by Claudia Kalb et al.

About the author: Claudia Kalb is associate editor of Newsweek, a weekly American newsmagazine, and reports on health care issues.

It all started innocently enough. Three years ago, when Michelle Brown got pregnant, her doctor wrote her a prescription for Lortab, a potentially addictive painkiller similar to Vicodin, for relief from migraine headaches. Her migraines eventually got worse; the Lortab made her life bearable. But it had a devastating side effect: "Slowly," says Brown, who is from Sanford, Maine, "I started to get addicted." She became a classic "doctor shopper," hopping from one physician to the next to get multiple prescriptions. She discovered Percocet, and soon she was mixing Lortab with OxyContin, a new, superstrength painkiller she got through a dealer. By early last year, Brown...