Couple dies by suicide after DEA shuts down office of their chronic pain doctor in fentanyl panic

On 1 November, agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency ordered Beverly Hills pain doctor David Bockoff to cease prescribing controlled substances like the powerful pain medication fentanyl, part of the agency’s crackdown on opioids.

A week later, Danny Elliot, one of Dr Bockoff’s patients who relied on the pain medication to treat painful lifelong complications from an electrocution, was found dead by suicide along with his wife, Gretchen, the latest sign that people with chronic pain are struggling to find their place in the US health system as it battles the opioid crisis.

“Found out today that the good ol’ DEA has shut down my pain doctor — the 3rd time I’ve lost a doctor to #DEAth,” Elliot wrote on Twitter shortly after the raid. “Even though I knew this would happen at some point, I’m stunned. Now I can’t get ANY pain relief…So I’m officially done with the US [healthcare] system.”

The Georgia native, 61, accused the federal government of “saving us to death.”

“I just can’t live with this severe pain anymore, and I don’t have any options left,” Elliot wrote in a note shared by family members with VICE News, which first reported on Elliot’s story.

“There are millions of chronic pain patients suffering just like me because of the DEA,” he continued. “Nobody cares. I haven’t lived without some sort of pain and pain relief meds since 1998, and I considered suicide back then. My wife called 17 doctors this past week looking for some kind of help. The only doctor who agreed to see me refused to help in any way. What am I supposed to do?”

The DEA said it shut down the doctor’s opioid prescriptions because Dr Bockoff posed “an imminent danger to public health or safety,” while the CDC said it alerted local health officials about the raid, so they could plan for the influx of doctor-less patients.

However, the federal health agency acknowledged that it didn’t actually provide any care or referrals for patients who lost their provider in the raid.

“Any loss of life due to suicide is one too many,” Stephanie Rubel, a health scientist in CDC’s Injury Center, added in the VICE report. “This case is heartbreaking and emblematic of the trauma, pain and danger many patients face when these disruptions occur and is why ORRP [Opioid Rapid Response Program] has been developed to help prepare state and local jurisdictions to respond when disruptions in care occur.”

The Independent has contacted Dr Bockoff for comment.

In 1991, Elliot was brutally electrocuted for 15 minutes by a malfunctioning water pump, leaving him with severe migraines and intense pain. He tried alternative pain management strategies like acupuncture and various prescription opioids to little avail.

Eventually, a 2002 fentanyl prescription, at levels usually reserved for terminal cancer patients, allowed him to find relief, though he was constantly having to seek new doctors and go through withdrawal periods as officials tamped down on fentanyl prescriptions.

The drug is better known for its potent illegal street form, which sometimes causes shock overdoses, though it retains legitimate use as a painkiller and medicine for certain surgeries.

When Dr Bockoff’s office was raided, Elliot and his wife reached out to more than a dozen doctors, each one declining to take him on as a patient.

In the mid-2010s, with awareness of the opioid crisis growing each year, US health officials began scrutinising patients getting over 90mg a day of fentanyl and the doctors who gave out such doses, putting people like Elliot, who needed high amounts of painkillers just to make it through the day, in the crosshairs.

Since then, the federal government has struggled to balance tackling the opioid abuse crisis, which has killed over 400,000 Americans, without limiting access to opioids for those who truly need them.

This has been made all the more complicated by how opioids entered the US health system in the first place, through a mix of legimiate and underhanded tactics.

Over a course of decades, and especially during the 1980s and ‘90s, drug companies funded research promoting opioid use as a chronic pain treatment, while also providing financial incentives to doctors who supported and prescribed such treatments.

To make matters worse, some companies made false and exaggerated claims about the safety and effectiveness of opioid treatments.

Once this became apparent, federal regulators and patients alike revolted, prompting a wave of multi-billion dollar lawsuits, shuttered pain clinics, and reduced opioid prescriptions nationwide.

However, this left people like Elliot as so-called “opioid refugees,” people who were constantly being forced to shuffle between a dwindling number of medical providers offering the opioids they needed to make life sustainable.

If you are have thoughts of self-harm, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).