3
JAN. 27, 2019, BROOKLYN WEEKLY
To rock bottom and back
A recovering heroin addict relives the near decade he lost to the drug
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
Jesse was 18-years-old when
he fi rst overdosed on heroin
at a friend’s apartment.
“I remember waking up
with paramedics around
me. I remember my throwup
on his glass table, and
his mom screaming, wondering
what was going on.
For some reason, I was not
scared. I didn’t think I had
died, I thought it was just
part of the high,” said the
now 23-year-old, who requested
his last name be
withheld so he could speak
freely about his addiction
and its aftermath.
Jesse found out later that
paramedics who rushed to
the scene gave him the lifesaving
narcotic Narcan, a
brand of Naloxone, which
is usually administered as
a nasal spray and quickly
counteracts opioid overdoses.
It was the fi rst time he
had ever taken heroin, a
highly addictive opioid, but
not his fi rst experience with
the class of drug abused by
so many people that the
federal government in 2017
declared the issue a publichealth
emergency.
Three years earlier,
at 15-years-old, Jesse got
hooked on the prescription
painkiller Oxycontin, another
opioid, while still in
high school.
His near-death experience
didn’t keep him off
heroin for long, however,
and he quickly returned to
chasing the high, he said.
“That same night, I
ended up doing heroin
again, within maybe
an hour of getting Narcanned,”
Jesse said. “This
is something that felt right
to me and took me to a
place that I never wanted to
leave.”
The young man — who
is now off opioids and
more than two years into
an addiction-recovery program
— turned to drugs
in his early teens, after he,
his mother, and his sister
moved to Sheepshead Bay
to escape his abusive father,
he said. Following his
family’s move, Jesse fell
in with what he called the
wrong crowd, whose many
older members introduced
him to marijuana, booze,
and Xanax, he said.
But he didn’t think
twice of the company he
kept at the time, assuming
his new group’s live-fast
lifestyle was just a part of
being a teenager.
“At 13, for some reason I
thought it was normal to be
going out every weekend,
not going to school, getting
high on a daily basis. It was
fun for me and it was something
I thought was normal
and seemed right,” he said.
Two years later, his
friends introduced him to
another group of people
who got him into prescription
opioids — and sent his
already tumultuous life careening
off track.
“That’s when my whole
world collapsed. I stopped
going to school and
dropped out. I started fi nding
more ways to get the
drugs I wanted. It was an
adventure, it wasn’t even
an addiction, it was something
I was constantly
chasing, I was constantly
chasing the same thing
that I got the fi rst time,
and I never seemed to get
it,” he said.
Jesse’s downward spiral
continued until he got
busted on a couple of burglary
charges and landed
in jail, where he met the
friend and fellow addict
who introduced him to
heroin — and whose house
he would later almost die
in on the night of his fi rst
overdose.
He’s not alone
Stories like Jesse’s have
become all too familiar in
the borough — and across
New York City — over the
last decade.
In 2017, 1,487 city residents
died from unintentional
drug overdoses — 62
more than in 2016, marking
the seventh year in a
row that overdose deaths
increased citywide, according
to the Department
of Health’s most recent annual
statistics .
More than eight out of
every 10 of those deaths involved
an opioid, with the
synthetic pharmaceutical
opioid Fentanyl — which
the agency says is 50 to 100
times stronger than morphine,
and often mixed
with other drugs such as cocaine
— accounting for 842
overdose deaths that year,
followed by heroin and cocaine,
the data shows.
Some 359 of those who
died by overdoses were
from Brooklyn, which
counted the second-highest
number of such deaths in
2017, with only the Bronx
home to more.
Together, Coney Island,
Brighton Beach, Manhattan
Beach, and Jesse’s
home of Sheepshead Bay
racked up higher-than-average
overdose deaths that
year, with an average of
22.3 fatal incidents occurring
among every 100,000
residents of those neighborhoods,
compared to an average
of 21.2 deaths among
every 100,000 residents of
other neighborhoods citywide,
the statistics show.
Other neighborhoods with
above-average overdose
death rates include Williamsburg,
Bushwick, and
East New York.
The Health Department’s
provisional fi gures
for the fi rst half of 2018
show that overdose-death
rates are similar to those
in 2017, but the number
is likely to increase due
to standard delays in determining
some causes of
deaths, according to a researcher
with the agency.
“There’s always a lag
because of toxicology, they
need to confi rm if it was
an opioid overdose or not,”
said Denise Paone, the director
of research and development
in the agency’s
Bureau of Alcohol and
Drug Use.
Reclaiming his life
Following his burglary
bust, Jesse faced more time
in jail because drug tests
he took on visits with his
parole offi cer kept coming
back positive. But his lawyer
offered him a way out,
he said, by suggesting he
enter rehab.
“He said, ‘Listen, you’re
facing a lot of time in jail,
but knowing that you keep
coming up dirty at your
probation offi cer, you obviously
need help and guidance,
you need an opportunity,’
” Jesse said.
The attorney advised
his client to enroll in a rehab
program with Dynamic
Youth Community, which
helps 16- to 25-year-olds recover
from alcohol and substance
addiction through
group and family therapy,
counseling, and vocational
and educational training
at facilities in Sheepshead
Bay and upstate.
Jesse ultimately left
Brooklyn to spend a year at
the organization’s upstate
facility — a crucial move,
according to Dynamic
Youth Community’s intake
director, who said getting
people in recovery out of
their traditional environments
for an extended period
of time is critical to
breaking their addictions.
“Getting clean is one
challenge, staying clean
is really another. And we
have a way to get people out
of the city,” said Marina
Nakhla.
He followed his time
upstate with three local
six-month outpatient-aftercare
programs — the fi rst
of which required him to
visit Dynamic Youth Community’s
Sheepshead Bay
center on Coney Island
Avenue fi ve days a week,
with the second requiring
thrice-weekly visits, and
the third, which he is currently
fi nishing up, requiring
once-weekly visits.
During his time in rehab,
Jesse attended counseling
sessions with his
peers and his family, while
helping out with jobs at
both the local and upstate
centers, where he also
spent time studying to get
his General Education Development
diploma.
He received his fair
share of support from fellow
addicts, according to
Nakhla, who said program
participants can forge deep
connections over their often
shared experiences.
“They’re able to relate
with and support each
other as they’re coming
into treatment, they really
understand each other,”
she said.
And Jesse credited that
support with helping him
overcome insecurities and
fears related to his treatment.
“All the guidance and
help that I got through my
peers, knowing that I have
help, through my family,
and everybody that’s
been there for me. I would
be there and wake up every
day with a purpose,
whether it’s going to work,
going to Dynamic, I feel
like I have a purpose,” he
said.
Battle not yet won
The city’s response to
the opioid crisis has focused
primarily on harmreduction
measures, including
efforts to substitute
more addictive strains of
the drug with less harmful
opioids such as Buprenorphine
or Methadone , abstinence
based rehabilitation,
referrals to clean needleexchange
programs , and
Naloxone trainings —
which leaders of the local
public-hospital system and
Borough President Adams
have hosted across the borough.
And last May , Mayor
DeBlasio announced his
intention to open one of
the country’s fi rst govern-
DEADLY CLOSE: Jesse fi rst overdosed on heroin when he was 18,
and took the highly addictive drug again that same night. He has
since recovered from his addiction through a two-and-a-half year
rehab program. Photo by Trey Pentecost
Continued on page 4