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Recovery in the News
Rx for Death
Russ Zimmer
ChillicotheGazette.com
December 5, 2009
There are no roadside memorials commemorating lives lost to drug overdoses, even though they outpaced deaths on Ohio highways for a third straight year.
Little publicity is given to those whose lives have been cut short by what the Ohio Department of Health calls an epidemic. But the pain felt by survivors of those who have died is no less than those mourning traffic fatalities.
The scourge of opiate addiction rolls on with no signs of breaking, and heroin and prescription painkillers with legal origins represent the bulk of the increase.
State data shows the number of people claimed by opiates and heroin jumped 55 percent from 2006 to 2008.
Jenny Hamilton's 21-year-old son is not a number. His name was Reggie Ours and he died Oct. 27, 2007, from a heroin overdose. His friends still post thoughts on a Facebook page devoted to his memory.
But Hamilton is doing more than mourn. She's speaking out against opiate abuse so other mothers don't have to share her grief.
Four-year-old James Michael Estep Jr. will go through life without his father and namesake because of a Vicodin overdose two years ago.
Mike Estep, 33, made several attempts to get clean, said his mother, Vicki Strausbaugh.
Sadly, in the end, the success he eventually had played a role in his October 2007 death.
Abstinence had lowered his tolerance for hydrocodone, and when he relapsed and took with the same amount of pills from his using days, his body couldn't handle it.
Not all deaths associated with opiates come by the hand of the deceased. Some are horrifically violent.
Helen "Lucy" Meadows, formerly of rural Licking County, is thankful her daughters have stopped asking why the man they used to call "Uncle Jay" killed their father, James Meadows, in August 2008. Police say it was for 20 prescribed OxyContin pills.
"How do I answer their question when I don't know how to answer it myself?" Meadows said.
It's a problem so foreign to vast portions of the state that it never occurred to Mary Jean Hensley, of Bucyrus, that her son could be gripped by opiate addiction.
"He would sweat profusely and blame it on a cold or just rushing around," she said of 22-year-old Ben Hensley, who now is in a treatment center in Marion. "It never occurred to me to have him drug-tested."
Some people once so lost in their addiction are resurfacing back into society, sober and hoping to stay that way.
Stephanie Peters, 24, used to shoot $100 worth of heroin into her veins every day.
Now, she's in substance-abuse recovery in New Lexington and trying to earn back the trust of her family, including an infant son.
"All I cared about was feeding that addiction," Peters said. "You are so numb. ... I look back on it now and it tears me up that I could be so selfish."
OPIATES KILLING MORE THAN EVER BEFORE
Orman Hall, president of the Fairfield County Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health board, said the epidemic is uncharted territory to Lancaster and central Ohio.
"There's never been a situation like this that we've had to navigate," Hall said. "So I don't think we know whether we've seen the worst of it or whether the situation is going to deteriorate."
In 2008, traffic deaths statewide dropped more than 5 percent to 1,191, while overdose deaths climbed 8.6 percent to 1,458, according to the state Highway Patrol and Department of Health.
Preliminary numbers for 2009 are difficult to interpret, because of the lag time between toxicology results, but some area counties are reporting startling increases through the first nine months of this year.
This year, Licking County has had seven people, or half the accidental drug-poisoning deaths, die from heroin overdoses.
Prescription opiates, or opioids, were named on the death certificates of the three unintentional drug poisonings in Marion County, according to those county coroner's offices.
One of the more startling statistics is that heroin, which has never come close to claiming as many lives as cocaine this century, was named on death certificates 246 times to cocaine's 265 last year.
Excluding heroin, opiates -- which also are distinct from methadone in the state data -- got the most mentions on 2008 death certificates, replacing cocaine for the first time since 2003, according to data from the health department.
"Prescription abuse is a terrible problem," Gov. Ted Strickland said. "And in many ways, in my judgment, more severe than the distribution of illicit substances."
OPIATES TRENDING UP IN ALL AREAS
In Richland County, evidence of individual crimes is proof of a greater trend.
"This year, for the first time we've had more heroin samples through the (crime) lab than we have had of cocaine, and more syringes than crack pipes," said Lt. Dino Sgambellone, commander of Richland County-METRICH, a 10-county drug enforcement unit based in Mansfield.
Smaller counties are being ambushed by heroin, as well.
Crawford County, with a little fewer than 44,000 residents, recorded 51 indictments for heroin possession in 2007 and 2008. Through 10 months this year, its grand jury has issued 28 heroin-related indictments, including four for trafficking.
Crawford County Assistant Prosecutor Clifford Murphy said he could not pinpoint why his county has so much more heroin prosecutions than neighboring areas.
ADDICTION SPREADS
Special Agent Tony Marotta, Columbus bureau chief for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said heroin has overwhelmed the region. No longer is it an urban phenomenon.
"Anytime you think of heroin addiction, you think of the inner city, people living in the slums, in some alleyway sticking a needle in their arms," he said. "When in reality, what you have is people across social boundaries who are abusing narcotics, heroin in particular."
Treatment providers across the state agree: Heroin and opiate addiction is their single biggest challenge right now.
# Maryhaven, a mental-health and substance-abuse agency in Columbus, said the number of patients who identified opiates, including heroin, as their drug of choice went from 38 percent in 2002 to 68 percent last year.
# The number of patients seeking help for heroin addiction at Shepherd Hill in Newark has jumped each of the past three years. This year's figure was 38 percent higher in late October than for all of 2008, spokesman Tom Argyle said.
"I've been in the recovery business for 25 years," said Denise Williams, behavioral-health specialist at the Genesis Recovery Center in Zanesville, "and this is the worst the opiate use has ever been in this area."
With intravenous drug use come assorted health risks. Williams said Genesis has seen an increase in positive tests for hepatitis.
Heroin addicts dominate the residential treatment program at the Marion Area Counseling Center, associate director Marty Paciocco said.
"Up until about three years ago, we saw maybe one heroin addict a year," she said. "Now at any given time, a third to a half of our residents are heroin addicts. It's been a huge shift."
COPS FACE OBSTACLES WITH HEROIN, OPIATES
Heroin presents distinct challenges for law enforcement.
Marotta said law enforcement is "trying to catch up" to the constant innovations of traffickers.
Large shipments of black-tar and brown-powder heroin from Mexico are coming across the border and are finding a home -- or at least a temporary respite from travel -- on the criss-crossing highways of Ohio, according to a report by the National Drug Intelligence Center.
The report and Marotta state that Hispanic street gangs in Columbus and Cleveland are becoming more organized, structured and disciplined.
"You have organizations popping up all over that we know nothing about," he said.
Outside of the major cities, several commanders of drug task forces said the majority of heroin trafficking is done by addicts who sell to help support their habit.
"We are more influxed with user-dealers," said Tom Brown, head of the Central Ohio Drug Enforcement Task Force. "Whereas with marijuana, crack or methamphetamine, they're dealing just to make money."
Sgambellone said this makes investigations difficult. With a crack house, police can do surveillance, gather evidence to get a warrant and likely recover money, drugs or lists that prove trafficking was taking place.
But what non-metro counties are seeing is individuals making a couple of trips a day to Columbus and taking orders with them or transporting amounts of heroin they know they can move fast.
"If you can't get them in transition, you've got to get them before they sell out," Sgambellone said.
He and Brown added the opiate addiction makes finding a trustworthy confidential informant difficult. If they can't stay clean, informants can't testify, they said.
Brown said right now there is little incentive for dealers to venture outside Columbus to the set up shop in surrounding areas, but that might change.
LEGAL DRUGS TURNING ILLEGAL
Diversion of controlled prescription drugs is also a significant threat, according to the National Drug Intelligence Center report.
Ottawa County has seen a "huge increase in doctor shopping," said Detective Doug St. Clair of the Ottawa County Drug Task Force.
"Doctor shopping" is a slang term for the illegal practice of visiting multiple physicians to obtain as many narcotics as possible. Addicts or would-be drug dealers often fake or exaggerate an illness during these visits.
Heroin has not surfaced in Ottawa County to the same degree as in other portions of the state, but 13 lives have been claimed by prescription pills since 2007, according to the Ottawa County Coroner's Office.
Sgambellone said Richland County's METRICH this year assigned an officer to investigate prescription drug abuse full time.
"Particularly the narcotic pharmaceuticals, there is a high street value for these drugs," he said.
Additional reporting was done by Morgan Day, Kimberly Gasuras and Jona Ison.
Russ Zimmer can be reached at (740) 328-8830 or razimmer@gannett.com.
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