Pill Head: The Secret Life of a Painkiller Addict

by Joshua Lyon

  I have only his word on this story as far as it goes; it seems a flawed sort of logic, to say the least. He testified that he had actually robbed the clerk to get more money for cocaine, but whatever the reason, his plan worked. He was sentenced to six to fifteen years for robbery, got off cocaine, found God, and earned an associate’s and a bachelor’s degree from Ohio University. Four years and eight months later, he was released and paroled to his mother’s house.

  He tried to rebuild relationships with Jimmy and Jason, with little success. He initially stayed clean and sober and became actively involved in the local church, but after failing to create a relationship with his sons, he fell back into drugs and alcohol.

  James started his own flooring subcontracting business with a friend and worked his ass off for the next year. In 1997 he fell in love with his mother’s best friend’s daughter, a woman named Lynda, and they were married. It was another messy relationship, and they divorced in 1999 because James had returned to his old partying ways. But they got back together again in 2000 and moved down to Fort Myers, Florida. Right before this, James hurt his back badly on a job and had to take six months off. He was diagnosed with degenerative disc disease, with bulging discs. He started physical therapy, chiropractic therapy, and massage, then got workman’s compensation. And he got his first prescription for oxycodone.

  “At first I didn’t like them; I’d just give them to friends,” he says. But after moving to Florida, Lynda got pregnant, and they were having a hard time paying the bills, and James quickly realized he could sell his prescriptions to make money.

  James eventually found a doctor who prescribed him one hundred and twenty 80-milligram OxyContins, one hundred and twenty 10-milligram Lorcet, ninety 4-milligram Dilaudids, and one hundred 2-milligram Xanaxes—every month.

  “Then I started liking the pills,” he says. “They were drugs I didn’t go out of control on. I wasn’t staying up for days wired, like I would be on cocaine, and I could work like a beast on them because they took the pain away.”

  He was eating his pills morning, noon, and night, and when the doctor’s prescriptions ran out, he found another doctor who would give him what he wanted.

  “When I first started going to him, he had an office,” James remembers. “A few months later I was meeting him in a Denny’s parking lot, where he’d sell me prescriptions of whatever I wanted for $100 each.”

  When their baby, Jacob, was born, they discovered he had CHARGE syndrome, a genetic condition that comes with a litany of life-threatening problems, like heart defects and breathing problems. Even though James was at this point a serious pill addict, he knew he had to make money and get insurance to help with the surgeries Jacob required to live. He got a job at Lowe’s, and because of his newfound, pill-induced work strength, he became a department manager within six months. But lifting all day aggravated his back, and he was legally prescribed oxycodone again, along with Percocet and Demerol. He’d take what he needed for his pain and sell the rest to help pay for his baby’s mounting medical bills.

  Prior to and during this entire time, James’s relationship with his two other sons, Jimmy and Jason, was strained. Neither of the children’s mothers wanted them hanging out with their father because of his past. But James claims that he kept continuing to reach out to both of them.

  After fifteen months at Lowe’s, James went through upper-management training and was promoted to a different store location, in Highland Heights, Kentucky, in 2003. Highland Heights is right on the border of Cincinnati, so James moved back up north, along with all his prescriptions, to start work. He was staying temporarily at a condo owned by his mother while searching for a new home for his family. Lynda and Jacob had remained behind in Florida until James could get everything settled.

  Here’s where things went to hell, and fast. According to James, a few months before he moved back to Ohio, Jimmy had come to visit him at a relative’s house in Tennessee. Jimmy saw James slipping some pills to the relative. According to James, Jimmy said, “I could sell those things in Cincinnati for fifty dollars apiece.”

  James had been selling his pills for significantly less, not quite realizing how huge the market really was.

  James claims that once he moved back up to Ohio, Jimmy, now nineteen years old, came to him and asked to borrow $1,000 for a paternity test on his newborn son, because he was having doubts that he was the actual father. James told him that he wouldn’t have that kind of cash until he sold his house in Florida, so Jimmy asked if he could sell some of his father’s pills to make the money. James agreed and gave him enough Xanax and OxyContin to make $1,000 on the street. But he swears that he made his son promise he wouldn’t take any pills himself.

  “I wasn’t even thinking,” he says, and starts to cry. “I guess I thought it was something we could do together. When you sell drugs with someone, there’s a bond. It’s sick, but it’s real.”

  It’s sick, but I get it.

  A few nights later, after Jimmy had been selling his dad’s wares, he and his friend Steven showed up at the condo with some beer. They seemed slightly buzzed. James made them something to eat and then fell asleep in a recliner in front of the television.

  “I woke up early in the morning,” James remembers. “I found them both on the bedroom floor. Steven was snoring, loudly. Jimmy was in a praying position, on his knees, as if he was bowing down. I said, ‘What are you doing?’ I got no response. I walked over and shook him, and he just kind of rolled over.”

  Instead of calling 911 immediately, he called Lynda in Florida to talk him through CPR. Then he called 911 and continued trying to resuscitate Jimmy.

  “Suddenly, all of this foam came out of my son’s mouth, and blood started pouring out of his nose,” James said quietly.

  When the EMTs and the police arrived, James made no effort to hide the OxyContin. He gave them his prescription bottle and told them that he thought the two boys had overdosed on them. “But I told the police that Jimmy had stolen them,” he admits. “I lied about it. I was in a state of shock. I question myself about it to this day.”

  Jimmy was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. Steven spent several days in the intensive care unit on a ventilator system before being released.

  James was initially indicted on several counts: for involuntary manslaughter, aggravated trafficking in drugs, corrupting another with drugs, and drug possession—all felony charges.

  James’s lawyer, Kenneth Zuk, was able to work out a deal with the state of Ohio in which all other charges would be dismissed if James pleaded guilty to two counts of corrupting another with drugs. These are second-degree felonies, with fines and mandatory prison terms of two to eight years. He would not be eligible for judicial release or community control. James knew that by entering this plea he might have to serve both sentences consecutively instead of concurrently. His sentencing hearing was set for April 7, 2004, at the Claremont County courthouse, by the Honorable William Walker.

  Emotions were running extremely high, so much so that Judge Walker had to begin the proceedings with a warning. “We have a lot of folks here today who have an interest in this case,” he told the courtroom. “I caution you because if there is a problem in the hallway or in the courtroom, the deputies in the building here have strict instructions to take those matters seriously and get them under control immediately. Which may mean someone might get taken into custody, and we don’t want that to happen here today.”

  The state brought in several individuals to testify against James. The last two were Jimmy’s mother, Laurie Bender, and his stepfather, Will Bender.

  Will Bender’s testimony was interesting. While all the previous witnesses put the blame directly on James, Bender admitted that “Jimmy wasn’t the perfect kid.”

  Of course not, that’s because there’s no such thing as a perfect kid. James told me that Will Bender had once called him in the middle of the night, demanding that James find some sort of protection for Jimmy because he
had robbed someone of a kilo of meth that was now sitting in their home. James claims he stayed out of it, but that Jimmy ended up selling the meth out of Laurie and Will’s home.

  When Laurie Bender, Jimmy’s mother, took the stand, all she said was, “I don’t really have a whole bunch to say today. A mother shouldn’t really have to take this position. It’s a shame that so many lives have been deeply affected. It’s a good thing to have drug dealers out of society and incarcerated. Eighteen years is definitely not enough in exchange for one life, but I know that James is convicted of guilt. I know that James Dean will have guilt in his heart for the rest of his life.”

  Laurie Bender tracked me down when she found out I had been speaking with James Dean. We spoke and emailed at length about many things, including James’s accusation that they had allowed meth in the house while Jimmy was alive, but usually we just talked about Jimmy’s life. Most of our conversations were off the record, though, and I won’t violate that trust. But she did insist that she never allowed drugs in the house, and that Jimmy was a depressed kid. “He always tried to please everyone,” she told me, “but he also seemed to know that something bad was going to happen to him.”

  I was also able to track down Steven, the boy Jimmy was with when he overdosed. But despite my credentials, Steven was afraid that I was personally affiliated with James and that James was trying to track him down. Steven refused to grant an interview.

  James Dean’s sole defense came down to his lawyer, Kenneth Zuk:

  First of all on behalf of Mr. Dean and myself, I want to state that we recognize that there is nothing that we are going to say or do that’s going to take the hurt away from anybody in this situation. A lot of people have a lot of bad things to say about my client, but he is capable of doing extremely well when he’s not under the influence of drugs, when he’s not dealing with an addiction, and when he’s not taking substances that are controlling his life. The prosecution has his records from his employment. When Jim is not dealing with an addiction, he has a personnel file full of commendations. There are some circumstances that took place here that no one ever could have imagined. When he got hurt on the job somebody gave him pain medication. It took the progression that it does with an addict. And so he started seeking them illegally, and as he has freely admitted in his pre-sentence investigation, he went beyond what was prescribed for him. He crushed them and snorted them. By the time he moved to Cincinnati, his mind and his body were out of control. He admits that he was involved in illegally trafficking in this with his son. His son was involved as well, and that’s one of the things that I don’t think people really understand. The State’s own evidence has in [Jimmy’s] handwriting his ledgers of who he was selling to, how much he was selling. I know people don’t want to hear this. The victims in this case were involved in the drug scene just as much as the Defendant. That doesn’t excuse what James did. He gave the drugs to his son for the purpose of his son selling them. He’s going to have to live with it for the rest of his life that he helped put into motion what resulted in his son’s death. He doesn’t express himself well, but I’ve sat in a room with him repeatedly. I’ve seen the genuine and deep remorse that this man has over what happened. He knows that you’re not going to give him the minimum sentence. What we are asking the Court to do is to take into consideration what this man is capable of accomplishing when he is not under the influence of these substances.

  The sins of the father.

  It’s clear that Jimmy was just as involved as James in the smalltime Oxy ring they had going on. I should be more shocked about this case. I know I should feel that what James did was despicable. Intellectually, I know that to be true. But I also know what it’s like inside that bubble. You really do feel like nothing can ever go wrong when you’re on pills. I’ve given away so many benzos to friends and strangers in my past, someone could have just as easily taken one of my Valiums, continued to binge-drink and do blow, and then never woken up.

  James knew what he was doing was wrong, and written testimonies from witnesses refute his claim that he only gave the drugs away for the paternity test, that there was actually a much larger drug ring going on between father and son. But both testimonies incriminate Jimmy as being just as much a part of the problem. A woman named Bridget Cassidy wrote she had been with James and Jimmy shortly before Jimmy’s death. She witnessed them discussing how much money Jimmy would owe James. They argued, and eventually agreed on $8,500. Bridget warned Jimmy that he was going to kill himself, presumably by taking any of the pills, and James agreed, saying, “You can’t be doing shit like that, boy.”

  Jimmy allegedly replied, “Shut up, I know what I’m doing.”

  Another woman, Suzanne Wolfinbarger, reported overhearing a conversation Jimmy had with his father about how many Oxys they had left. Jimmy was trying to get his father to sell him Oxys for $30 a pill, but James said no, they were worth $40 or $50 each. “Haven’t I made you enough money already, son?” James asked.

  Jimmy supposedly replied, “Yeah, but I want more.”

  Despite how tragic this case is, James was right in asserting that the dealing connected them together in a way they’d never been able to before. Which, if you take the drug selling out of the equation and try to see it as a family issue, you can look at in two ways: James was trying to do whatever he could to help out the son he abandoned, no matter how morally wrong. Or, Jimmy was trying to impress the father he had never known by going into business with him. The sad fact is, no one will ever really know what happened. There are too many people contradicting each other and no concrete proof that Jimmy was already a wild child or that James was the original corruptor. Of course James never should have given Jimmy any pills.

  The judge’s decision was based on James’s own written statement—the fact that he had tried to use his own dead son as an excuse, putting the blame on Jimmy for asking him for money for a paternity test, and maintaining that Jimmy was the drug dealer, not him. James was initially sentenced to serve twelve years and pay $20,020, but his sentence was later reduced to eight years, with no appeal.

  When last James heard, his other son, Jason, had been arrested twelve times for selling drugs and sent to jail. There he met an inmate who knew James. Through this connection Jason sent word through the jail system to James that he still loved him.

  “That’s the last I’ve heard from him,” says James. His release date is set for April 18, 2012.

  Rather than just being tossed into a cell and left to rot, it’s too bad that James can’t be transferred out of state, to the Sheridan Correctional Center, seventy miles outside of Chicago. Sheridan is one of the first large prisons that focuses on drug and alcohol rehabilitation. It provides treatment and job training to repeat offenders. Early data suggests that prisoners who complete the program and do aftercare once they are released are about half as likely to be rearrested.

  The prison itself first opened in the 1940s as a juvenile facility, but it was closed during George Ryan’s administration. (Ryan is the ex-governor of Illinois who was sentenced in 2006 to six and a half years in prison for racketeering and fraud.) While the now notorious ex-Governor Blagojevich was campaigning for election the first time, he promised to reopen the Sheridan Correctional Center, dedicate it to substance abuse treatment, and make it a national model.

  The 1,300-bed facility started training staff in November 2003 and admitting inmates in January 2004. In order for an inmate to be eligible for the facility, he or she has to pass a screening test developed by Texas Christian University. It’s a series of questions designed to provide a snapshot of an inmate’s drug and alcohol abuse history. If the inmate is considered eligible after the test, the screeners next take a look at the inmate’s crimes. Sheridan doesn’t accept inmates who have been convicted of murder or sex offenses. The third criterion is how much time the inmate has to serve. Eligible candidates must have a minimum of nine months and a maximum of twenty-four months left on their sentence; this means
that prisoners from other in-state facilities can also transfer in.

  According to Sheridan’s warden, Michael Rothwell, the facility is run as a holistic program—one that looks not only at addiction and chemical-dependency issues, but also at academic, vocational, and cognitive behavioral issues as well.

  “It’s like a three-legged stool,” he explains. “If you pull any one of the legs, the stool falls over. Our inmates are constructively engaged seven hours a day.”

  Inmates participate in one-on-one and group therapy sessions that focus on different needs for different inmates, such as grief or anger.

  The vocational and educational activities aren’t designed to just pass the time. They are specifically set up to meet demand occupations in the state of Illinois—everything from welding to culinary arts. Sheridan works with several organizations, like the Safer Foundation, which helps with job placement in different communities. Anyone who leaves Sheridan has at least a ninety-day aftercare community-based transitional plan. There are also community advisory councils, which are citizen groups that help integrate inmates back into the general population.

  “There are thousands and thousands of inmates that come back to Chicago,” Rothwell says. “It’s foolish for the communities not to say, ‘Hey, we need to take some ownership in helping them transition into coming back.’”

  There are other prisons that have small-scale versions of the Sheridan program, but Sheridan is unique in its size and community involvement. “It’s a much more comprehensive effort to integrate services inside the prison and outside, based on this behavioral continuum,” Rothwell says.

  So why aren’t all drug offenders sent to prisons like this one? Why are we wasting millions and millions of tax dollars every year to let prisoners sit in a cell, only to come right back for a repeat offense because they have learned absolutely nothing except how to avoid being raped and how to score cigarettes?