‘Lost it all’: Doctor imprisoned for fentanyl trafficking is rebuilding his life—one story at a time

Dr. Darryl Jordan Gebien “lost it all”—his family, house on the lake and job as an emergency doctor in Barrie, Ont.—after he admitted to forging a medical prescription and trafficking fentanyl, and was sentenced to two years in prison. Today, more than six years after he finished serving eight months of that sentence, Dr. Gebien is trying to rebuild the life he lost. And he wants to talk about his experience, in hopes of helping other people struggling with addiction. “The worst-case scenario is using in isolation, knowing that you’re dying but letting it happen,” he told a reporter at Bradford Today. “I’m understanding with my patients—I’m a new physician now.” Dr. Gebien, who now works under supervision at a Toronto walk-in clinic, has done the opposite of what most other people might do after such a fall from grace: He has laid bare the details of his life as a cautionary tale about the dangers of opioids. A common message in his accounts is the fact that anyone and everyone is at risk. “How does a doctor and somebody who’s so well educated get addicted to fentanyl?” he said in a March 2022 Health Canada audio series called Plain Sight. “This is how it happens. I’m already addicted to Percocet, I’m going through withdrawal, and I wanna just simply feel better.“ During this interview he also talked candidly about his life before and after he developed his substance abuse problem. His own mother, he recalled, was a frequent opioid consumer who gave him one of her Dilaudids when she saw how much pain he was in from a back injury. Dr. Gebien has also spoken about the role doctors play in the opioid crisis. Read: B.C. launches new opioid agonist therapy training program “Doctors are part of the problem,” he wrote in a 2017 piece for Toronto Life magazine. “One of the most common complaints we get from patients is that we under-treat chronic pain. And, because pain is subjective and difficult to diagnose, we tend to take patients’ word for it when they say they’re in pain.” According to case documents written by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, Dr. Gebien developed an addiction to opioids after a serious back injury in 2008. His family doctor prescribed Percocet to help him deal with the pain but by the summer of 2013, Dr. Gebien was abusing Fentanyl. That same year, according to college documents, he began recruiting people to help him obtain drugs through fake prescriptions he wrote for them. He also forged the signatures of other physicians at the hospital where he worked. Dr. Gebien’s scheme came to light when a pharmacist called the hospital with questions about one of these forged prescriptions. The hospital suspended his privileges in November 2014 and about 18 months later he signed an undertaking with the college to cease practising. In February 2020, the college discipline committee suspended Dr. Gebien’s certificate of practice for 14 months and imposed practice re-entry conditions that included prescribing restrictions and an agreement to enter into a physician health program. As he works to rebuild his life, Dr. Gebien continues to share his story, recently writing to the editor of the Toronto Star, which then featured his account. Read: PTSBC hosts webinar on supporting patients with addictions Dr. Gebien faces many challenges ahead. He has just undergone back surgery for the third time to address sciatic nerve and root compression. He lives with his father in a Toronto apartment. Money is a problem. Still, he is hopeful he can create a bright new future for himself while contributing to a solution to the opioid crisis. “I became a doctor so that I could help people,” he wrote in the Toronto Life article. “I messed up my life, but I can still help others avoid the same fate.” Read: A life saving tool’: More people carrying naloxone to help strangers on the street

‘Lost it all’: Doctor imprisoned for fentanyl trafficking is rebuilding his life—one story at a time

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