Huntington, West Virginia, July 1987
Fifteen-year-old Paul Farrell stood with his father on a grassy hill that served as the outfield bleachers for the All-Star Little League game in downtown Huntington. It was a muggy July evening and the ballfield was buzzing. Hundreds of fans from town had turned out to watch the game and the star of the team, Mark Zban, the latest sensation to emerge from a legendary local family of athletes. His uncle had played football at Marshall and was drafted by the New York Giants. Another uncle played basketball for the university. One of Zban’s brothers was a star player on three high school state championship baseball teams. Another brother won a full scholarship to play quarterback for Virginia Tech.
As the youngest of six, it was Mark’s turn. He was only twelve, but he had quick wrists, a powerful swing, and the presence of a much older, seasoned player. Down a run, with a runner on base, Zban stepped into the batter’s box. Spectators lined the fences along the baselines. Zban’s bat sliced across home plate as he effortlessly launched a fastball high into the early evening sky.
For Paul, it was a slow-motion, cinematic experience as he watched the ball sail over the outfield fence and clear the small metal scoreboard. Zban ran the bases like a gazelle as the crowd roared. When he trotted around third, his teammates streamed out of the dugout and mobbed him when he reached home. His two-run shot had won the game.
Paul looked up at his father. “Wow,” was all he could say.
Paul’s family knew Zban’s family through church, youth soccer, and Little League, and the two later became friends in high school. Zban looked up to Paul and he was enormously proud of Zban, particularly when the Ohio State University signed him in 1993 as a top quarterback prospect and later when he transferred to Marshall to play alongside future Hall of Fame wide receiver Randy Moss. At six foot five and 220 pounds, Zban was built for the NFL. But hobbled by serious knee injuries at Ohio State and Marshall and a blown disc in his back from years of wear, his dreams of turning pro faded.
By the time he reached his early thirties in 2006, with six children of his own and a high-stress job selling medical supplies, Zban’s pain from his sports injuries had become unbearable. Doctors prescribed low doses of hydrocodone, then higher doses of oxycodone. He started to take OxyContin 80mg tablets, sometimes two and three times a day. When he couldn’t convince doctors to write him prescriptions, he bought pills on the streets of Huntington.
“I got sick as hell when I didn’t take it,” Zban said. “I couldn’t work. I couldn’t be a father. I couldn’t do anything. But when I took it when I was withdrawing, I was a completely different person.”
Getting high became his daily routine. Nothing else mattered.
“I was so embarrassed and ashamed of what I was doing. I really isolated myself,” Zban said. “It got so bad that it became more important than my kids. I’m embarrassed to say that.”
Paul was heartbroken when he heard about Zban’s descent into opioid oblivion from Zban’s wife and his friends. For years, he tried to help. He gave Zban money and legal advice, but he couldn’t save his friend.
As his addiction deepened, Zban blacked out one day and crashed the family’s GMC Acadia into the brick wall of a local barbershop. He eventually lost his house, his job, his twelve-year marriage, and his children. Two stints in rehab ended in relapses. In 2012, Zban lost his freedom when he was arrested for stealing money to buy pills while working in North Carolina. He spent five months in the Watauga County Detention Center, where he kicked his habit, cold turkey.
“I knew that once I got out of there, I never wanted to go through that again,” Zban said. “I wanted to just stay clean for me. I wanted to prove a lot of people wrong.”
A year after his release, Zban traveled back to Huntington, where his children were living with their mother. One afternoon, he was standing at the edge of the fence near the outfield wall of the baseball field, watching one of his sons play. His son wasn’t speaking to him, and his wife asked him to stay away from his twin girls. They were in the stands, and when they saw him, they ran down the baseline to hug him. His ex-wife was not happy to see Zban at the ballfield. But Paul was. He walked down the fenceline, put his arm around him, and patted him on the back.
“Looks like you’re doing well, buddy,” Paul said.
“Yeah, I guess,” Zban replied.
“Just keep doing what you’re doing,” Paul said. “Just keep doing your own thing and time will heal.”
Zban remarried. He landed a solid job as a salesman for Honeywell. He began to put his family back together, reestablishing a relationship with his children. As Paul started to develop his public nuisance case against the drug companies four years later, his thoughts kept returning to his friend. Huntington was filled with people who had lost their way and never returned. He had grown numb to the carnage. But Zban was different. Watching Zban’s life unravel became a deeply emotional experience for Paul. He wondered if he should include people like Zban in his case to put a face on the dry legal arguments and federal regulations. But he worried that personal stories like Zban’s might leave the plaintiffs open to attack from drug company lawyers. They could easily place the blame on users like Zban, rip him apart during depositions and on the witness stand, and deflect attention away from their own conduct.
It will be a rabbit hole, Paul thought.
As he prepared his cases for court, Paul interviewed Zban. How did you get the pills? Who were the doctors? Where did they work? Who ran the clinics? How were you able to doctor shop and get so many prescriptions? And how were you able to fill all of them?
“This is the true essence of the epidemic,” Paul realized. “How do I tell this story without telling the story of people like Mark Zban?”
Paul decided that Zban would never see the inside of a courtroom. But he held his story close, a reminder of why he was bringing this fight, that even the best can fall. He needed to figure out how the doctors, clinics, and pharmacies that supplied Zban were able to get so many pills from the drug manufacturers and distributors. And he knew that gaining access to ARCOS—the DEA’s pill-tracking database—would provide the answer.