To have a medical provider be polite to you, accept you, maybe even dig through your charts to find the root cause of your ailmentsit can be validating. Ballard: Most doctors dont wanna touch you, and they only wanna address one issue at a time. Alperovichs lawyer declined to comment.). Young was indicted on drug-trafficking charges in April 2019. Use the hashtag #TheExperimentPodcast, or write to us at [email protected]. Khazan: When I first started talking to Jeffs former patients, I thought I understood this story. I talked to him a couple of weeks ago. I accept all insurance, he told her. You ready? Another compared Young to a brother and called my reporting disrespectful.. (Patel did not respond to requests for comment.) Furthermore, Dr. Young along with his wife and daughter Melody works at his clinic. They thought I was basically lazy and just wanted to have pain pills, just for whatever reason. * This article has been clarified to more accurately convey the details of Gutgsell's plea. Tennessees nursing board, the main agency that has power over nurse practitioners in the state, launched its investigation into Young within a year of PreventaGenix opening. ), Youngs sexual desires and need to please patients allegedly soon blurred together. Rudins lawyer did not respond to a request for comment. (Later, Phillips pleaded guilty to threatening a Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was investigating Young. This social-media stardom appears to have helped inoculate him against concerns that his loose approach to medicine could harm anyone. Even after this, she returned to Young as a patient. Everybody pay fucking attention worldwide because Im about to save this motherfuckers lifelive on Periscope broadcast! He seemed, to his former employees, constitutionally unable to deny patients the pills they wanted, even if it was the last thing they needed. Jackson, TN USA. (Endo denied the allegations.) And now we see the result. His wife also loves animals and works in the same clinic. Khazan: So Ive written a million stories about this. The cause of death, according to the letter, was a probable cardiac event due to polypharmacy, or the simultaneous use of multiple drugs.. RockDocTV Show. Hed also given her tips on how to eat better and how to lose weight. Im Julia Longoria. (The drugmaker that is most often blamed for the epidemic doesnt agree with this assessment: Suggesting that activities that last occurred more than 16 years ago are responsible for todays complex and multifaceted opioid crisis is deeply flawed, a Purdue Pharma spokesperson, Robert Josephson, said in a statement to The New York Times for a story on this issue.). Fullington, who was also let go, told me she got a threatening call from Young. But the more time I spent thinking about it, the more I started to realize that Jeff has a point. The daughter, Melody, actually works in her dad's vet clinic. Trial dates have been set for "Rock Doc" Jeffery Young, his supervising physicians, and two more medical professionals recently indicted on additional drug trafficking charges. Khazan: In one sense, I understand some of Jeffs patients defensiveness toward him. Am I a misogynist, or do women just like rough sex? Young asks himself in one video. Young, 43, a Tennessee nurse practitioner who called himself 'Rock Doc' and once piloted . Jackson, a city of about 70,000 people, looks like almost any midsize patch of America that sprang up sometime after the Pilgrims but before Microsoft. Khazan: Not long after Jeff opened Preventagenix, the Tennessee nursing board started to investigate him for prescribing high doses of opioids to his patients, even when he didnt have a good medical reason. Kevin: Jeff and I are full of antics. (Youngs attorney claimed in court that only about 25 percent of his patients were.) The whole thing was Very Online. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information. Young got married, then quickly got divorced, according to several people who knew him then. In the past five years, at least 40 medical providers nationwide have been accused of exchanging sex for addictive drugs. Nurses are consistently rated higher in honesty and ethics than all other professions that Gallup asks about, by a wide margin, the polling firm said in a January 2020 survey. The self-proclaimed "Rock Doc" is accused of trading powerful . Though both she and Reaves said Young should be held accountable for anything he did wrong, Stephanie told me that she forgave him. (Ringing leads into a soft, humming organ song.). According to police reports and court records, his second ex-wife, Dawn, claimed that throughout their relationship Young repeatedly pushed, threatened, and attempted to rape her. #saturdays at noon est to hear #nikkidarling chat with the #RockDoc Jeff Young II #musicmeetmedicine Starts at 12pm est. One of them was that I had the story all wrong. Khazan: LeAnn Naylor was the secretary for the mayor of Jackson when she started seeing Jeff as a patient. November 7, 2018, marked the beginning of legal repercussions for Young. Young seemed eager to hire lots of staff, but would end up firing them later. Even when they do, the boards are mainly composed of doctors and nurses peers, who can be reluctant to throw the book at one of their own, says Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a Vanderbilt University law professor who has studied medical boards. Still, the citys southernness peeks through. In another, he totters around with an empty bottle of bourbon and pans the camera over to Phillips, who is asleep on the couch. Why didnt anyone try to put a stop to this? I just had a lot of questions about how could this happen, you know? Young grew up in Bethel Springs, a 700-person village near Jackson. The clinic mostly offered cosmetic treatments, and it was located in a strip mall in a more industrial part of town, next to a chiropractor and a place called Genes Tire & Wrecker. When the local news station, WBBJ, posted a story about Youngs case on Facebook, the usual chorus of defenders raised their voices. 2,760 Followers, 1,655 Following, 2,046 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Jeff Young II (JY2) #RockDoc (@jeffyoungii) She wasnt the only patient to stick by him. Khazan: There was this really big series of indictments that came down in 2019 where the federal government said, You know what? All of them said that they didnt think Jeff sexually abused them. Rock Doc pilot testimonial: (Over heavy rock music.) On my trip, I strolled by a glass case near the federal courthouse that held a large Bible opened to the Gospel of John. But it played [Emphasizing.] Once again, there was an outpouring of support. She became his patient around 2016. Throughout Youngs year-long treatment of MY, Young failed to conduct pill counts, consult a state database meant to monitor the dispensing of controlled substances, and discuss with MY the risks of combining these drugs, according to the document. To one patient, who he prescribed hydrocodone, amphetamines, and fentanyl, he said, I accept all insurance. You can all suck my d***. Downtown has an old-fashioned square, a few coffee shops striving for trendiness, and some suburban standbysMcAlisters Deli, Kohls, Chilis, Panera Breadall connected by well-maintained roads and featuring black oceans of parking lots. Look at me! Julia Longoria: Over 20 years ago, pharmaceutical companies began to market the use of a magical pill. Listen to the trailer for. A new court filing, first reported by The Tennessean last week, portrays the Rock Doc as a menacing figure at the intersection of the opioid crisis and the #MeToo movement. (A snare hit plays, and the music changes tone again. Several others dismissed the notion that Young could be sexually coercive. Defending himself in one of his on-camera interviews, Young acknowledges that he is maybe a little untraditional and that he might like to drink a little bit after hours. But, he says, Im very passionate about what I do I work hard, but I play harder. Youngs practice was, for a time, an inexpensive, reliable option for medical care in Jackson. I cant wait to start being your patient again, one woman wrote. Christi Calles lived 30 miles away in Lexington. The biggest blow came in 2019, when Jeff was indicted by the federal government for overprescribing opioids, often in order to get, quote, money, notoriety, and sexual favors., In a court hearing, investigators described several Facebook messages between Jeff and his patients, identified only by their initials. Calles: I dont know. The week that followed Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination was revolutionaryso why was it nearly forgotten? Though many of these deaths have been caused by street drugs such as heroin and illegally manufactured fentanyl, the nations opioid epidemic was sparked by the kinds of painkillers medical providers prescribed. Whether or not Young is convicted, the perverse incentives for doctors to see patients for short visits and to prescribe too many unnecessary drugs will remain. No one could quite tell me who or what was responsible for Youngs transformation. The half-dozen former patients who did agree to talk with me were mostly people who wanted to defend Jeff. Employees I spoke with said he eventually was seeing 50 to 85 patients a day, compared with about 20 for the average doctor, and most of them seemed to be on opioids. However, many of Youngs online supporters have remained loyal. This is Aalto. Young: (Over hard-rock music.) According to a medical-board report, one employee recalled Young having sex in his office with a patient who appeared to be drugged; when Young left, she was passed out on the couch. I told him about this podcastexplained to him what a podcast was. Scott Deberry: But after a while, when you read stuff, how many people could be wrong? Khazan: Do you feel like Jeff has done more harm than good? Unnamed guest: I cant believe he stabbed himself (Fades under.). He graduated from Musicians Institute in 1985, and is best known for his time with the thrash metal band Megadeth, appearing on the 1988 album So Far, So Good. 14:46. Find Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and TikTok profiles, images and more on IDCrawl - free people search website. With Young at least temporarily behind bars, some of his fans seem to have reached a point of disillusionment with the Rock Docor, at least, a point of fatigue. Young had an active channel on Periscope, where he and Phillips drank and waxed philosophical. Every time. Shed come to see Jeff for a range of health issues, from diabetes to cystitis, and she just didnt buy the things people were saying about him. He never admitted to anything that would make him look bad. Longoria: The result is that more than 450,000 people are dead from overdose in the last 20 years. We cant live if hes out, she said. 1,274 likes. She once saw someone running across her yard into the woods. Listen to the trailer for, The Hard-Partying, Rock-Obsessed Nurse at the Center of a Massive Opioid Bust. You can find Olgas written reporting on the Rock Doc at our website: http://www.theatlantic.com/experiment. On it, they found evidence of Young having sex with many different women, one of whom appeared to be motionless and had her eyes closed, a DEA agent testified later. In April 2019, he was indicted on drug-trafficking charges, along with five other medical providers in Jackson, two of whom were the supervising physicians Young, as a nurse practitioner, was required to have. Naylor: I said, Go see Jeff. And she said, Id rather not. And I said, Why? And she said, Because if I go see him, hell start texting me and calling me. And I said, And wanting to go out with you? And she said, Yeah. Thats the thing. And the consequences might have gone beyond sexual abuse and addiction. Thats the only way you can describe it. (The two clap each others backs in a half-hug.). Trust me, I got people, he says to the camera. MY came to PreventaGenix complaining of lower-back pain and numbness in his left arm, and asked for refills of pain medications. Two bouncers made sure she got home, but when she woke up in bed the next morning, her eyes were black, her nose was broken, and her mouth was bleeding. They do not have serious medical side effects. While Youngs antics could be a nightmare for his staff, his pool of patients increased as word about his practice spread. And I was like, My mind is blown. Im very shocked. I expected to hear lots of horror stories of abuse and mistreatment. Khazan: To me, this felt immature, but it was all part of the brand. Longoria: The indictment against the Rock Doc alleges that he prescribed more than a million addictive pills, treated patients while intoxicated, and used his prescribing power to have sex with womenincluding women who were his patients. I said, um, So what are yall doing after-hour? Khazan: I started calling up former patients to try to understand the relationship Jeff had with them, and the appeal of this whole Rock Doc thing. The clinics aim would be to halt the parade of miseriesheart attacks, early deaths, hospital billsbrought on by the obesity epidemic. And people in the pilot gave testimonials saying as much. He raises a glass filled with red wine, as if in a toast. He messaged at least five female patients about sex and filling prescriptions, prosecutors would later say, detailing the anonymized encounters in court. He invited a cameraman to document his life and eventually had it edited into a pilot for a reality-TV show. Hes just laid back. The cameraman who shot the pilot, who requested anonymity because he doesnt want to be associated with Youngs case, heard about Young through a mutual friend and visited him several times to shoot footage for what he hoped could become a reality show. One of his patients, Helena Louvaris, told me that Young saved her life by putting her on a diet plan. Some of Youngs dalliances with his patient-friends similarly took a dark turn. Im in the middle of a life-saving procedure here. Lots of people refused to talk to me because they fear Young, but many others refused because they love him. Its gonna be a little cold, all right? Make and Model: The only Billboard Hot 100 entry for new wave greats The Cars with an automotive title to match their band name . Have you ever been to a doctor and you just didnt feel comfortable? Khazan: Her husband had severe dehydration and was suffering from a heat stroke. (Fades under.). His indictment implicated him and two of his former supervising physicians, Alexander Alperovich and Andrew Rudin, and alleged that Youngs motives in prescribing controlled substances to his patients were often to obtain money, notoriety, and sexual favors. Alperovich and Rudin, the indictment claims, accepted money derived from the proceeds of the conspiracy in exchange for their purported supervision. (Both have pleaded not guilty. The judge denied this request, in part because, he wrote, Young has chosen to not wear a mask or practice social distancing consistently in jail., In September, Gutgsell, Youngs former office manager, pleaded guilty to federal charges for her involvement in prescribing opioids without a legitimate medical purpose.*. In 2016, Young, who was 42 at the time, invited a cameraman to shoot a pilot episode about his life as a nurse practitioner in Jackson, Tennessee. Listen to the trailer for Holy Week. Naylor: (A sharp inhale.) Were small enough where we still talk, Jerry Gist, who was the mayor at the time, told me. Khazan: LaRhonda was skepticalbut she was also dealing with a lot of pain. Young began arriving at the clinic smelling rancid, with greasy hair, and the clinics money problems mounted. He found diseases, for example, that other doctors missed. The clinic sat on a quiet road crammed with other medical practicesa sleep doctor, a dentist, a nephrologist, an orthodontisteach in its own . Scott Deberry: When I first was going in the office, I could go in there and thered be maybe 10 of us in there. Tanya Ballard: I think people are Just didnt like Jeff. After the hearing, Young was jailed pending his trial, which is currently scheduled to be held this spring. was found dead of an apparent overdose. Naylor: I felt like he was being treated unfairlythat maybe he had even been set up. Dont worry, my tattoos dont like you either, one image reads. Case 18-11780-BLS Doc 45 Filed 08/02/18 Page 1 of 1041. They entered the office and ordered the clinics staffers to lie on the floor. They didnt try to become reality-TV stars. Khazan: When Jeffs indictment became public, LeAnnlike many of his former patientswas suspicious at first. 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