Too gullible – how easy it is to con a doctor for narcotics:

You’d be surprised how easy it is to con a doctor into believing that you need narcotics for pain, Joe Leonetti says.

He should know. Before he became sober last June, the Des Moines man supplemented his methamphetamine habit with OxyContin, Vicodin and other powerful prescription drugs. He says he obtained many of the pills by going to emergency rooms or medical clinics and spinning a tale of back pain or other hard-to-diagnose ailments. “It’s really, really simple,” he says.

Addicts swap tips on which doctors are the most gullible, he says, and on how to avoid detection. For instance, he says, physicians tend to become suspicious if patients ask for a specific brand of narcotic, and many doctors seem more likely to believe women than men.

Leonetti says some doctors started him out on less-potent, non-narcotic medications and sent him to physical-therapy sessions. He pretended to go along with those measures. “Then, you just say it isn’t working, and they’ll give you something stronger,” he says.