Heroin

I finally got a chance to watch “Saving Mr. Banks,” the story of the creation of the Disney film “Mary Poppins.” I’ve dabbled in song-writing for many years, and so especially enjoyed the scenes that depicted the Sherman brothers as “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” came to life. But my favorite song scene was “Just a Spoonful of Sugar,” as they discover the trick of the note going up high on the word ‘down.’ Just when we expect the music to go down, it comes up.

We’re glad when what is expected to come down actually goes up, as in the stock market. But in recent months, I for one have found it quite a relief when prices that we’ve expected to go up (gasoline, for instance) have actually plummeted. I love being able to fill up my gas tank for under $25. Too bad I can’t stockpile gasoline like I do cereal.

A recent Times-Gazette report by Dan Kubacki described another price decrease, not good news for law enforcement. According to Ashland Police Department’s Detective Brian Evans, the price of heroin is dropping. What sold a year ago for up to $60 a half gram can now be obtained for as low as $35, especially if the buyer is buddy-buddy with the seller. That may be good news for those looking to purchase heroin, but not good news for families whose lives have been drastically damaged by the drug use of their kids or parents.  

I wasn’t able to attend the Heroin Summit that the Mental Health and Recovery Board sponsored in November, but I know that many community residents and service providers gathered at Ashland University to hear about the extent of the heroin and opiate problem. Representatives from healthcare, first responders, law enforcement, and prevention and treatment agencies helped to raise awareness of the extent of the problems facing our county – and beyond.

I thought I might write about the facts of heroin: the physiological injury to the body, the suppression of breathing that can result in hypoxia, the opioid receptors in the brain that convert heroin back into morphine, or the increasing tolerance that demands more and more of the drug to achieve the desired high. They’re disturbing consequences, but it’s the faces of heroin that continue to haunt me.

I’ve met some of them in my work in the Salvation Army shelter in Wooster as well as in Ashland. Some are just kids, like the young couple who became estranged from their parents, had their children taken away, and ended up in a homeless shelter. They had both been clean for about four weeks when we last talked, and their conversation was peppered with the phrases common to addictions treatment.   

I sat with one woman who had been using for some time, and I thought the intake worker had made a mistake on her paperwork. Surely the woman in front of me couldn’t be under forty – she looked at least as old as I am, only a few days short of sixty. But no, she was thirty-six. The heroin had robbed her of her youth.

But it’s the collateral damage that truly breaks my heart. The babies who face the symptoms of withdrawal in their first hours of life. The kids who’ve been tossed aside as their mothers chase after their next fix. The parents who’ve mortgaged their retirement to pay for one more treatment program

It’s tempting to think that all heroin addicts are like the derelict living under the bridge or the high school classmate who you could just tell was headed for a life of addiction and decline. But, as NBC’s “Hooked: An American Heroin Epidemic” discovered, heroin doesn’t discriminate. “In recent years, heroin has wound its way into American communities and touched people who wouldn’t have considered using it just a decade ago.” Ashland may be someplace special, but we need to understand that we’re not exempt from the challenges of heroin use. The NBC report was clear: “These days, no place is safe from heroin, not the suburbs, not the country, not the most affluent of neighborhoods.” Not even Ashland.