By John Hyde
For 10 days straight, Brian Coates couldn”t sleep. For three of those days he couldn”t eat, but he was constantly on the toilet anyway, either vomiting or with diarrhea. His body hurt; it felt like his skin was crawling. For the next month and a half, he would struggle to get any sleep at all.
“Withdrawals are a very uncomfortable experience,” Coates said. “I barely survived.”
For five years of his life, Coates, 24, did every drug from marijuana to cocaine. Sent once to jail and twice to Utah County”s Foothill Treatment Center, Coates experienced the terror of heroin withdrawals more than once.
More terrifying, however, was the several times he felt like he was close to death.
“I”ve had some scary experiences with that,” Coates said.
But Coates was lucky. He can personally think of 20 people he grew up with in Springville, some of them his closest friends, who died of heroin overdoses.
And Utah County”s heroin problem extends far beyond Coates” circle of friends. Police and treatment centers both report an increase in heroin use – and heroin-related deaths – in the past few years. In 2005 the Utah County Major Crimes Task Force seized 3,273 grams of heroin, valued over $500,000 – more than the previous four years combined. Over the past five years, the number of patients at Project Reality, a Utah County opioid treatment center, has increased 233 percent.
This recent surge in heroin use has had dire consequences. The majority of drug overdose deaths in the last 18 months are heroin related, said Lt. Mike Forshee, field director for the Utah County Major Crimes Task Force.
In fact, heroin and other opiates claim at least one life a week in Utah County.
At the Foothill Treatment Center, program director Bruce Chandler said the number of heroin overdoses he”s seen has “quadrupled in the last two years.”
In order to combat the problem, Forshee said police have been asked to concentrate their efforts.
“The task force has been asked to put a major emphasis on heroin over the last two years,” Forshee said. One thing they have found – notwithstanding that most overdose deaths occur by young males – is the prevalence of heroin use where one would least expect it.
The common thing to think is that it happens in the ghetto or other parts of town, except one”s own, Forshee said.
“Heroin knows no bounds,” he said. “It”s affluent people: sons of doctors, lawyers and administrators. Anybody and everybody take heroin.”
Part of the problem might be the relative ease of getting the drug.
Although it may be difficult to find more than synthetic opiates in Utah County, patients concur that heroin is readily available in Salt Lake, said Rhonda Busch, program director for Project Reality.
“I had to go to Salt Lake to get it,” Coates remembers. “But in high school, it was easier to get heroin than it was to find someone to buy me beer.”
How easy?
“Go to any pay phone past Sandy all the way up to Ogden, dial the right number and drop a name and you can have heroin or cocaine in 10 minutes,” said Jake Dahl, who also grew up in Utah County and has many friends who have done heroin.
According to police, heroin, which is made from the milky fluid of the unripe seed of the poppy plant, is made outside of the United States in places like Mexico, Columbia and Southeast Asia.
Once it”s here in Utah, it is distributed by specific cartels in Salt Lake City and other areas.
Ironically, heroin is relatively cheap. While painkillers like OxyContin run $80 a dose, a balloon of heroin (about a dose) is only $10, Forshee said. The affordability is another likely reason for heroin”s recent popularity.
“Usually the young people that are doing it get started with pain pills,” Chandler said. “But what costs $80 at a pharmacy they can get for 10 bucks a pop on the street.”
Heroin, once bought, can be taken in various forms, from turning it into a liquid to be injected, or it left as a solid to be smoked or snorted. The street term for smoking heroin is called “chasing the dragon.”
“The fear that is sometimes associated with injecting isn”t there with smoking,” Chandler said. “So kids think, smoke? Yeah, I”ll do that.”
The majority of people dying from heroin overdoses range in age from 14 to 21 years old, police said. It is this age group that isn”t getting the picture about the danger of drugs.
Adults might be to blame for at least some part of the problem.
“I think a lot of it is education,” Forshee said. “There is a lack of education from adults about drugs.”
He said it is these kids who are going from prescription narcotics to heroin – from A to Z – with nothing in between. Generally, users used to go progressively from minor drugs to the more hardcore, while drinking and smoking in between, Forshee said.
Coates got started on heroin in a similar way.
“I had sports injuries and took pain pills,” he said. “But heroin was better and cheaper. A lot of kids did it.”
Both Coates and Dahl said it”s too easy to get these prescription drugs.
“It”s so easy to get pain pills. Right now I could walk into a doctor”s office and not prove anything; just tell them I used OxyContin and that my back is hurting again. …Odds are I”d get the pain pills,” Dahl said. “And there are a lot of crooked pharmacists. I had friends that would buy bottles of stuff from pharmacists.”
While Chandler doesn”t want to point fingers at doctors or pharmacists, he does agree the health system shares part of the blame.
“The health care system is in the ground; it is broken,” he said. “People that are addicted become masters of manipulation. They work the docs.”
Once users are hooked on these drugs they turn to heroin, but find it hard to quit once they are addicted.
Addicts can turn to places like Utah County”s Division of Substance Abuse for help. Assessments are conducted on drug users and are designed to help addicts find the appropriate program within the county that can best assist in rehabilitation. According to Troy Clarke of the Division of Substance Abuse, around 200 appointments are scheduled each month.
A pregnant woman on drugs, for example, would likely be referred to the program Promise or House of Hope. For Coates, it was the Foothill Treatment Center. He got that assignment twice.
“The first time I had a bad attitude, and I was shooting up a week after I got out,” Coates said. “But the second time was better. I was clean from everything for 18 months afterward.”
In the 11 years Chandler has been directing the Foothill center, he has seen miraculous changes in the patients being treated, despite the program only lasting three to six weeks.
“Physically, the changes are night and day,” Chandler said. “They drop 20 years. They come in absolutely hammered by drug use; they might be 27 and look 50.”
Through group, family and individual therapy, Chandler said the program attempts to break the addicts from the “death-style” (as opposed to lifestyle) they are living in. While physical changes come quickly, a complete mental change takes longer.
“Coming to Foothill is kind of like going to a summer church camp. They have this good experience up on a mountain and feel good and want to change,” Chandler said. “But that has to translate to the real world.”
Longer-lasting outpatient programs like Project Reality assist in that transition. Most patients of Project Reality go through a variety of treatments that last an average of two and a half years.
“We have between 15 to 17 new patients entering the program each month,” said Rhonda Busch of Project Reality. “Most come here because they want to get treatment – they are self-referred.”
Project Reality is an opioid dependence treatment center that specializes in methadone maintenance, a drug that helps alleviate withdrawal symptoms.
“Methadone maintenance helps normalize biological and neurological functions,” she said.
Combined with that, the treatment program is designed around making behavioral changes.
“It does take a long term treatment process to make lifestyle changes,” she said. “We have mental health therapists that help those that come in.”
For Coates, the treatments have helped him make permanent changes. Instead of “chasing the dragon”, Coates spends his spare time enjoying his motorcycling and fishing hobbies. More than anything, Coates keeps himself busy.
“If you”re not busy, it”s harder,” Coates said.
For those who are becoming involved in the drug, Coates offers the following advice: Stay away from it.
