(April 14, 2016) Following introductions during last Thursday’s inaugural meeting of the Worcester County Warriors Against Opiate Addiction at the Ocean Pines Library, the several dozen people each took a few minutes to talk about how drug abuse had affected them on a personal level.
There were plenty of tears.
A local man lost his partner in November to an opiate-related overdose. In September, a mother watched her son be arrested after six years of drug abuse. Another man said he, both of his parents, his brother, and several other family members all struggled with heroin abuse.
That was just the beginning.
A case manager at Diakonia said, out of every 100 calls she receives, between 80 and 90 were related to heroin.
“There are the people that have lost their housing due to their addiction,” she said. “It’s very frustrating for us. We want to house them, but we also want to help them.”
Erin McCormack, a defense attorney based in Salisbury, said he had lost several clients because of heroin addiction.
“I sort of privately complained about the lack of any observed resources out there, and any education programs [or] prevention programs,” he said. “Instead of continuing to complain, maybe I can begin to participate in trying to create some sort of prevention programs and education programs.”
He said he noticed a sharp increase in opioid abuse around 2007.
“All of the sudden, every other client (involved) heroin,” he said. “I don’t know how it got here and it’s so cheap, but it’s here.”
Stacey Robinson, an Ocean Pines resident and a nurse at Sussex Central High School in Delaware, said she often feels like a “Benedict Arnold.”
“I started my career in orthopedics, and I went from feeling like a nurse to feeling like a drug dealer,” she said. “After my third friend entered a rehab program, I decided I couldn’t be on that end of it anymore, and I left my job at the hospital.
“I get really emotional and impassioned about this, because in the communities and the areas that I work with, I see my kids at school whose parents are dead, incarcerated, gone [because of] their issues with addiction,” Robinson continued. “I speak loudly everywhere that I can about this problem, because it’s touched my own family, it’s touched my own friends, and I see it every day.”
She said she carries Naloxone, an anti-overdose drug, in her school, and is often derided for it.
“There have been multiple comments by the people who teach in my school, ‘Why do we have to have that here … it’s a waste of our taxpayer dollars?’” Robinson said. “I want to stab those people with a ballpoint pen in the jugular.
“It’s a disease, and there’s so much information out there that we’re getting every single day that just reinforces that,” she added. “I’m in graduate school to get information and write papers. Everything I’ve ever done has been on this platform. I just am always looking for an opportunity to lend my voice and, hopefully, maybe even bridge some gaps across state lines, because we are louder together than we are alone.”
Robinson added that her young daughter was at home, recovering from having her tonsils removed. When she came out of surgery, the nurse offered her Fentanyl.
“I said no thanks, and, ironically, she’s fine,” she said.
Jake Windsor, from the Worcester County Health Department, said he first “crashed and burned” between 2006 and 2007.
“What happened during that time [was] they cracked down on all the doctors [issuing prescription pain killers],” he said. “Where is there left to go? You go to heroin. While their intent was good, we may not always see, down the road, what this ripple will do.”
Windsor said education was the “number-one, most-important thing” in curbing opiate abuse.
“If you have a loved one … that doesn’t want to get well, you educate yourself. That teaches you about how not to enable – how you can lovingly support someone, but not fuel their addiction,” he said.
“My mom got educated this last go-round, after I relapsed, and that helped her and myself … You can give yourself the tools to keep yourself as well as possible, because this is a family disease.”
He encouraged other parents to similarly talk to their children.
“We cannot be afraid to talk about it, and that is the parents to the children, saying, ‘I noticed that you’ve been groggy lately. Let’s have an open discussion about drugs and alcohol,’ because the same sixth grader that was just playing My Little Pony is now learning about how to shoot up IV drugs in the bathroom,” he said.
Kevin Hassett, a West Ocean City resident, gave his phone number to the entire group.
“We’ve been through the journey,” he said. “If anybody, at the end of this, ever wants to call me and talk about their situation, you can call me any time.”
Hassett said both of his sons got into opiates about eight years ago in Montgomery County. They moved to Worcester County, but problems persisted.
“When you’re in this, you feel like you’re on an island by yourself and you don’t know what to do,” he said. “And there’s no social class, there’s no economic class, there’s no gender class – it affects everybody,” he said.
Both of his sons were sent to a 30-day treatment center in Florida. Within 60 days of returning home, they relapsed. Eventually, feeling like his options were exhausted, he kicked them out of his house.
“By the grace of God, they wanted to try again, and we started the process again, almost two years ago,” he said. After close to year in a treatment center in halfway houses in Florida, they came back completely clean and sober.”
His youngest son, he said, now works for a recovery center in Florida.
Ocean Pines resident Lauren Reinhardt said her eldest son’s addiction to heroin started while he was a student at Stephen Decatur High School.
“He’s been in and out of rehab, he’s overdosed twice in the past six months,” she said. “I have watched him die, every day, a little bit.”
Pam Wilson, also from Ocean Pines, said she moved to the area in 2006, from Anne Arundel County.
“My son died in June last year of an overdose, and he has two young, adult children – my grand children. They live in Anne Arundel County and they’re both addicts,” she said. “My grandson is homeless as well.”
Every month, she said she goes to see her grandson, meeting him in a parking lot and taking him to lunch.
“I just don’t know where to go for help,” she said. “My granddaughter went to court today. I don’t know what the outcome of that was. I just feel helpless.”
Sean Kelley, whose mother Heidi McNeely organized the meeting, was the last to speak. At 26, Kelley said he was a recovering heroin addict, who bounced in and out of treatment facilities for years.
“I kept using and I was tired of it,” he said. “I got a nudge from a judge, got arrested and got a DUI. Because I had a bunch of heroin, they tried to give me distribution of heroin [charges]. A couple of my friends had just gotten 8-10 years on distribution charges, and I was really scared.”
He stayed in a halfway house for six months and got clean, but he “still wasn’t in the right mindset of wanting to be sober,” and relapsed again.
Then, he got on suboxone, a drug used to treat addiction to narcotic pain relievers. Kelley said he eventually weaned himself off that and has been completely clean for three and a half months.
“It’s still a constant struggle every day,” he said. “One of my best friends died about two weeks ago of an overdose. I’ve had countless friends from rehab die of overdoses … I don’t want to see any more of my friends die. I’m here to help in any way I can.”
There were plenty of tears.
A local man lost his partner in November to an opiate-related overdose. In September, a mother watched her son be arrested after six years of drug abuse. Another man said he, both of his parents, his brother, and several other family members all struggled with heroin abuse.
That was just the beginning.
A case manager at Diakonia said, out of every 100 calls she receives, between 80 and 90 were related to heroin.
“There are the people that have lost their housing due to their addiction,” she said. “It’s very frustrating for us. We want to house them, but we also want to help them.”
Erin McCormack, a defense attorney based in Salisbury, said he had lost several clients because of heroin addiction.
“I sort of privately complained about the lack of any observed resources out there, and any education programs [or] prevention programs,” he said. “Instead of continuing to complain, maybe I can begin to participate in trying to create some sort of prevention programs and education programs.”
He said he noticed a sharp increase in opioid abuse around 2007.
“All of the sudden, every other client (involved) heroin,” he said. “I don’t know how it got here and it’s so cheap, but it’s here.”
Stacey Robinson, an Ocean Pines resident and a nurse at Sussex Central High School in Delaware, said she often feels like a “Benedict Arnold.”
“I started my career in orthopedics, and I went from feeling like a nurse to feeling like a drug dealer,” she said. “After my third friend entered a rehab program, I decided I couldn’t be on that end of it anymore, and I left my job at the hospital.
“I get really emotional and impassioned about this, because in the communities and the areas that I work with, I see my kids at school whose parents are dead, incarcerated, gone [because of] their issues with addiction,” Robinson continued. “I speak loudly everywhere that I can about this problem, because it’s touched my own family, it’s touched my own friends, and I see it every day.”
She said she carries Naloxone, an anti-overdose drug, in her school, and is often derided for it.
“There have been multiple comments by the people who teach in my school, ‘Why do we have to have that here … it’s a waste of our taxpayer dollars?’” Robinson said. “I want to stab those people with a ballpoint pen in the jugular.
“It’s a disease, and there’s so much information out there that we’re getting every single day that just reinforces that,” she added. “I’m in graduate school to get information and write papers. Everything I’ve ever done has been on this platform. I just am always looking for an opportunity to lend my voice and, hopefully, maybe even bridge some gaps across state lines, because we are louder together than we are alone.”
Robinson added that her young daughter was at home, recovering from having her tonsils removed. When she came out of surgery, the nurse offered her Fentanyl.
“I said no thanks, and, ironically, she’s fine,” she said.
Jake Windsor, from the Worcester County Health Department, said he first “crashed and burned” between 2006 and 2007.
“What happened during that time [was] they cracked down on all the doctors [issuing prescription pain killers],” he said. “Where is there left to go? You go to heroin. While their intent was good, we may not always see, down the road, what this ripple will do.”
Windsor said education was the “number-one, most-important thing” in curbing opiate abuse.
“If you have a loved one … that doesn’t want to get well, you educate yourself. That teaches you about how not to enable – how you can lovingly support someone, but not fuel their addiction,” he said.
“My mom got educated this last go-round, after I relapsed, and that helped her and myself … You can give yourself the tools to keep yourself as well as possible, because this is a family disease.”
He encouraged other parents to similarly talk to their children.
“We cannot be afraid to talk about it, and that is the parents to the children, saying, ‘I noticed that you’ve been groggy lately. Let’s have an open discussion about drugs and alcohol,’ because the same sixth grader that was just playing My Little Pony is now learning about how to shoot up IV drugs in the bathroom,” he said.
Kevin Hassett, a West Ocean City resident, gave his phone number to the entire group.
“We’ve been through the journey,” he said. “If anybody, at the end of this, ever wants to call me and talk about their situation, you can call me any time.”
Hassett said both of his sons got into opiates about eight years ago in Montgomery County. They moved to Worcester County, but problems persisted.
“When you’re in this, you feel like you’re on an island by yourself and you don’t know what to do,” he said. “And there’s no social class, there’s no economic class, there’s no gender class – it affects everybody,” he said.
Both of his sons were sent to a 30-day treatment center in Florida. Within 60 days of returning home, they relapsed. Eventually, feeling like his options were exhausted, he kicked them out of his house.
“By the grace of God, they wanted to try again, and we started the process again, almost two years ago,” he said. After close to year in a treatment center in halfway houses in Florida, they came back completely clean and sober.”
His youngest son, he said, now works for a recovery center in Florida.
Ocean Pines resident Lauren Reinhardt said her eldest son’s addiction to heroin started while he was a student at Stephen Decatur High School.
“He’s been in and out of rehab, he’s overdosed twice in the past six months,” she said. “I have watched him die, every day, a little bit.”
Pam Wilson, also from Ocean Pines, said she moved to the area in 2006, from Anne Arundel County.
“My son died in June last year of an overdose, and he has two young, adult children – my grand children. They live in Anne Arundel County and they’re both addicts,” she said. “My grandson is homeless as well.”
Every month, she said she goes to see her grandson, meeting him in a parking lot and taking him to lunch.
“I just don’t know where to go for help,” she said. “My granddaughter went to court today. I don’t know what the outcome of that was. I just feel helpless.”
Sean Kelley, whose mother Heidi McNeely organized the meeting, was the last to speak. At 26, Kelley said he was a recovering heroin addict, who bounced in and out of treatment facilities for years.
“I kept using and I was tired of it,” he said. “I got a nudge from a judge, got arrested and got a DUI. Because I had a bunch of heroin, they tried to give me distribution of heroin [charges]. A couple of my friends had just gotten 8-10 years on distribution charges, and I was really scared.”
He stayed in a halfway house for six months and got clean, but he “still wasn’t in the right mindset of wanting to be sober,” and relapsed again.
Then, he got on suboxone, a drug used to treat addiction to narcotic pain relievers. Kelley said he eventually weaned himself off that and has been completely clean for three and a half months.
“It’s still a constant struggle every day,” he said. “One of my best friends died about two weeks ago of an overdose. I’ve had countless friends from rehab die of overdoses … I don’t want to see any more of my friends die. I’m here to help in any way I can.”