Heroin Epidemic: Hits Close to Home
The heroin epidemic isn’t just a national problem, it’s hitting right here in the valley.
A few local addiction counselors are all saying the same thing: addiction doesn’t discriminate.
While there are different cases for how people get hooked on the drug, one thing is clear: heroin is hitting here.
Chuck Bergeson has been an addiction drug counselor for five years.
But just within the past year he’s never seen opiate use so high.
“Addiction has really never discriminated. 10 percent of homeless people have addictions, 10 percent of lawyers have addictions, 10 percent of people in the medical field have addictions,” says Prairie St. John’s Addiction Counselor, Chuck Bergeson.
While there’re multiple reasons behind the increase, prescription drugs are leading the way.
“We get a lot of people in here that may have had surgery and then got hooked on the pain meds and it just progressed and progressed,” says Share House Addiction Counselor, Amanda Crockett.
Once someone is hooked on opiates keeping that high becomes increasingly more expensive.
The fix? Heroin.
“Then a lot of people get started on the opiate use and then they switch to heroin,” says Crockett.
“People who use illicit street drugs, may use heroin because it’s cheaper,” says Bergeson.
“You can’t just get heroin anywhere on the streets it does stay within social circles. But those social circles are getting younger and younger.”
Think back to the 80s, a time when sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll were the norm.
“And then after a lot of people started dying from this drug it was kind of deemed to be bad so the use went back,” says Bergeson.
A time that many young people don’t really remember.
“And then after a lot of people started dying from this drug it was kind of deemed to be bad so the use went back,” says Bergeson.
A time that many young people don’t really remember.
“They don’t have the connection with the history of heroin where a lot of famous people back in the early 80s were dying from that drug they don’t know who those people are,” says Bergeson.
Bergeson tells me even just one hit of heroin can kill you.
According to the CDC, 100 people die from drug overdoses every day in the U.S.
