David Hartman

David Hartman is a Roanoke psychiatrist whose treatment of Joey Gilbert shows both the practical reach of medication-based care and the conditions and costs surrounding access to it. He prescribed Joey buprenorphine after she had earlier received Vivitrol, and later took her on again as a Suboxone patient when volunteers helped her seek residential treatment.

Identity and Clinical Role

Hartman is identified as the psychiatrist who prescribed Joey Gilbert medication for opioid addiction. His role in her story is described through specific treatment decisions rather than through a broader account of his career or views. He had prescribed Joey Vivitrol during an earlier period of sobriety; after she later lost access to that medication, she transitioned to buprenorphine under his care.

Prescribing and Monitoring

Hartman required Joey to pass a weekly drug test before he would write her buprenorphine prescription. Her father, Danny Gilbert, held the medication and gave it to her daily, adding family oversight to the clinical monitoring. The prescription cost around $700 a month, a substantial ongoing expense for Joey and her family.

Renewed Care for Joey

When Joey was still using drugs and facing renewed instability, Cheri Hartman persuaded her psychiatrist husband to take Joey on again as a Suboxone patient. Joey’s divorced parents shared the costs of the prescription, appointments, and laboratory work, while Joey, who was uninsured, applied for charity care at a hospital-run clinic. This return to treatment gave her a medical option as volunteers searched for a residential bed, but it did not remove the financial and institutional hurdles surrounding care.

Treatment Access and Its Limits

The book also places Hartman’s practice within a shortage of addiction-treatment capacity. His federally mandated waiting list had already stymied Tess Henry’s effort to obtain buprenorphine treatment. Joey, too, encountered waiting lists and barriers to entering rehabilitation, including a requirement that she be drug-free upon admission. Hartman’s prescribing therefore formed one part of a constrained care system: monitored medication was available to Joey, but securing it and finding compatible residential treatment remained difficult.