To rock bottom and back
A recovering heroin addict relives the near decade he lost to the drug
COURIER LIFE, J M B G AN. 25–31, 2019 3
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 throw-up 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 life-saving
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 public-health 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 secondhighest
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 sixmonth
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 onceweekly
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.
A battle not yet won
The city’s response to the
opioid crisis has focused primarily
on harm-reduction
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 12