The Carrollton physician indicted in May on charges of illegally dispensing prescription drugs from 2002 until his arrest in 2007 pleaded guilty today in federal court in Newnan to all 175 charges in a superceding indictment. Dr. Philip C. Astin III was the personal physician for wrestler and Fayette County resident Chris Benoit.

Astin pleaded guilty to offenses relating to 19 patients who received hundreds of illegal prescriptions for methadone, Percocet, Oxycontin, M.S. Contin, Demerol, Lorcet, Ritalin, Vicodin, Klonopin, Vicoprofen, Xanax, Adderall, and Soma, according to U.S. Attorney David Nahmias. 

Through the plea agreement, Astin further admitted that the prescriptions he issued resulted in the death of one patient when she overdosed on the drugs. Astin also admitted that he wrote and filled 16 prescriptions for Lortab, Xanax, Dexedrine, Adderall, and Ritalin in the names of two patients without their knowledge. 

From approximately May 2002 until the date of his arrest in July 2007, Astin intentionally wrote prescriptions for controlled substances that were not for a legitimate medical purpose and were not in the usual course of a physician’s professional practice, Nahmias said. 

Astin dispensed these prescriptions without conducting the appropriate physical examinations and diagnoses to justify the prescriptions and, as a result, many of the patients who received these illegitimate prescriptions became addicts or had existing addictions which were fed by the illegitimate prescriptions, said Nahmias.

Nahmias said Astin admitted that he dispensed the painkillers and other drugs that the patients requested without an adequate medical history, physical exam, x-ray, MRI, or referral to a orthopedist or pain management specialist. 

Astin also wrote prescriptions in quantities and in contexts that bore no relationship to a legitimate medical problem or legitimate pharmacological benefit, said Nahmias, citing the example of a combination of prescriptions for several painkillers dispensed together along with muscle relaxers, sleep aids, amphetamines, and other drugs, that are commonly abused together and referred to as “cocktails” by drug abusers.

Astin also admitted to writing multiple prescriptions for the same drug on the same date, sometimes as many as four simultaneous Percocet prescriptions to the same patient for the same 30-day period, and wrote undated prescriptions as well, said Nahmias.

Federal law requires medical practitioners to sign and date each prescription for controlled substances on the date that it is issued. And Astin dispensed methadone as a maintenance therapy without the proper license to dispense drugs in this fashion and in quantities and durations that readily perpetuated the addiction of these patients, Nahmias said.

The evidence presented at the plea hearing included descriptions of several of the patients to whom Astin wrote illegal drugs. 

Citing an example, Nahmias said two married patients were abusing Lorcet, Xanax, and Soma they received from another doctor and heard from an acquaintance that Dr. Astin would give them the prescriptions without conducting a thorough examination. The female patient began receiving the same drugs from Astin in 2002 and developed an addiction to the drugs, which continued until her death in 2007.

Her husband told investigators that Astin never performed any kind of medical examinations or tests to justify the prescriptions that he and his wife received, said Nahmias. On June 20, 2007, the patient overdosed on Lortab, Xanax, and Soma that was prescribed by Astin and died from acute toxicity of the drugs, Nahmias said.

Nahmias said another patient, who was a professional wrestler, said that it was widely known in the professional wrestling community that Astin would dispense prescriptions without performing a medical examination.

This patient received prescription drugs, including Lorcet, Percocet, Xanax, and Soma, from Astin from December 2004 until November 2005, and said that he did not receive a legitimate medical examination or testing from Astin during that time, said Nahmias.

The wrestler developed an addiction to the drugs and Astin never questioned his addiction and instead simply wrote prescriptions for larger quantities of pills, the federal prosecutor said. The patient said that a number of professional wrestlers obtained prescription drugs from Astin for the purpose of abusing the drugs, adding that some of these wrestlers also were addicted to the drugs, Nahmias said.

Astin was charged in a superseding indictment on May 29 with 174 counts of illegally distributing prescription drugs and one count of conspiring to distribute prescription drugs. 

Astin pleaded guilty to all 175 counts of the superseding indictment. He could receive a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $1,000,000 on each count, according to Nahmias.

Sentencing is scheduled for May 12 at 10 a.m. before United States District Judge Jack T. Camp in Newnan.

Astin was officially linked to prescribing a large amount of anabolic steroids to Benoit, who police believe killed his wife and son, then himself at their Fayette County home June 23-25, 2007.

This case is being investigated by Diversion Investigators of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Fayette County Sheriff’s Tactical Narcotics Team (TNT), with the assistance of the West Georgia Drug Task Force, and the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department.