There’s a great scene in the 1970 World War II – or as Rep. Ilhan Omar (D–Minn.) calls it, World War Eleven – epic movie “Patton.”
General Patton is awakened and advised that German Field Marshal Rommel was planning an attack at El Guettar.
The scene ends with the camera panning to Patton’s nightstand where a copy of Rommel’s book, Infantry Attacks, was sitting.
While watching the ensuing battle unfold just as he anticipated, Patton lowers his binoculars and shouts triumphantly…
“Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!”
And with that in mind, I’ve been reading Nevada Assembly District 9 candidate Ryan Hampton’s book, American Fix.
What an eye opener. And what a world-class liar.
As you’ll recall from Part 2 of this series, Hampton has been presenting a sanitized version of his drug addiction to voters in both his failed 2024 campaign, as well as this year’s.
To hear him tell it, in his own words…
“I’m Ryan Hampton, running for Nevada Assembly. When I injured my knee hiking in my twenties, the doctor prescribed opioids and addiction and despair began.”
And now, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story…
* * *
I’ll accept at face value Hampton’s claim that he started taking prescribed opioids for the pain from his knee injury.
But there’s a lot more to his story, as detailed in his own book, that’s been conveniently hidden from voters on the campaign trail.
Let’s start with something small and generally insignificant.
On the campaign trail, as you’ll see from the quotes taken directly from his campaign websites, he says it was a knee injury.
But in his book he wrote that he started taking the pain-killer pills “after I’d hurt my ankle, and it just wasn’t healing.”
He then blamed his ensuing addiction on “seeking care for my ankle.”
Ankle or knee?
Yeah, that’s a pretty minor difference. But it portends much bigger problems and discrepancies in his story as it all unfolds. So let’s get started.
Hampton writes about taking his first prescribed pill and notes that his pain went away.
However, he wrote, “Four hours later it came back. So I took another one.”
“The number of pills I had wasn’t enough,” he explained. “It was never enough.”
Hampton notes that he got that first prescription pain pill “in a doctor’s office.”
He then derisively refers to his doctors as his “dealers” and refers to their care as “nothing less than medically sanctioned murder.”
That’s a damned serious accusation… if true. But is it? Let’s see.
First, Hampton admits to earlier drug use, marijuana, and alcohol.
He writes that he “enjoyed my college years and the period of socially acceptable excessive drinking.”
Then, after getting his first prescription, Hampton writes:
“I bounced in and out of care clinics, collecting a new prescription every time. My ankle had long since healed, but I’d tell the doctors that it hurt, and they’d reach for the prescription pad.”
So in other words, he LIED to his doctors – but still accuses THEM of “medically sanctioned murder.”
In his mind he is, of course, completely blameless. He’s a “victim.”
But is he really? Onward…
Hampton goes on to write about finding Dr. Leah – “tall, like a model, with long blond hair” – who operated a pain clinic in Ft. Lauderdale in 2005.
He says he told the nurse who checked him in that “My ankle is swollen” – even though it wasn’t.
In other words, he lied. Again.
Dr. Leah prescribed him two new prescriptions for OxyContin and oxycodone.
She also told him, he admits, that if he had any problems with the dosage being too high that she would “taper you off at ten to twenty percent of your dosage per day until you’re completely off the medication.”
And she told him to come back in a month.
But, Hampton admits, “I lasted three weeks.”
“My ankle didn’t hurt,” he writes. “I was doing great. If I took the pills more frequently than the doctor’s suggestion, so what?”
In other words, HE immediately started misusing his prescription. Not the doctor. HIM.
Hampton continues:
“When the prescription was almost gone, I realized I had another week before I could go back for a refill. I panicked. The long days without my medicine stretched out in front of me. I felt nauseated. How would I get by?
“I picked up the phone and, with shaking hands, dialed Dr. Leah. Luckily, the receptionist was able to get me an appointment for the next day – for an extra $100. I was happy to pay that amount out of pocket. Soon I had more pills and my fear of running out of them went away. …
“THIS prescription was gone in less than two weeks. The next one, even sooner.”
So instead of tapering off as the doctor advised, HE doubled down.
“I couldn’t afford an extra $300 per month to cover my early visits to Dr. Leah, so I found another clinic that would prescribe to me. And then another one. I rotated as many as five pain doctors as I juggled those pill bottles. The whole time, I somehow knew that what I was doing was risky…”
Again, these were choices HE made.
Instead of sticking with Dr. Leah and working with her to taper off, he just went to five different doctors, lied about his condition, and kept popping more and more pills.
HE was misusing his opioid prescription – lying all the way, But somehow THEY were committing “medically sanctioned murder”?
And things were about to go from bad to worse. Much worse. I’ll pick up on that in Part 4.
And if you don’t already know the story, you’re simply not going to believe it. Stay tuned.
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“Instead of alcoholic, addict, user, or abuser, we now say a person with a substance use disorder.” – Ryan Hampton, “American Fix”
Chuck Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, publisher of Nevada News & Views, and founder of CampaignDoctor.com. You can sign up for his conservative, Nevada-focused e-newsletter at MuthsTruths.com. His views are his own.