LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Another sobering statistic is that this figure gives every single American 64 Percocets or Vicodin. Pain pill prescriptions continue to surge, up 600 percent in a decade, thanks to doctors who are increasingly compliant to hand out drugs to suffering patients.

Even worse is the fact that more of these people are taking these pills not for pain-related issues - but to merely get high. Their drug abuse leads to 14,800 deaths a year, which is more than from heroin and cocaine combined.

Howard Levin, a Long Island, New York, pharmacist, says doctors are far too willing to hand out prescription painkillers. "We've become a society of wusses," he says.

Levine stopped carrying all of the major addictive prescription drugs after he was robbed twice by addicts looking to get high.

Police are reporting increases in robberies and other crimes by people who are addicted to oxycodone and hydrocodone, the key ingredient in most prescription pain pills.

In one startling demonstration of the high toll this has wreaked on contemporary society, one of the people lured into crime by drug dependency was 36-year-old Rich Elassar, who once owned a successful business in New Jersey.

But an addition to painkillers led to him taking 90 Percosets a day. When the money ran out he was desperate for more drugs. One day, he walked into a bank and handed the teller a note demanding cash. He was caught and arrested shortly after the robbery.

When the police came to bust him, he said he was actually relieved. "I looked in my rear-view mirror and I saw the cops, I saw their lights flashing and I really, really, really remember thinking, well this is it. I'm going to get clean now," Elassar said. He then spent three years in prison.

But his prison sentence and a drug recovery program wasn't enough to help him kick the powerful hold oxycodone had over him. He has released three times since his release and must take medication every day to keep the drug withdrawal symptoms at bay.

He's been clean since June, but he's still doesn't know whether he's kicked his addiction for good.

"I think this is definitely it. I mean, I say think and I pray to God every day that this is it."

© 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.