Community holds drug addiction forum focusing on heroin

BY ERIKA NORTON
MONROE — For Peter Lazier, the pain from losing his son to heroin addiction will always be there. He and others shared their stories at a Monroe-Woodbury Community Drug Addiction Forum Tuesday night in the high school auditorium, an effort by the school and police department to engage in conversation with parents and the community about drugs.
“This kind of pain doesn’t go away,” Lazier said. “It is with me when I wake, in the afternoon, when I go to bed, when I wake up at 2 a.m.”
Lazier’s son Ryan began experimenting with marijuana and alcohol at age 13, eventually progressing to prescription pain medication and onto heroin. He and his wife spent the last four years of Ryan’s life trying to help him get well, but after countless rehab centers and halfway houses, he ended up living on the streets in Florida state.
Just before Ryan was to return to another rehab facility, he decided to get high one more time. He had no money and tried to grab a bag from his dealer, but while trying to get away the drug dealer shot him in the back of the head. He died four days later.
Lazier, who now works with an organization called Shatterproof to share his story, left the audience members, ranging from middle schoolers to elderly couples, with this message:
“Kids, please listen. Parents, talk to your kids, get information. When we used tough love, that’s when it go toughest and that’s when we lost him. So parents, tell your kids you love them everyday, you don’t know when it could be the last.”
Major increase in Monroe areaAccording to Monroe Detective Patrick Tenaglia, the department has been seeing a lot of overdoses in the community. People are dying from using heroin and fentanyl, a synthetic and much more potent form of heroin where even a little bit can be a deadly dose.
They’ve also been successfully using Narcan, an injection that can revive those experiencing an overdose.
“Unfortunately,” Tenaglia said, “we’ve also had scenarios where we’ve used Narcan on an individual and then a week later, we’re responding to the same house because they’ve overdosed.”
He said some have even told them that they continue to use, counting on their Narcan to save them if they overdose.
Many users are beginning with prescription painkillers and moving on to heroin because it’s has the same effect, but is a lot cheaper, Tenaglia said. While an oxycodone pill on the street is $40 to $80, heroin is $10 a bag.
There is also a strong relationship between addiction and criminal activity. To support the habit, Tenaglia said they are seeing people stealing from their family members, and even conducting robberies and burglaries.
What drugs do to the brainJim Conklin, executive director of the Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Council of Orange County, talked about what drugs do to the brain and why those with an addiction act the way they do.
A certain level of dopamine, a compound found in the brain, is necessary for people to get out of bed in the morning, get showered and get to work, he said. That level is about 50 nanograms/deciliter.
If someone has the best day ever, Conklin said, for example, they have zero percent body fat, just won the lottery and sitting on a beach, they’re dopamine level may be at 98. The best meal they ever had, 95, the best sex they ever had, 94.
When someone uses a drug like methamphetamine, that person’s dopamine level spikes to 1,200. Heroin spikes dopamine to 950, cocaine to 900, marijuana to 700, and nicotine to 500.
“That part of the brain is what’s responsible for fight or flight, procreation, seeking food and water and safety,” Conklin said. “What happens is those dopamine spikes cause the drug to move up that list. The drug is not as important as those things in the beginning, but as that person uses it more and more, it goes higher and higher up the list. The drug basically replaces the number one position on the list of survival for the person who becomes dependent on it.”
The reason they can’t “just quit,” Conklin said, is because the need for the substance at that point replaces the need for food or water.
For a lot of young people, Conklin said they see prescription opiates as a safer alternative because they come from a pharmacy and are prescribed from a doctor. Sometimes they even think that their parents wouldn’t mind because it’s coming from that familiar brown bottle with a white cap with a family member’s name on the bottle or a family doctor they trust.
And while most of the population can use pain medication after an injury and then move on, about eight to 10 percent of the population do not and experience a substance use dependency. Some people have higher trigger points based on their biology, Conklin said, so the more they use a substance, they reach that trigger point and now have an addiction problem.
Road to recovery But recovery is possible, which is why Assistant Principal Wilson Castro said they are having forums and are planning other events in the future. He said he wants the community to know the district is here to help the community and it’s students, so it is a safe place for people to ask for help for themselves or others they are worried about.
For example, Castro said that that day, they had a student begin to get the help they need because a student came to them, letting them know what was happening.
Dana, a Monroe-Woodbury graduate, shared her story of recovery. Similarly to Ryan Lazier, she said she began experimenting with alcohol and drugs at a young age for fun, but also to self medicate.
“At the end of the day,” she said, “what always caused me to use drugs is how I felt about myself.”
While drugs weren’t interfering in her life in middle school, when she reached high school, she nearly didn’t graduate. She was offered a full ride to a college, but decided to stay in the area because that’s where her drugs were.
In her mind, Dana said, she still didn’t think she was an addict because she got a job, a car, an apartment and a boyfriend. One day, two of her friends committed suicide, jumping off the George Washington bridge because of the shame they felt about their addiction.
Her life quickly spiralled out of control. She lost her job because they found out she had been stealing from them the whole time to support her habit. She was arrested three times.
The third time she went to jail for two months and then into a 30 day rehab program. Dana called jail “a gift” because she looked back on her life and realized she wanted to change.
She went to an outpatient program, made new friends, and got involved in drug court, which she recently successfully completed. While her road to recovery has been rocky, she said she has been “showered with love” by people willing to help her stay with them and support her.
Her friend even threw her a surprise 26th birthday party, something small, she admitted, but something she at one point never thought possible.
“The life I have today is beautiful because of what’s happened to me and in spite of what’s happened to me,” Dana said. “It’s really amazing.”