The week that followed Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination was revolutionaryso why was it nearly forgotten? Years active. However, many of Youngs online supporters have remained loyal. At the same time, building himself up as a renegade nurse practitioner seems to have allowed Young to sweep his faults under the rug of unconventionality. Young had also allegedly begun siphoning off $100 almost every day from the clinic for his personal expenses, according to former employees. Others accused me of seeking to discredit Young and slander his name. Mellow and slow, it moves under the narration the way water moves through a stream.). By the end of this hearing, you will be asking what on Earth took the medical board so long, Pennebaker, the prosecutor, said in court. In 2012, Young was working at a cardiology practice in Jackson when, with a consultant named Rich Reitz and cardiologist named Dharmesh Patel, he set up a side business giving talks to doctors about treating heart attacks and strokes. We cant live if hes out, she said. I dont I dont even know what to say. On my trip, I strolled by a glass case near the federal courthouse that held a large Bible opened to the Gospel of John. Longoria: This week, Olga Khazan peers into an internet portal to try to find one answer to how on earth we found ourselves in an opioid crisis. Updated at 10:28 p.m. 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. The music plays on.). The cause of death, according to the letter, was a probable cardiac event due to polypharmacy, or the simultaneous use of multiple drugs.. 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. They married in 2014 and lived right above his vet clinic in Denver. I asked to speak with him for this story, but because of a gag order on the case, his lawyer declined interviews with me. Young: Listen, I am for the patient. Longoria: Opioids would be a new kind of painkiller to treat not just acute pain after an event like a surgery, but also pain that was more mundane, like chronic back pain that patients would complain about for years, but which doctors didnt have a clear cure for. In 2020, had he not been indicted, he would have been allowed to petition to have his prescribing privileges reinstated, as long as he agreed to extra monitoring. Young was indicted on drug-trafficking charges in April 2019. Jeff refilled M.Y.s prescriptions for Percocet and Valium and gave him a new one for hydrocodone. Jackson, Tennessee. The sharpteeth charge through and run into the rock spire and fall down. Calles: And I mean, he didnt dress like your average doctor. 13.6k members in the AutoNewspaper community. Well all be killed., It helped that Young had prominent friends he could call on for help. They thought I was basically lazy and just wanted to have pain pills, just for whatever reason. One patient she knew kept a cane in the trunk of her car and visited doctors offices with it in order to appear disabled so she could get more pills. Listen to the trailer for, The Hard-Partying, Rock-Obsessed Nurse at the Center of a Massive Opioid Bust. 0:06. The nurse practitioner Jeffrey Young produced a reality-TV pilot in which he branded himself "the Rock Doc., The week that followed Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination was revolutionaryso why was it nearly forgotten? Naylor: They would look at me and say [Dismissively. Young cries at his sons fifth-grade graduation, then explains that hes so emotional because his nurses are having their periods. Like many actual rock stars, he flamed out on his own extravagant lifestyle. I dont like him asking out my daughter But even then, I still went to him, and my ex-husband still went to him. Longoria: There are many pieces to the puzzle of how opioids found their way into so many medicine cabinets. And you can kind of look at it like locker-room talk . (Patel did not respond to requests for comment.) On April 17, 2019, officials swept through Appalachia, charging 53 medical professionals, including doctors, nurses, and pharmacists. The grosser side. Its heavy, and it loops. Listen to the trailer for Holy Week. All of them said that they didnt think Jeff sexually abused them. Khazan: Jeff was working as a nurse practitioner at a clinic called Preventagenix in Jackson, Tennessee. (Young has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Furthermore, Dr. Young along with his wife and daughter Melody works at his clinic. And I said, And they say that youre trading sex for medication. He was like, You know, these motherfuckers lie all the damn time. [Chuckles.] But when he suggested it the way he did, I took it seriously. Khazan: Do you remember what kind of music was playing? They didnt play Stairway to Heaven or have Periscope accounts. Khazan: Online, Jeff would get drunk and smoke cigars. Lots of people refused to talk to me because they fear Young, but many others refused because they love him. Am I a misogynist, or do women just like rough sex? Young asks himself in one video. Khazan: LaRhonda Scott Deberry is a 54-year-old former teacher who lives in Memphis. His lawyer also declined to answer any specific allegations. Nurse practitioners have played a key role in Tennessees opioid epidemic. Of course other doctors dont write as many prescriptions, the implication seemed to be. The first move of any significant consequence for Young came in early 2017, when the DEA raided the clinic. Khazan: LeAnn Naylor was the secretary for the mayor of Jackson when she started seeing Jeff as a patient. Will be glad to take the balance out of your ass. To another, Jeff asked, You want to come by for a checkup tomorrow? (Lo-fi synthesizer music plays up. Young began arriving at the clinic smelling rancid, with greasy hair, and the clinics money problems mounted. The men each contributed $40,000 to the endeavor. American doctors went on to prescribe opioids at much higher rates than their counterparts in other countries. So what? At Youngs practice, the quantities of opioids were larger than many investigations that I conducted, Shirley Pickering, a nursing-board investigator, later said in court. Will be glad to take the balance out of your ass. He asked another patient, to whom he prescribed the opioid hydrocodone, to come in for a checkup the following day and wear a short skirt and no panties., Young was sometimes even more direct. Without doing a physical exam, Young diagnosed MY with chronic lower-back pain and anxiety, the letter details. They didnt openly harass anyone who criticized them. The next morning, the office manager, Kristie Gutgsell, would clean up after them. He would chitchat with his patients, ask them about their latest tattoos. Khazan: I talked to many of Jeffs patients. How was a nurse practitioner whose behavior was so outrageous allowed to treat patients for so long? (A long beat of music. a dangerous combination of an opioid, a benzodiazepine, and a muscle relaxant. There was no statement even made to the Feds. The Tennessee Department of Health will not release audio recordings from a state investigation of "Rock Doc" Jeffrey W. Young II, a nurse practitioner who was allowed to stay in business . If PreventaGenix staffers suspected that a patient was abusing drugs, they would sometimes try to fire the patient, by telling him or her not to return to the clinic. Khazan: In 2017, the very public world Jeff had built around himself started attracting a different kind of attention. Khazan: Which was exactly what she liked about him. Nurse practitioner Jeff Young, known as the "Rock Doc," and . She appreciated that he asked about her grandkids. She said, He latches on to young single mothers, and he rushes in and wants toquote-unquotesave them.. 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. Though he was not an M.D., Young christened himself the Rock Doc.. The men each contributed $40,000 to the endeavor. Opioid manufacturers such as Endo, the maker of Opana, and Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, targeted high-volume providers, in particular generalists, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants, who generally had less expertise in pain management and were more receptive to marketing from sales consultants, according to a lawsuit filed by the state of Tennessee against Endo in May 2019. Another compared Young to a brother and called my reporting disrespectful.. One employee recalled him sometimes being too drunk to see patients. Find Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and TikTok profiles, images and more on IDCrawl - free people search website. I mean, I worked at a bank for 15 years, and when youve worked at a bank and youve cashed checks, you have to judge people in two seconds. Calles: Doctors judged me because of my weight. Branding himself as the "Rock Doc," he flooded his social media accounts with images of a party-loving lifestyle, vitriol for his "haters" and even a pilot episode for a reality TV show . You can find Olgas written reporting on the Rock Doc at our website: http://www.theatlantic.com/experiment. Young: Very nice. Health care is one of the Jackson areas most important industries, and West Tennessee Healthcare, which once employed Young, is the largest employer in the county. 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. Naylor: And I remember him saying, Bring him to the office. (Dawn did not press charges at the time, and she declined to speak with me for this story.). His lawyer also declined to answer any specific allegations. Khazan: LaRhonda was skepticalbut she was also dealing with a lot of pain. [Chuckles.] Were tracing your fucking account now, so you better be prepared to reap the whirlwind of your bullshit., As he gathered followers, Young began to deploy his social-media presence to hunt down and intimidate his former employees and ex-friends, some of whom told me they felt threatened by Young and his followers. Young would call these liaisons nooners or say it was tap-that-ass Tuesday, according to court testimony. 14:46. MY died on August 25, 2015, from an apparent drug overdose. Yall partying in the office? [Chuckles.] I dont wear underwear. Jeffery Dale Young known as Dr. Jeff Young or Dr. Jeff is American Veterinarian and a reality TV actor. 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. This is Aalto. His wife also loves animals and works in the same clinic. I need you to find this fucker, he wrote, according to court testimony later reported by The Jackson Sun. Yeah. In 2018, a woman told police that Young put his hands down her pants during an office visit, but that apparently led to nothing. Listen to the trailer for Holy Week. 1:32. Use the hashtag #TheExperimentPodcast, or write to us at theexperiment@theatlantic.com. Not that theyre not watching internet porn. He made them feel comfortable in a way that no other doctor did. He has three children, two sons, and a daughter, from his first marriage. (There were different Jeff Youngs in [the Records Management System] and I had very little information so he was not added to the report, the police report states.) Young: So, the, uh, the sinister ministerthat would be me (Fades under again.). Always have been for the patient. One of the differences between physicians and nurse practitioners is that physicians are regulated by a state Board of Medicine, while in most states, nurse practitioners are regulated by a state Board of Nursing. Its hard to hear or believe that the only provider whod ever been kind to youwho made you comfortablehad been accused of abusing other patients. People who criticized Young swiftly became his enemies. He seemed, to his former employees, constitutionally unable to deny patients the pills they wanted, even if it was the last thing they needed. Once his colleagues were out of the business, Young began crafting a persona based around rock music and hard living. Im Julia Longoria. The daughter, Melody, actually works in her dad's vet clinic. Five other medical providers, just in Jackson, were indicted too. Make and Model: The only Billboard Hot 100 entry for new wave greats The Cars with an automotive title to match their band name . (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.). Young, 43, a Tennessee nurse practitioner who called himself 'Rock Doc' and once piloted . Actually very nice, yeah. She once saw someone running across her yard into the woods. As Young collected more tattoos and befriended more local bands, he began to attract a certain clientele. Why would you go to this doctor? Khazan: And some of what she saw really weirded her out. Khazan: So, like, that doctor-patient interaction and how the opioids actually got prescribed. (Somber, reflective droning notes play up. Khazan: LeAnns story was similar to Tanyas and LaRhondas and Christis. So it was kind of significant to me. Some speculated that it could have been drugs, alcohol, the prospect of fame, a divorce from his second wife the year after PreventaGenix launched, or a combination of all of them. Why would he do this? The lack of oversight in the Young case is in keeping with practices seen throughout the opioid crisis. The allegations against Young seemed to take a toll on him, though. 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. Jackson nurse-practitioner Jeffrey Young, known as the "Rock Doc," was released on bond and will be allowed to continue treating patients, a federal judge ruled Thursday. What a great, great, great, great song! It feels claustrophobic.). Before long, the three men hatched a plan to found a network of health clinics that would check patients cholesterol levels and offer diet and exercise advice. Khazan: In his Periscope videos, Jeff insisted it was all fun and games, and people were just criticizing him because of his style. Aw, shit! But tonally, much of the footage betrays him. Were taking next week off to work on new stories, but well be back with new episodes starting April 15. Early in the epidemic, Purdue gave doctors OxyContin fishing hats and swing-music CDs to encourage them to prescribe more of the drug. (The music changes tone, becoming a little more up-tempo and treble-heavy.). FNP Jeff Young Jr. shares his life with his fans and promotes a healthy and fun lifestyle to make you "young" at heart! Khazan: Jeff had been good to Tanya in the clinic, which was an experience that she didnt usually have with doctors. But the allegations against him point toward what can be permissible, even celebrated, in a medical system built on profit. Later that month, M.Y. * This article has been clarified to more accurately convey the details of Gutgsell's plea. 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