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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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