BANGOR – A federal judge Tuesday told a Brewer man who smuggled OxyContin pills across the border in his anal cavity that his behavior should have been a wake-up call.

U.S. District Judge John Woodcock sentenced Joshua W. Delmonaco, 27, in U.S. District Court to 21 months in prison on drug smuggling charges.

“When you have reached the point that you are stuffing drugs up your rear end to smuggle them into this country, you have all you need to know about where your life is headed and what drugs are doing to you,” Woodcock said.

Delmonaco, who pleaded guilty last year to importing a controlled substance, also was sentenced to three years of supervised release after his release from prison and ordered to pay a $4,000 fine.

He faced a maximum of 20 years in prison and a fine of between $4,000 and $1 million. According to the federal sentencing guidelines, Delmonaco’s recommended sentence fell between 18 and 24 months in federal prison in part because he had no criminal history.

Delmonaco said he smuggled the drugs into the country for his own use.

Last summer, he successfully completed a drug rehabilitation program in Aroostook County before voluntarily relinquishing his bail. He has remained in jail for the past six months while awaiting sentencing, according to court documents.

Delmonaco was stopped on March 3, 2005, at the Milltown port of entry in Calais after U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents received a tip from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that he might be smuggling drugs. His dark blue Crown Victoria was stopped about 9 p.m. when he attempted to return to Maine from Milltown, New Brunswick.

He was taken to the Calais Regional Hospital after agents found that he was concealing an “off-white foreign object” in his anal cavity. The next day, after several enemas, Delmonaco passed a plastic package containing 59 oxycodone pills.

Woodcock suggested Tuesday that that ordeal might serve as a deterrent if Delmonaco is tempted to relapse into drug use after his release.

“Perhaps you will remember how it felt,” the judge told him, “to be at [the hospital] sitting on a portable toilet, being watched by police officers, waiting for nature to take its course. If that image doesn’t convince you to change course, no sentence I impose can change your course.”

Records of border crossings showed that Delmonaco had made numerous short trips to Canada between Jan. 1, 2005, and the day he was arrested, according to court documents.

Woodcock told Delmonaco that those additional trips were why he had added three months to the minimum sentence of 18 months.