Heroin’s Harrowing Reality

The situation in Cabell County, West Virginia, is worse than initially thought. Officials late Thursday updated the already unprecedented number of drug overdoses this week in the Huntington, West Virginia, area, from 26 and no deaths — to 28 and one death, the local NBC affiliate reported. And that was just in one four-hour time span.

Police and other officials believe the overdoses were due to a batch of heroin laced with something wildly potent — and they’re not sure they’ve seen the end of it.

“We have communities that are deathly against this and say we should throw everyone in jail or let them die. We don’t think that’s the answer,” said one physician.

“We’re not sure what it was laced with,” said Michael Kilkenney, M.D., physician director of the Cabell-Huntington County Health Department. “We have historical evidence of what’s occurred in the community before, and a lot of that has been fentanyl. We don’t know what this particular batch contained — or if it was just one batch. What we understand from the community is that there were active drug dealers in the area, and shortly after this flurry of activity there were these overdoses. We suspect a particular tainted batch is the fault here, but we can’t say that without more conclusive evidence.”

The community of Huntington, like many others across the country, knows it has a drug problem — a drug epidemic, actually, Kilkenney told LifeZette. But Huntington’s mayor, fire department, EMS, county health officials, the schools, and others have come together over the past year because of it in a way they never have before.

A brand new “harm reduction program” includes community education initiatives on drug abuse, safe injection techniques, the risks of injecting drugs, disease prevention, overdose prevention, instruction on treatment with naloxone, training recovery coaches, and avenues for recovery for users — as well as a new syringe exchange program.

Related: A Letter to My Heroin Addict Daughter

The goal, Kilkenny said, is to “love addicts out of this problem — because hate isn’t working.”

“We have communities around here that are deathly against this and say we should throw everyone in jail or let them die. We don’t think that’s the answer. We’ve been trying to arrest these people the last 40 years. Every family in the community is suffering from this disease — we all have friends, family members, affected. That’s why we’re committed.”

He said within the past year, in a town of 46,000, the syringe exchange has already served 1,700 people. And “that’s a lot,” he said. In addition, overdose deaths have significantly been reduced, at least through the first half of the year.

“We’ve been able to educate a lot of IV drug users about the risk of overdose and how to manage an overdose. Now, instead of dragging somebody out on the lawn and abandoning them to die, they’ll call 911. We’ve also gotten all of our first responders up to speed on overdose treatment and they’ve become very good at it.”

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Kilkenney swears the heroin problem they’re seeing now, as in many other places, is rooted in prescription drug abuse from years past and what he calls misguided medical management. Responsible prescribing has been the message Cabell County has hammered home over the past several years — but it’s not enough.

“I’ve seen three generations of people with a great deal of suffering — the average age of people in our syringe exchange program is 38 years old. They didn’t learn that at 38. They learned that at 13, 16, or 18 when their parents were afflicted. Now they have their own kids in school, and those kids are afflicted. We are all going to die if we don’t correct our situation — maybe that’s too melodramatic,” added Kilkenney. “But every person in our community is touched by this, and so every person has to be involved in fixing it.”

“We want them back with their families and back in society.”

Obviously, the efforts haven’t stopped the problem yet. But they did allow first responders to address 28 overdoses in just a four-hour window with fewer deaths than they might have seen even a year ago.

“We are building capacity for treatment as one of our more long-term goals — but you can’t go into treatment if you’re dead,” said Kilkenney bluntly. “We have to keep people alive. We want them to stay alive and disease free. HIV and Hepatitis C — that’s a burden they don’t need to carry into their recovered life. We want to expand recovery. We want them back with their families and back in society. Being able to save that life is one of the initial steps … but there are a lot more steps that need to be taken.”

Opioids across the nation — primarily prescription pain relievers and heroin — were involved in 28,647 deaths in 2014, the most recent year statistics are available. Opioid overdoses have quadrupled since 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The five states with the highest rates of death due to drug overdose in 2014 were West Virginia, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Kentucky, and Ohio.

In addition, Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia all saw statistically significant increases from 2013 to 2014.