American opioid crisis Part 2

 Today is part 2 of the American opioid crisis

 These are some stories from people who have experienced first hand the effects this crisis is having on the kids over there.

These kids that are taking these fentanyl laced drugs aren’t your high school drop outs or the rejects these are the friendly creative talented kids, the smart ones, the artistic ones, the musical ones, the ones who have futures of being doctors or scientists or high challenging jobs.

One mother said her son switched overnight things he use to love to do he lost interest in. He basically became a recluse lived in his room addicted to his phone and social media. He started to get suspensions and then expelled, grades had slipped, then they discovered he was on drugs – something he had tried once at a friend’s party.

On the 31st December 2019 his mother received a phone call – thinking it was her son when she answered but it wasn’t it was a cop telling her they had found her son unresponsive in a car along with two friends and he was in an ambulance on his way to the hospital. He had overdosed, he was in and out of consciousness, he had taken a pill that was laced with fentanyl. When he left the hospital his mother grounded him saying he couldn’t go out, he asked if he could have a friend over since it was new years. She agreed so he had a friend come over she unbeknownst to the mother had bought over a couple of pills, they said they were going to watch movies in his room she told him to leave the door open ( it’s a good thing she did) because 20 mins later her and her 12yr old son heard a gurgling sound like someone gasping for air, they ran upstairs to his room and found him and the girl overdosing on the bed. They changed colour’s from blue, purple to gray, and had pinpoint eyes. The mother being a nurse understood what was happening and grabbed her narcan kit applying nasal narcan shots to both her son and the girl while her 12yr old called an ambulance. The pills they had taken were both laced with fentanyl. They both survived,her son has currently been sober for 7 months. She says her son is now on numbered days cos she has already done CPR on him twice and he’s just turned 18.

Many kids that are taking these fentanyl laced drugs aren’t waking up. Parents have woken up to many kids who have died overnight. A mother woke up for her sons 21st birthday only to find him dead in his bed, he took a pill laced with fentanyl before bed and overdosed dying in his sleep. At 13 he started taking pills as he was being severely bullied and to make himself feel better. At 18 he was a full blown drug user of opioids. He died on his 21st ( worse 21st birthday ever). His death has destroyed his mother she’s constantly questioning herself over everything ( she’s broken).

In Colorado they are charging a doctor over the death of people in her care, the amount of pain pills she was prescribing her patients ultimately led to their deaths, one patient was prescribed 99 pills a day. Why would someone need 99 pills a day???

These are highly potent and very powerful pain medication she didn’t prescribe them for care she is what is known as a pill doctor. The more pills they prescribe the more money the doctor makes, big pharma companies pay pill doctors big money to prescribe loads of pain medication ( highly addictive pain medication) it gets the user addicted to them and they keep coming back for more and more.

Pill doctors came about when oxicotin first came out, some doctors were making 10k by just prescribing loads of pills. Some pill doctors are still around today in some states and drug users and dealers know exactly where they are to obtain what they need – as the doctors don’t ask any questions and don’t keep a record of the patients coming in.

Keeping a child sober and off or away from fentanyl or drugs laced with fentanyl becomes a full time job because one slip up and your child takes a fentanyl pill and this time they dont survive, or they are revived making it extremely stressful on the parents and other kids in the family or household.

In America there aren’t many residential places for teenagers to go for treatment that are hooked on fentanyl pills or drugs laced with fentanyl, they can’t get into most programs til they are an adult at 21yrs old ( if they even make it to that age). So for many parents it’s extremely stressful for them worrying if today will be the day their child dies of an overdose. They want to give their kids the freedom to grow , to be an adult to have friends and do things with them but they also can’t incase they don’t ever come home again.

Parent’s are now being more invasive constantly checking their kids phones, snapchat, social media, their laptops everything to make sure their child isn’t getting drugs of any kind from anywhere.

More kids are dying at home from overdoses than anywhere else, they are taking these drugs in their bedrooms and dying. Parents need to be super vigilant than ever, cleaning their kids rooms, checking everywhere, keeping their kids bedroom door open and knowing who their friends are and what is going on in their kids lives.

Teens that overdose and recover have brain development delays , due to the damage their brain has gotten through the use of fentanyl and other drugs. There is hope that as the child stays sober longer the brain will heal but only time will tell as this is still a fairly new side effect and not enough study has been done unlike with other drugs which have been around for years.

1 In every 3 families in America has a child or person in their family that has some sort of fentanyl addiction.

1 in every 5 families in America will experience a death of a family member or child from a fentanyl overdose.

1 in every 3 families on America will experience the fentanyl user overdosing more than once in the house.

1 in every 3 kids in America will experience a friend or family member dying from a fentanyl overdose.

1 in every 3 kids in America will experiment and become addicted to fentanyl or fentanyl laced drugs.

Narcan is an opioid reversal agent it has no other use than that. The nasal sprays come in packs of 2 and are 4mg each. It will bring the person overdosing out of the overdose if you get to them in 4mins or less. Narcan is also known as( Naloxone HCI ).

In the last 15 months Fesno county in California has removed 100,000 fentanyl laced tablets off the streets. They are now going after the drug dealers and people responsible for selling these pills to kids. All fentanyl arrests are now federal arrests and suspects will be charged under federal law because of how lethal and dangerous fentanyl is. So far they have arrested 24 suspected drug dealers and suspects responsible for fentanyl related overdoses and deaths.

Fentanyl also comes in patches – these patches are designed to be used for people who require high strength pain relief over a 24 hour period they are only used if people are in severe and persistent pain and have a tolerance to other narcotic pain medication. These patches are 25mg of fentanyl equivalent to 60-90mg of oral morphine. One patch will last the wearer 3 days each patch is placed in a different place to avoid damage to the area of the body. Some drug users will take these patches and add water to them and heat them up to extract all the fentanyl out of them then they inject it directly into themselves. Patches are prescription only and of recent are highly regulated.

Fentanyl is a highly potent synthetic piperidine opioid primarily used as an analgesic, it’s 30-50 times stronger and more potent than heroin and 50-100 times more potent than morphine. Its primary and clinical use is to give pain management for cancer patients and those recovering from painful surgeries.

Safe spaces ( also known as safe injection sites)

These are places off the street that allows drug users to go there to take their drugs. They are issued with clean needles ( if they inject ) or clean equipment and they go to a table and do what they need to do. There are a couple of people that observe the drug users and they are there to administer narcan should anyone start overdosing, they also have test strips for the drug user so they can test their drugs to see if it had fentanyl in it, the strips won’t tell you how much fentanyl is in the drug just if it has it or not.

These spaces are designed to stop the unnecessary calls the ambulance gets for people overdosing on the street requiring Narcan.

The leading cause of death in 18 -45yr olds is fentanyl by 40,000 deaths.

53 kids aged 14-20 died in San Diego in 1 year from fentanyl, 6 out of every 10 pills has a lethal dose of fentanyl.

In America one person dies of a fentanyl overdose every 8 mins and 57 seconds.