average<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">\u201cThe effects produced by oxycodone and hydrocodone are indistinguishable from the effects produced by heroin,\u201d said psychiatrist Dr. Andrew Kolodny, chief medical officer of Phoenix House, which runs more than 100 drug treatment clinics nationwide. \u201cIf we don\u2019t see that the many veterans who became addicted are provided with effective addiction treatment, we will continue to see veterans turn to heroin, and we will continue to see very high overdose death rates.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Jacob Ward, 27, overdosed on heroin and cocaine in a Milwaukee apartment in September 2013. He was a patient at the Tomah VA, too, and his parents said he first was exposed to opiates in the psychiatric ward overseen by Houlihan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">On Oct. 8, 2012, 5-year-old Danielle Bobak awoke to find her father, Marine Corps veteran Michael Bobak, dead alongside his girlfriend, Tracey Small, in their home a half-mile from the hospital. A toxicology report by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health found that both had lethal doses of heroin in their systems, but Michael Bobak also had a long list of prescription painkillers and tranquilizers in his urine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">\u201cHe was supposed to take his daughter to preschool,\u201d said Michael Bobak\u2019s father, Cecil. \u201cInstead, he was dead.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">The day before he died at 26, Derik McGovern joined his three sisters and his mother for dinner at his grandmother\u2019s house. They shucked corn and put it on the grill with brats and hamburgers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">McGovern had faced his share of problems after he deployed to Iraq in 2008. He told family members that he had been shot in the stomach and a roadside bomb had wrecked his knee. VA doctors performed a series of surgeries on his knee, but his sister Hannah said the main treatment her big brother received was oxycodone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">\u201cHe was gone a lot,\u201d Hannah, 14, said in a Facebook message. \u201cHe got addicted. They gave him however many he asked for.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Court records chronicle McGovern\u2019s descent while under the care of the Tomah VA.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">In April 2010, he was arrested for driving under the influence after his Chevrolet Cavalier was T-boned by a Dodge Intrepid, throwing it onto a neighboring lawn. McGovern told officers that he had tapped his brakes, but witnesses said he blew through the intersection.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\"><a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/1687000-derik-mcgovern-2010-owi-oxycodon-tomah-va.html\">In the police report<\/a>, Tomah police Officer Nathan Stafford noted that: \u201cSgt. (Christopher) Weaver told McGovern to sit down on the bumper of my squad car. \u2026 I walked over to McGovern and shined my light under his eyes. I observed his pupils to be constricted and his eyelids were half closed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">A search of McGovern\u2019s car revealed a nearly empty bottle of 28 oxycodone pills prescribed a few hours earlier. But charges would later be dropped when the blood drawn by police detected oxycodone levels within legal limits.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Three months later, McGovern was arrested for disorderly conduct, harassment and impersonating a police officer when he stalked his ex-girlfriend. Then, in September 2011, McGovern pleaded no contest to a host of charges and agreed to serve 25 days in jail and pay court costs. He told the court that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Two and a half years later, in February 2014, McGovern was arrested again, this time for kidnapping and armed robbery after an altercation with another felon. After McGovern was jailed, sheriff\u2019s deputies charged him with criminal damage to property. He had used a juice box to carve the words \u201cKill Me Kill Me Kill Them\u201d into his cell wall.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">On July 1, 2014, McGovern died alone in his Tomah apartment of a heroin overdose, leaving behind an infant son, Lucian. McGovern\u2019s roommate found him. His arms, the autopsy report later said, were covered in track marks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<h3 class=\"\"><strong class=\"\">Dealing drugs on VA grounds<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">The tendrils of narcotic abuse crept inside the Tomah VA itself. In recent years, police reports and court records show veterans repeatedly have been caught with drugs on hospital grounds, sometimes even selling their recently filled prescriptions, while addicts have preyed on other patients and hospital staff.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Derik McGovern\u2019s roommate, Damien Ehlert,\u00a0<a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/1687001-damien-ehlert-oxycodone-dealing-tomah-va.html\">was among those arrested<\/a>\u00a0for dealing prescribed narcotics. In December 2013, VA police stopped Ehlert\u2019s maroon Ford truck after he swerved erratically on hospital grounds.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">When police asked him why a bottle of oxycodone prescribed the day before was empty, Ehlert said he had been selling the VA-prescribed narcotics in front of the hospital\u2019s addiction treatment center. He also mentioned that he had shared his painkillers at least a dozen times with McGovern, who promised to pay him but never did.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Betty Sumiec is one of the victims of an addicted veteran. Last February, the retired dairy farmer came to the Tomah VA to visit her husband, Edwin, an 88-year-old Army veteran who is paralyzed from the waist down.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"tnt-ads-container text-center\">\n<div id=\"fixed-inline-video\" class=\"tnt-ads dfp-ad\" data-dfp-adunit=\"\/8438\/chippewa.com\/news\/local\" data-dfp-custom-pos=\"fixed-inline-video, stf\" data-dfp-size=\"[4,1]\" data-lazy=\"true\">\n<div id=\"google_ads_iframe_\/8438\/chippewa.com\/news\/local_3__container__\" class=\"\"><iframe id=\"google_ads_iframe_\/8438\/chippewa.com\/news\/local_3\" class=\"\" title=\"3rd party ad content\" name=\"google_ads_iframe_\/8438\/chippewa.com\/news\/local_3\" width=\"4\" height=\"1\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Sumiec left her husband\u2019s room for a few minutes. When she returned, all her money was gone.\u00a0<a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/1687032-jacob-zimmerman-elderly-woman-robbed-tomah-va.html\">VA police tracked down<\/a>\u00a0the thief in the parking lot. He was a 32-year-old Iraq War veteran with multiple convictions on drug charges.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">\u201cHe was a nice, fine-looking kid, but he talked funny,\u201d Betty Sumiec said. &#8220;The police said he was a druggie. That\u2019s why he talked the way he did.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">The perpetrator, Jacob Zimmerman, pleaded guilty to petty theft and was granted leniency on the condition that he apologize to Betty Sumiec. But she says that apology never came.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Five months after the theft, a police officer in Adams, Wis.,\u00a0<a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/1687010-jacob-zimmerman-found-with-gun-tomah-va.html\">found Zimmerman passed out in the middle of the street<\/a>\u00a0with a .40-caliber Smith &amp; Wesson handgun sticking out of the bottom of his shorts. Zimmerman told police that he wasn\u2019t sure how he ended up with the gun. Perhaps someone drugged him, he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Timothy Benton goes by the street name \u201cTurtle.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Hospital staff have been concerned about the Marine Corps veteran since at least July 2013, when a medical resident complained that Benton, then 33, \u201capproached him in the elevator and asked him to \u2018get high.\u2019 \u201d The exchange was caught on security cameras.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Officers also\u00a0<a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/1687005-timothy-benton-tomah-va-injection-kit.html\">tracked Benton down<\/a>\u00a0in the VA parking lot, where he was cutting his toenails with a knife next to his Ford Ranger pickup, with a pit bull in the cab.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">When one of the officers asked to search his backpack, Benton said, \u201cAll I have is extra clothes,\u201d according to court records. But inside, they found a hypodermic needle, pen tubes and cotton balls\u00a0\u2014 all covered in an unidentified fine residue.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Ehlert, Zimmerman and Benton and Underwood could not be reached for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">The dangers posed by the criminal activity created considerable tension between Dr. David Houlihan and the police who patrol the hospital. VA police records show that when drug-addled veterans assaulted other patients and hospital staff, Houlihan repeatedly intervened to prevent the assailant from being arrested.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Lori Hensley, chief steward of the American Federation of Government Employees local that represents rank-and-file officers at the facility, traces the law breaking to a policy Houlihan implemented in 2010. It required his approval before any veteran could be arrested on the premises. The policy also required that any prescriptions had to be written and ready to go before a veteran could be arrested.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">On Dec. 6, 2010,\u00a0<a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/1687022-hensley-david-houlihan-emails-police-officer.html\">Hensley wrote to Houlihan<\/a>\u00a0to protest, labeling her email: \u201cVA Police Officer Safety Concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">The \u201ctime it takes to get this type of communication completed could put many at high risk of getting hurt,\u201d Hensley wrote. \u201cWhat happened to past practice in which our highly trained professional VA Police Officers were given authority to intervene as needed?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Houlihan brushed those concerns aside. \u201cThe veterans are patients above all,\u201d he emailed back a half hour later. \u201cThat they are in a hospital is an indication that they are in a potential state of crisis. To arrest without taking this into consideration puts the veteran at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Current and former employees also tried to go above Houlihan. They wrote to their congressmen and senators, filed whistle-blower complaints, even exchanged emails directly with VA Secretary Robert McDonald.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Fed up, nursing assistant Janelle Arnold said that last year, she confronted Houlihan\u2019s boss, Mario DeSanctis, director of the Tomah VA.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">She called Houlihan the Candy Man, she remembered, telling DeSanctis: \u201cYour own chief of psychiatry hands out narcotics like they\u2019re candy. \u2026 I know I\u2019ve had people come to me and say that they can get narcotics from him.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"tncms-region-article_instory_middle\" class=\"tncms-region hidden-print\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">But DeSanctis, she said, \u201csat back in his chair and laughed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">DeSanctis, however, does not seem to recall that exchange. In fact, he says no one used the phrase \u201cCandy Land\u201d or \u201cCandy Man\u201d in his presence before CIR revealed widespread problems at the hospital in January.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\"><em class=\"\"><span class=\"\"><strong class=\"\">OPTIONAL TRIM BEGINS HERE<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<h3 class=\"\"><strong class=\"\">\u2018Houlihan Cocktail\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">In her home outside Kansas City, Mo., Dawn Bishop tosses and turns late into the night, fearful that a phone call could come from Wisconsin informing her that her brother, 39-year-old Air Force veteran Jason Bishop, has died of an overdose.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com\/chippewa.com\/content\/tncms\/assets\/v3\/editorial\/2\/7d\/27d5f72b-ec20-539a-ab69-502c329faa26\/5538586b51b77.image.jpg?resize=1200%2C800\" alt=\"Candy Man Impact 1\" \/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Jason Bishop has a long history of painkiller addiction dating back to a botched surgery in the military in the 1990s. But over the years, he had slowly turned his life around. After a divorce, he assumed custody of Chloe, his 9-year-old daughter, and used a VA home loan to buy a farm outside La Crosse.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Dawn Bishop thought things were getting better. Then her brother went to the Tomah VA for health care and ended up seeing Houlihan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">\u201cThis guy came in and sat on the floor and talked to him,\u201d she said. \u201cJason thought Dr. Houlihan was awesome. Nobody had ever done that before.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Soon, Jason Bishop was receiving a witches\u2019 brew of powerful medications, including amphetamines,<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">benzodiazepine tranquilizers and two types of morphine. Dawn Bishop said he started to call her at all hours, rambling incoherently.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">\u201cHe ballooned up to over 200 pounds, got lethargic and had terrible fatigue,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\"><strong class=\"\">\u201c<\/strong>I don\u2019t want to be resigned to losing my brother,\u201d she wrote in an email. \u201cI battle against that every day. It is a\u00a0<em class=\"\">lot<\/em>\u00a0harder for a family to have an impact when doctors are telling him this is \u2018what he needs.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Hospital staff call the combination of medications prescribed to Jason Bishop the \u201cHoulihan Cocktail.\u201d They said their chief of staff was dedicated to it and would threaten them when they tried to remove some of the powerful drugs he had prescribed or lower the dose.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Army Reserve Capt. Mary Forslund, a former nurse practitioner at the VA\u2019s Wausau clinic, said Houlihan brought up the cocktail during her job interview.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">\u201cI didn\u2019t really understand his train of thought, but I was also intimidated at the time because he was the chief and I was a brand-new nurse practitioner,\u201d Forslund said. \u201cHe told me that many people disagreed with the way he did things, and so I just tried to stay out of the whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">The Houlihan Cocktail runs counter to the VA\u2019s own regulations, which warn doctors to be especially cautious when prescribing addictive narcotics to patients with mental illness. Doctors also are supposed to avoid prescribing tranquilizers and opiates to the same patients, because the combination can cause them to stop breathing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Giving veterans amphetamines for PTSD isn\u2019t even addressed in the regulations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">\u201cUsing amphetamines off-label for PTSD sounds strange, and that would be a controversial use of amphetamine,\u201d said Andrew Kolodny, the Phoenix House medical officer. \u201cI would hope that a physician engaging in a dangerous and questionable practice would be able to point to real evidence supporting that practice.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">In his patients\u2019 medical charts, Houlihan justified his use of amphetamines for PTSD patients by citing research &#8212; a paper published in 2011 in the\u00a0<a class=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/jop.sagepub.com\/content\/25\/11\/1568\">Journal of Psychopharmacology<\/a>\u00a0by Dr. David Houlihan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">The paper is not based on a typical double-blind study, with one group of patients receiving an experimental treatment and a control group of patients receiving a placebo or conventional therapy. Instead, it is a narrative describing three combat veterans who Houlihan said improved after he provided them with Ritalin, a stimulant typically associated with reducing hyperactivity in children.<strong class=\"\">\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Forslund said she watched the cocktail destroy the health of many of her patients.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">\u201cI\u2019ve seen perfectly healthy guys who come into my office and then I see them a year later, and they\u2019re fat, they\u2019re dulled, and they have no quality of life at all, and it\u2019s because of that cocktail,\u201d she said. \u201cThey can\u2019t think straight, their wives are disgusted and some of these guys have no idea how to take medications. They just want pills.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">For his part, Jason Bishop said he\u2019s been seeking acupuncture, surgery and other treatments to get to the root of his pain. His medical record shows he\u2019s been receiving the Houlihan Cocktail, but he said he hasn\u2019t been taking all of his pills.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Instead, he\u2019s hidden nearly full bottles of morphine sulfate, Xanax and Ritalin in a drawer underneath his bed where his daughter won\u2019t see them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">\u201cEvery time I went in there, I would get asked, \u2018Do you need more?\u2019 \u201d Jason Bishop said of Houlihan and other doctors at the Tomah VA. \u201cI would say, \u2018No, I don\u2019t need more, I don\u2019t want more, find something that works for me and fix the problem.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<h3 class=\"\"><strong class=\"\">Dealing with the aftermath<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">The body of baby Ada Mae Miller is buried in a simple grave a half-mile from the Millers\u2019 family farm, in a cemetery now nearly obscured by snow. The buggy was fixed long ago. More than five years after Brian Witkus took his daughter\u2019s life, William Miller said his family has begun to recover.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">\u201cObviously, you never forget,\u201d he said, his voice quavering with emotion, \u201cbut we don\u2019t live in the fear and dread that we did after the first months.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Miller was not aware that drugs were a factor in the crash, and he declined to discuss the role VA-prescribed painkillers could have played in the accident beyond saying that \u201cabusing narcotics is wrong. If he was doing it, that was a factor in the accident, that\u2019s why he was convicted in court.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">Religion offers some solace. \u201cPerspective brings compassion,\u201d Miller said. \u201cWe believe in allowing God control of our life. Why he allowed this to happen, we won\u2019t know until the other side. The only thing for us to do is accept and move on.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">As for Witkus, he served three years in prison and was released after completing a drug rehab program. Today, he lives in a halfway house in Wausau. His beard is gray, his face haggard and he walks with a cane.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">His main complaint is that as a condition of his parole, he is no longer allowed to take tranquilizers, while the amount of painkillers he\u2019s being prescribed has been cut in half.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">He remembers Houlihan as a good doctor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">\u201cHe was pretty understanding,\u201d Witkus said. \u201cHe didn\u2019t really push the meds on me. I think he\u2019s an awesome doctor.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">During a 45-minute conversation in January, Witkus never mentioned the Millers\u2019 baby. Asked if he had anything else he wanted to say, he brought up a conversation he once had with a psychiatrist.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p class=\"\">\u201cI had a psychiatrist when I was in prison over in Jackson County, over in Black River Falls,\u201d he said. \u201cShe was a student and she asked me, she says, \u2018With all your bad things that happened to you, what would you change in your life?\u2019 I said, \u2018Ma\u2019am, I would not change a thing.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"tncms-region-article_instory_bottom\" class=\"tncms-region hidden-print\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"asset-tagline text-muted\">\n<p><em>Chris Hubbuch of the La Crosse Tribune contributed reporting to this story. This story was edited by Amy Pyle and copy edited by Sheela Kamath and Nikki Frick.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Retrieved from: http:\/\/chippewa.com\/news\/local\/devastating-effects-of-candy-land-reach-beyond-veterans\/article_0253b732-bc41-5c66-a5c5-4a5d740a5f4c.html<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Devastating effects of \u2018Candy Land\u2019 reach beyond veterans Aaron Glantz Center for Investigative Reporting Mar 16, 2015 &nbsp; On a clear August morning, Amish carpenter William Miller and his family climbed into their black horse-drawn buggy and headed out to the nearest big-box store, a 16-mile journey from their central &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6219,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cannabis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}