Mental health, opioids create massive double storm

“The problem is so massive,” observed Blue Earth County Sheriff Jeff Wersal, “it’s very hard to know where to start.”

 

Waseca County Sheriff Jay Dulas agrees. “It’s like a giant web,” he told the Pioneer. “People are using drugs, so they’re desperate for money. Their paychecks are spent, they’re having health issues. They commit crimes to get money to buy the drugs. They neglect their families, their children, because they’re either spending all their energy trying to get the drugs, or they’re high because they’re using them.

 

“Their children end up in foster care. They get caught up in violence, they have warrants out for their arrest, so they’re trying to avoid being noticed by law enforcement.

 

“Everything is interconnected and it’s hard to know where to begin.”

 

Waseca-based certified peer recovery specialist and operator of “Wecovery,” Marty Johnson points out the connection between mental health and addiction. “It’s often hard to know which one came first–whether people are self-medicating because of their illness, or they’re experiencing symptoms because they’re using a substance.”

 

Ben Johnson, an Owatonna police sergeant and head of the regional drug enforcement task force which covers Waseca County comments, “It’s a train wreck. The victims are the children and families because the users are fueling an addiction with every penny they have.”

 

Safety and health officials are persistently looking for ways they can make a dent in the problem.

 

Task force leader Johnson suggests addicts can seldom understand the depth of their difficulty until they are forced “to face the consequences of their choices.” In other words, they go to jail or prison and must become sober, often for the first time in years.

 

Like similar agencies all over the country, the county public health office receives funding from a national lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies which profited from distributing opioids. According to information shared at an April meeting of the Waseca County Board of Commissioners, the county is scheduled to receive about $50,000 a year for each of the next 15 years.

 

The public health office has already used some of those funds to expand programming which protects children. Furthermore, according to Colin Ayers, the department’s public health educator and planner, the organization persistently looks for ways to understand what needs exist in the community and then find ways to meet them. Ayers mentions that public health works with school counselors, mental health agencies and others to target its efforts, many of which aim to educate young people about the dangers of drug use and encourage them to find more uplifting free time activities.

 

County opioid settlement coordinator Andrea Kronbach explains one objective is to maximize the visibility of services already offered by agencies within the communities, help those agencies collaborate among themselves, and steer people toward the programs which meet their needs and interests. Prevention, of course, is a long-term approach.

 

One very immediate service is that the public health agency, located at 1000 W. Elm in Waseca, provides Narcan for free. Persons who fear a loved one or acquaintance has a chance of overdosing on an opioid–most famously fentanyl, but also OxyContin and heroin–can acquire a dose of this medication which can revive someone experiencing an otherwise fatal episode. The idea is to have it handy for quick use in case an overdose occurs.

 

“Some people haven’t encountered it in their own lives, so they’re probably not aware of the ways drug abuse and mental illness complicate the work of public safety officials,” comments Sheriff Dulas. “But those complications are some of the biggest difficulties we face on a day-to-day basis.”

 

Task force leader Johnson describes undercover investigations which reveal drug deals are much more common than most people are aware. He speaks of setting up surveillance cameras in order to prepare for a drug bust and catching footage of numerous sales taking place in the planned location.

 

“If you see some beat-up cars way off at the edge of a large parking lot, and people going back and forth between them, that’s quite possibly a drug buy,” Johnson says.

 

In addition to the problems they cause for society, Wecovery leader Johnson describes, mental health difficulties and addiction lead to a great deal of personal anguish.

 

“There’s nothing simple about it,” he says regarding entering recovery and then avoiding relapses. “It’s a constant struggle, and everybody stumbles somewhere along the journey.”

 

He told of one individual he is working with who, after having received financial help from parents to attend an expensive treatment program, is now deeply embarrassed to admit she has relapsed and may need to attend it again.

 

During a presentation on the topic held in Mankato on Sept. 17, one recovering user admitted to a long list of thefts and law violations, and revealed she had even collected a dog’s urine to submit for a test meant to determine whether she had violated her parole by using drugs.

 

Another speaker at the same session, recovering addict Kara Richardson who eventually acquired a job helping understand behavior of addicts incarcerated in the county jail, told of a suicide she prevented. A young woman had tried to hang herself using her shirt. “People experiencing withdrawal from fentanyl go through a real crisis.” Richardson named symptoms including complete incontinence, hallucinations, nausea, pain, and sometimes “pseudo-seizures.”

 

“Addicts are victims, too,” said Richardson. “They’ve been pulled into a very dark place and they don’t think there’s any way to come back into the light.”

 

Discussing the activity of drug dealers, Dulas says cartels and the people who work for them view drug users as “numbers,” and suggested that a certain number of deaths among their customers is viewed as an acceptable loss.

 

“But to me, people are the loved ones and family members of the community I serve,” he said. “I take every injury, every death personally.

 

“None of us know what the answer is, but we’re all doing everything we can to cope with the circumstances and find ways to chip away at the problem.”