A retired RCMP officer is speaking out about how he beat his addiction to a powerful prescription drug and then helped sue its maker.

George Critchley, 68, who lives in Northern Arm in central Newfoundland, is a member of a class action lawsuit that recently reached a $20-million settlement with the makers of OxyContin.

Because of this drug I had no life. It was hell on earth. - George Critchley

But before all that happened Critchley says the painkiller nearly destroyed him.

"Because of this drug I had no life. It was hell on earth. That's what it was … It's a terrible, terrible pill. It never should have been put on the market. I couldn't function as a normal human being," he said.

Critchley was prescribed the painkiller after a head-on collision in Botwood, a few kilometres from his home. He was on his way back to the local detachment where he worked.

The crash destroyed discs in his back and required surgery, leaving him in constant pain. Critchley said OxyContin helped at first but eventually "did more harm than good."

"I suffered. I mean every bone in my body ached. It seemed like every nerve I could feel and it was terrible. It was hell on earth was what it was," he said.

Critchley, who retired in 1995, about five years after the accident, said the dependence turned him into a disoriented zombie who rarely left his home.

He also had a heart attack, something he believes was caused by prescription drug abuse.

OxyContin was aggressively marketed as a revolutionary painkiller. But many patients became addicted, leading to a country-wide class action lawsuit against its maker, Purdue Pharma (Canada). (Toby Talbot/Associated Press)

Afraid of losing family and friends, he quit cold turkey. It meant three or four months of agony.

"The physical pain. It's hard to describe. It is like you have a pulse everywhere. I could feel my legs throbbing, my arms and my back throbbing and sweating," he said.

Critchley did successfully wean himself off OxyContin and is now prescribed another drug to treat his pain.

"My back is basically, for lack of a better word, screwed," he said. "If I didn't take that one morphine pill per day, I wouldn't be able to sit here for very long at all."

OxyContin lawsuit

About a decade ago, Critchley was asked to be one of the representative members of a class action suit against Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin.

This May, lawyers who launched that suit announced that they have reached a $20-million out-of-court settlement with the drug company.

I don't think anybody is going to be moving to Hawaii on the little bit of money that they get from this lawsuit. - George Critchley

Lawyers typically take a third of a settlement. As one of hundreds of people who are members of the class action Critchley says he's thankful to the lawyers who took on all the expense and the risk of a class action but he doesn't expect to get much money from the settlement.

"Most of it will go to the law firms because they took on the responsibility for this court case. If they didn't get a settlement they would be the ones out millions of dollars," he said.

"I don't think anybody is going to be moving to Hawaii on the little bit of money that they get from this lawsuit but I didn't go in it for that reason."

Critchley has mixed emotions about the settlement. He said he was looking forward to testifying in court and believes the big pharmaceutical company got off easy.

"It was a nasty drug. They put those things out to make the billions of dollars that they make. My opinion is that they don't care who they hurt and how many families may be affected and that's the unfortunate thing about it. I would have liked to have gotten that point across to a jury or even a judge alone," he said.

"If I could have gotten into court to lash out at someone … I was lashing out at Big Pharma, period."

Drop in the bucket

Ches Crosbie, one of the lawyers who started the class action 10 years ago, agrees the settlement is a drop in the bucket compared to the more than $30 billion Purdue Pharma is estimated to have made in profits for OxyContin.

"It really is not a level playing field when it comes to plaintiffs suing Big Pharma. The cards are held by the drug companies. So it's gratifying to get settlement for the class members," he said.

St. John's lawyer Ches Crosbie was one of the lawyers who launched a class-action lawsuit against Purdue Pharma over OxyContin. (Gary Locke/CBC)

Crosbie said the provisional settlement, if it is approved by a judge later this summer, will be a formal recognition of the suffering caused by the "fraudlent marketing" of OxyContin.

"They marketed the drug as a non-addictive ... the latest in pain relief ... which clearly it was not," he said. "It was very addictive."

Newfoundland and Labrador's 2004 OxyContin Task Force report linked 20 deaths to the drug between 1997 and 2004.

In a statement, Purdue Pharma Canada said that by resolving the suit, it makes no admissions of liability.

Lessons learned

Dr. Jeff Cole, who runs a pain management clinic for Central Health in Grand Falls-Windsor, said physicians have learned from cases like Critchley's, and are using narcotics less to treat non-cancer pain.

Dr. Jeff Cole is the Vice-President of Medical Services for Central Health. (Mark Quinn/ CBC)

"We don't see a lot of OxyContin anymore at all. It definitely has some stigma attached to it now because of the court cases," said Cole, who is also an anesthetist and the Vice-President of Medical Services for Central Health..

New Canadian guidelines for opiod prescription were released in May 2017. They call on physicians to limit the use of painkillers and recommend using narcotics to treat only cancer pain, something Cole said won't happen overnight.

He said he knows of many patients who are "highly-functioning" members of society but are dependent on narcotics to manage non-cancer pain. He said right now Central Health doesn't have the resources to support weaning them off painkillers.

Cole fears that it those people are taken off prescription drugs without a lot of support, they may turn to other, possibly illegal, sources to manage their pain.

More legal action against Purdue?

Canadian lawyers may not be done with Purdue Pharma just yet. Some American states sued over OxyContin and won hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, and some Canadian provinces are considering doing the same.

"There is currently no action on behalf of Newfoundland and Labrador to recoup any costs of the settlement amount, but the province will monitor legal developments across Canada and elsewhere respecting the drug's use and impact," an official with the province's health department told CBC News.

In the U.S., three executives with the U.S. branch of Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty in a U.S. Federal Court to misleading regulators and an unsuspecting public about the risk of addiction to OxyContin.

As for George Critchley, he said he has his life back now.

"It's as good as it's going to get. My back is not going to miraculously cure itself but it's something I've learned to live with and it's something I'm going to live with until the day I pass on."