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Thursday, June 23, 2016
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com NEWS
likely to unintentionally overdose
on heroin — with an average age of
overdose of 32 — while unintentional
prescription opioid overdoses were
more common among older white
women, with an average age of 51.
There is no discernible set of risk
factors — such as socioeconomic
status, parental occupation or a
familial history of drug use — that
can be tied to the recent chain of
overdoses. Often, a child is injured
in a sport or at a park and needs
some kind of surgery. Years later,
they continue an addiction to the
painkiller first prescribed to them
following the operation.
As the number of fatal overdoses
in young adults and children spiked
in
Washtenaw
County,
Radzik
started asking questions — and
parents tended to repeat a similar
narrative.
“Every story that I heard was the
same: that their child had a sports
injury and was given Vicodin or
Oxycontin or in a car crash,” Radzik
said. “Soon they’re addicted; they’re
buying pills off the street.”
Marr’s story follows a similar path
after her surgery. She described her
childhood with sentimentality: She
loved Girl Scouts, did gymnastics,
weathered her parents’ divorce, but
says she felt normal as a kid. After
addiction found its way into her life,
she said, everything changed. Living
mostly out of her car, she felt tired,
miserable and alone.
“Addiction for me was a very
isolating experience, and I was
really ashamed of it,” Marr said.
“It was like it just took over my life
and my mind, and I really was up
and running with opioids. I truly
believed I was the only heroin addict
in Ann Arbor.”
New policies and combative
treatments offer some hope, though.
In the first five months of officers
carrying Naloxone in 2014, the
Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office
reported officers’ use of the drug
saved 11 lives.
According to Radzik, the number
has risen to 26 since last December.
Naloxone could have saved even
more lives back when the number
of overdoses first peaked in 2012,
she said, but the department had to
wait for a bill allowing non-medical
personnel to administer the drug.
The sheriff office’s supply is
currently funded by a grant that
was facilitated by the Washtenaw
Opioid Project, a community-based
collaborative effort organized in
July 2013 as part of the Washtenaw
Health Initiative. Their aim is to
improve
access
to
coordinated
care for the county’s low-income,
uninsured and Medicaid-supported
populations. The grant is currently
funding the replacements for the
office’s now-depleted supply of the
Naloxone.
In the sheriff’s office, police are
trained to administer Naloxone
regardless of whether or not they
can confirm the user took an opioid,
as Naloxone has no harmful effects
to an individual not experiencing
an overdose. They are trained to
administer another dose within five
minutes of the first because the drug
could wear off and the victim could
resume overdose effects. Inserted
through the nose, Naloxone could
stay active in the body between 30 to
90 minutes, depending on a person’s
metabolism, while opioids can last
up to two hours.
University response
While marijuana and prescription
drug use have been consistent issues
on campus, hard drug use has been
climbing at the University as well,
according to a 2015 report, and
administrators across a number
of campus units are beginning to
respond to the recent spike.
Last December, the University
Injury Center held an Opioid
Overdose
Summit
to
educate
researchers, community members
and
those
involved
in
the
pharmaceutical field on current
prescription drug opioid research,
to prevent overdose mortality and
to discuss other unresolved issues.
Central
Student
Government
also tried to raise awareness by
launching
a
prescription
drug
misuse campaign during the winter
2016 semester.
The
University’s
Division
of
Public
Safety
and
Security
is
adding additional officer training
as well. DPSS spokeswoman Diane
Brown said, beginning in July, all
University police officers, including
housing security officers, will have
access to and will be trained in the
deployment of the Naloxone.
“We are right now finishing up
our week-long training on a variety
of subjects,” Brown said. “It takes us
several weeks for us to be able to take
our whole group of people and put
them in training. We do it in rounds,
and so, by the end of the month, we
will have finished the last of those
rounds.”
Brown said witnessing an opioid
overdose could be difficult to discern
right away, which is why the training
is so important.
“When you come upon somebody,
there’s a wide variety of things,
particularly if they’re unconscious,
which overdose tends to apply,”
Brown said. “But then there’s the
situations where people are going
into an unconscious state from a
drug interaction, and sometimes
those can be a wide variety of
responses based on the person.”
Withdrawal and the road to
recovery
Radzik
said
purchasing
prescription opioids at the street
level could range from $30 to $50
in some cases, so users often turn
to cheaper methods of substance
abuse.
Marr made the switch to heroin
after several years of abusing
Vicodin.
“I
didn’t
seek
out
heroin.
Somebody proposed it to me when
I complained that Vicodin wasn’t
doing it for me anymore,” Marr said.
“I’m shocked today to hear how easy
it is to come by drugs; many times
it was people that I already knew,
friends. When I made the transition
from
opioid-based
prescriptions
to heroin, I would snort it, but that
became less and less effective — I
built a tolerance to it — so I resorted
to taking it intravenously.”
Marr said she had a dealer and
would take trips to Detroit, though
she said such trips are not necessary,
as she claims heroin is available for
sale in Washtenaw County, including
Ann Arbor.
Radzik said the user, is in many
cases, not the only one who suffers,
as families bear much of the burden
financially and otherwise.
“When a family loses a child to
heroin, they have to say, ‘But they
were such a good kid,’ ” Radzik
said. “When a family loses a child to
cancer, they don’t have to say that.”
Marr described how her addiction
began to take over her life.
“I needed more and more of it to
not feel sick,” Marr said. “It wasn’t
about getting high anymore. I need
it to function, not just emotionally
but physically.”
Marr said she never feared
anything more than the feeling of
withdrawal.
“My bones felt like glass,” Marry
said. “I felt sick to my soul, crawling
out of my skin — I felt, I’m not sure
how to describe it. You’re hot and
cold at the same time. You can’t sit
still, but you feel even sicker trying
to get up and pace around. That is
a contributing factor as to why I’m
still in recovery. I don’t ever want to
do that again. It’s awful.”
During her time suffering from
heroin addiction, Marr was almost
entirely isolated from the support
of her family and friends, whom she
kept in the dark about her condition,
mostly because she was afraid they
would associate her with the stigma
attached to drug addicts.
“I mostly hid it from my friends,”
Marr said. “Addiction for me was a
very isolating experience, and I was
really ashamed of it. Being from Ann
Arbor, there are certain substances
that carry less of a stigma.”
Marr said she relocated to a
halfway house in Brighton after
several months of treatment before
she moved back to a transitional
home in Ann Arbor.
Along with the Brighton Center
for Recovery, which helped Marr
recover from her addiction, there
are dozens of other recovery efforts
in the area. Besides the Washtenaw
Recovery Advocacy Project, there
is The Home of New Vision, which
provides
treatment,
transitional
housing,
counseling
and
peer
support services throughout the
county.
Matt Statman is the program
manager for the University branch
of the Collegiate Recovery Program,
a nationwide initiative that offers
non-clinical support to students in
recovery from alcohol or other drug
problems. The program launched
at the University in 2012 as part of
Wolverine Wellness — a section of
the University Health System aimed
at supporting and promoting healthy
behaviors related to alcohol, drugs
and sexual health — and is funded by
student health fees.
“We are really focused on social
support, helping students that are
in recovery support each other,”
Statman said. “Everyone knows
SINDUJA KILARU/Daily
Eastern Michigan University police officer Mike Anderson practices administering Naloxone at EMU on Wednesday.
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