OxyContin nearly killed William Stelcher. It was Halloween, 2001. He'd been on the popular painkiller for nearly a year following surgery for a congenital problem with his back.

"That's the night when my addiction to OxyContin exploded," Stelcher said. That's the night Stelcher stopped breathing.

"My mother heard a weird noise and found me in my room," he began. "I had stopped breathing and my heart stopped because of the medication." His mother started CPR and called for help.

An ambulance arrived. A tube was shoved down his throat. They brought him back from death's doorstep. "I just remember coming to at the hospital and feeling like I had been hit by a truck," said Stelcher, a father of three. "That [near-death experience] was probably the worst thing that could happen on OxyContin, aside from the addiction."

Troubles began when he sought doctor's help for severe back pain

Despite the Halloween fright, Stelcher continued to take his prescribed OxyContin. It was the only way to cope with the back pain. "The pain in the back gets so severe that it robs you of your attention," he explained. "All you can do is lay down, curl up in a ball and hope it passes. It feels like someone is jamming something hot into your back — like lightning is going down your legs."

Doctors inserted screws near his spine during his first surgery in 2000. They cut into his nerves and left him paralyzed below the waist down.

He began taking Oxy. A second surgical procedure removed the screws and ended the paralysis.

"The OxyContin was by far the worst medication I had ever taken," he said. "When I took it, it made me feel real zoned out. I would disappear when I was on it. The OxyContin was the knockout punch for me."

Once a general manager with a fitness center, Stelcher saw his weight fall from a robust 250 to 167 pounds. The unwanted loss occurred during a 10-month span of Oxy use. "I got thinner and thinner, the medication was killing me," he said.

The doctors thought he was conning them to keep the Oxy coming. "That was the last thing on my mind," he said. "I just wanted to be well. You get to a point where your family says that you look like a victim from the Holocaust. Then you start thinking that you have to correct this or you will die."

Terrifying withdrawl symptoms when he tried to stop on his own

By April of 2003, he knew he had to get off OxyContin to get on with living. He had tried the cold turkey approach to Oxy before. That left him looking like a strung out dope fiend, sitting in a corner, vomiting.

"You feel like dying," he said of the tough method. "It's like having non-stop flu for 10 days. Everything you drink comes back out. I probably threw up every 45 minutes for 10 days."

Determined to get free of OxyContin, he underwent detox

He finally beat back the addiction with a rapid detox approach at Lincoln Park Hospital in Chicago. "They basically put you into a medically induced coma and wring the stuff out of you from the bones," he said of the treatment.

"I went to detox because the medication made me nuts," he said. "I could not even trust myself to do the right things like getting up to bathe. I was like a heroin addict. I would just be in bed for months at a time."

Told OxyContin "would do no harm"

Stelcher, a vegetarian and non-drinker, said he is careful about what goes into his body. But he trusted those who said OxyContin would do no harm. "You take OxyContin because the doctors says it will help you," he said. "I did what they said."

He completed detox in May, 2003. "I was still real slow and lethargic," he said. "It was not a pretty thing. I guess I wanted to live a bit more than I wanted to die."

Stelcher's constant back pain and the debilitating influence of Oxy left him without work for three years. "My family survived on prayers, credit and help from friends," he said. "We tightened our belts and lived through it." Stelcher now looks forward to a sales job with a trucking firm. He is also off pain medication for good.

"I believe in my heart of hearts that the drugs were developed with health in mind," he said. "But they are for cancer patients who are biding their time until they go. The company needs to focus on medications that are non-addictive, that are not as powerful and not killing people. They also need to take responsibility."

"I understand business and corporations and I understand the bottom line, but human health is more important. If what happened to me ever happened to anyone at the company — or one of their loved ones — I know they'd rethink this drug."