More DUI stops find Xanax

The drug and alcohol make for a dangerous combination for drivers, police say.

By SARAH MISHKIN, Times Staff Writer
Published August 12, 2007

Hillsborough sheriff's Deputy Larry Morrell pulled over the 26-year-old woman after she crashed into an apartment gate on Brandon's Regency Avenue.

He shined a light in her eyes and asked her to track its movement. She couldn't.

"It looked like a pingpong game going on her with her eyes," Morrell said.

Typically, only an extremely inebriated driver would fail the test so badly, he said.

But the woman's breath test showed a blood alcohol content of just 0.09 percent, slightly above the 0.08 level at which the state presumes impairment.

So while processing her arrest, Morrell asked her whether she had taken any drugs.

Yes, she admitted. She'd been at a party at a hotel in Brandon and had taken some Xanax, a prescription antianxiety pill.

Law enforcement officers increasingly encounter drivers impaired by dangerous combinations of alcohol and Xanax.

In Pinellas County last year, it was the most commonly detected prescription drug among those arrested for impaired driving, according to the Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner's Office, which tracks the statistics. The drug was found in 177 drivers suspected of driving under the influence.

That's a sharp increase from 1998, when the drug turned up in just four cases. Then, experts say, doctors were writing prescriptions much less frequently. (Hillsborough County does not track DUI arrests involving Xanax as Pinellas does, so totals are not available).

The drug isn't as potent as methadone, and not as well known as painkillers like OxyContin. But it is widely prescribed and reacts so strongly with alcohol so that people taking Xanax become incapacitated with fewer drinks.

The drug, known generically as alprazolam, exacerbates alcohol's intoxicating effect.

"One plus one may equal three or more," said Dr. Raphael Miguel, the program director of pain medicine at the University of South Florida College of Medicine.

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Xanax, also used to treat panic disorders, gives users a feeling of euphoria, said Dr. Bruce Goldberger, a toxicologist and director of forensic medicine at the University of Florida College of Medicine.

"That's why it's abused," he said.

The pills can be bought from friends who have prescriptions or illegally from an online pharmacy advertising "Anxiety Drugs with Discounts this Week!!!" But the drug is widely available legally too.

Alprazolam is the fifth-most commonly prescribed drug in America, according to data from IMS Health, a health care information company. In 2006, 37.5-million prescriptions for it were dispensed, up from 29.9-million in 2002.

"People aren't any more anxious," said Goldberger. "But patients are being prescribed more and more medication in the past decade."

Miguel prescribes Xanax infrequently, but when he does, he tells patients about the drug's anesthetic effect, which can cause fuzzy memories, and warns them that the pills may make them feel drowsy.

"I prefer to start them on a weekend when they don't have job responsibilities, so they get a good idea of how they're going to feel on the medication," he said.

Patients starting on the drug may take doses of 0.25 or 0.5 milligrams, said Miguel.

Those doses can seem far less potent than the 80- or 160-milligram doses of OxyContin, a frequently abused painkiller, making it easy for someone to take too much of it.

"Doctors prescribe it for three times a day, but for patients with true anxiety, that's not enough, so they end up popping it four or five times day," Miguel said. "It's easy to spill over into the next effect of oversedation."

Last year, 456 people overdosed on alprazolam, according to a report by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission, making it the fourth-most common cause of overdose, after cocaine, methadone and oxycodone, the generic name for OxyContin.

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Hillsborough sheriff's Sgt. Ronald Harrison is assigned to Operation 3D, a countywide effort to target drunken drivers. He finds drivers impaired on all sorts of drugs, though Xanax, cocaine and marijuana seem to be the most common.

Natalie Rodriques, 21, had a blood alcohol content of 0.10 percent when she was arrested in March, charged with killing a pedestrian and leaving the scene of the crash.

She later said she didn't know she had hit anything, police said.

But, according to the investigation report, Rodriques told a Tampa police officer that she had a prescription for Xanax: one milligram four times a day. The toxicology report showed she had the drug in her blood at the time of the accident.

Only two months earlier, she had been charged with driving drunk after a traffic stop. During that arrest, a Hillsborough sheriff's report says, she "spontaneously" told the arresting deputy that she had been taking Xanax before the arrest.

State records indicate that neither case has been resolved.

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Trooper Larry Coggins, a spokesman for the Florida Highway Patrol, says often patrol officers will stop impaired drivers who don't think they could be drunk, or who think that they can't be arrested for driving while on legally prescribed medicine.

"These people generally never thought a couple of drinks would do it to them," he said. "People need to be aware no matter what you take, prescription medication or not, if it impairs your normal faculties, you will be arrested."

[Last modified August 11, 2007, 22:33:23]