EVERY DAY, A particular kind of patient comes in to Olympic Medical Center: a man or woman using heroin.
Chief Nursing Officer Lorraine Wall reports this daily occurrence.
All too often, these patients arrive following an overdose. They’re the lucky ones, having survived the trip to the emergency room.
Across town at the Clallam County jail, nurse Julia Keegan contends with the same crisis. She reports that one in five of the inmates she cares for displays the sweating, nausea and general misery of heroin withdrawal.
In Jefferson County, the numbers are lower: Joyce Cardinal, chief nursing officer at Jefferson Healthcare, counted 10 heroin overdose cases so far this year.
“We see two to three people a month in various stages of withdrawal,” added Steve Richmond, Jefferson County jail superintendent.
This is an increase, he added, a problem that is “not going away anytime soon.”
Last year, Clallam County had 13 opiate-related deaths while Jefferson County had one, according to the state Department of Health. Opiates include heroin and prescription medication such as Oxycodone.
Clallam’s number is the highest per capita opiate-related death rate in the state, noted Dr. Tom Locke, public health officer for both North Olympic Peninsula counties.
Daniel Doran is a Port Angeles resident who got hooked on heroin in his 20s and wound up in the ER last year.
A festering abscess in his arm, the limb into which he shot the drug, put him there. It took six days before he got out of the hospital.
A 2006 graduate of Port Angeles High School, Doran was into alcohol, marijuana and pain pills first.
The pills got harder to get. Like many who started out with a prescription, Doran switched to the much harder substance.
After the abscess, his parents asked him to get help. And Doran, wanting badly to get out of the deep hole heroin had put him in, went to a detox center in Aberdeen, then returned home for treatment at Reflections Counseling in Port Angeles.
Doran is clean now, has been since Oct. 10, 2013.
He graduated from Reflections, went to Narcotics Anonymous meetings, took part in the Celebrate Recovery program at the Lighthouse Church in Port Angeles and has been working two jobs: at First Street Haven and at the new inpatient drug treatment center in Port Angeles.
At 26, Doran counts himself blessed. He’s a survivor of an epidemic that has spread across the United States, beyond the inner city and into quiet, rural places like the Peninsula.
Locke, for his part, doesn’t speculate on the Clallam-versus-Jefferson disparity in heroin use. He is instead seeking to save the lives of overdose victims.
Naloxone
Locke wants Naloxone, an antidote to heroin overdose, to be more readily available. Paramedics carry it now; Locke is an advocate of local pharmacies providing it confidentially.
Naloxone can avert death for someone who has overdosed, Locke said, if a family member or housemate has it on hand.
But there are people who don’t believe the antidote should be easily procured. There are those who ask Locke: “If someone is so self-destructive as to inject heroin, why don’t we let them die?”
His response: Everyone deserves a second chance.
Addiction “is a treatable condition. It’s a horrible and dangerous detour,” Locke said, “but it shouldn’t be a death sentence.”
Sparks other crime
Heroin’s effects are felt across the community. The drug has a way of driving up the crime rate in homes and businesses, Port Angeles Deputy Police Chief Brian Smith said, as addicts break in to steal cash and valuables, anything they can sell.
An addict might get behind the wheel of a car, then pass out while the car veers onto a sidewalk and crashes into power pole, as in one case Smith saw.
As for burglaries, “we can’t show you cases that are not tied to drug addiction,” he said.
Dr. Art Tordini, a reserve deputy with the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office and the county jail’s physician, has observed this, too.
It used to be that when a chain saw was stolen, it was because the thief wanted a chain saw, Tordini said, but “now, it’s stolen to sell for drug money.”
$200 a gram
Heroin sells for $200 a gram, and it’s not unusual for a user to inject a gram a day, noted Sgt. Jason Viada, a member of the Olympic Peninsula Narcotics Enforcement Team, or OPNET.
He’s also known of users shooting up 2 grams or more per day.
OPNET’s mission is to arrest dealers, and so far this year, the agency has investigated 25 cases involving heroin arrests, with the majority in Clallam County.
One OPNET investigation resulted in the arrest of two Port Angeles residents allegedly carrying 97 grams of heroin, or about $194,000 worth.
Link to prescription drugs
Both Viada and Locke see an all-too-common connection between heroin and prescription pain pills.
“The ubiquitous sad story seems to be a person was injured, they were prescribed Oxycodone, they became addicted, they ran out, they switched to heroin,” Viada said.
“There was an explosion of prescription drugs that hit the street, [of pills] that were heavily promoted by their manufacturers. So their use skyrocketed in the last 10 to 15 years,” Locke added.
But then as patients built up tolerances to those drugs and doctors stopped prescribing them as readily, people turned to the illegal opiate.
All across Clallam and Jefferson counties, the risk factors persist, Locke said: the availability of heroin combined with the pervasive use of prescription pain medicine.
People may switch from taking pills to smoking or snorting the drug, but injecting it has the strongest effect.
And as people like Doran and Turner know, heroin has the power to destroy a life.
Doran wants to give his fellow recovering addicts one key message: You’re not alone.
“For so long, I had no hope,” he said.
But Doran found support from family, from therapists and from people at NA — which stands for Narcotics Anonymous as well as “never alone,” he said.
His employers have also given him a second chance. Doran had worked at First Street Haven before going into detox and was able to get his job back afterward.
Shifts there and at the treatment center have meant a 50-hour workweek, but Doran is fine with that.
“I’m just happy to be clean. I’m embracing the lifestyle,” he said, looking like a burden had been lifted from his broad shoulders.
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NEXT, ON MONDAY: Needle exchange programs see more activity in Clallam, Jefferson counties; recovering addicts tell of their journeys.
Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
