<\/p>\n
Almost a year ago, 21-year-old Shane Gibson died in Durango, where he had grown up. In January, the son of U.S. Sen. Mark Udall was arrested on charges of heroin possession. On Feb. 2, actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was discovered dead in his New York apartment.<\/p>\n
These aren\u2019t isolated incidents: Heroin is making a comeback. Southwest Colorado is no exception.<\/p>\n
\u201cHeroin exists like it never has before. We have definitely seen an increase,\u201d said Pat Downs, director of the Southwest Drug Task Force. \u201cEven three years ago, we never used to see this.\u201d<\/p>\n
The heroin \u2013 largely brown and black tar \u2013 is coming here from Mexico, said Tim Gorman, director of Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas, which coordinates federal, state and local drug-enforcement efforts.<\/p>\n
But law enforcement and health-care experts say demand for heroin is surging because an explosion in prescription painkillers such as Percocet, Vicodin, OxyContin and oxycodone has primed Coloradans for opiate dependency. Downs said new regulations have made it more difficult to obtain the prescription pills, so people have turned to heroin for their opiate need.<\/p>\n
According to death certificates filed with the Colorado Department of Health and Environment, heroin caused 22 deaths in 2004 compared with 91 in 2012.<\/p>\n
The mortalities dovetail with prescription opioid use, which has shot up nationally in recent years.<\/p>\n
Prescription painkillers cast a large shadow over La Plata County, said Dr. Jack McManus, medical director of Mercy Regional Medical Center\u2019s emergency department.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you had to rank the drug problems in our community, alcohol is number one, and prescription painkillers are number two,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Daniel Thomas, an addiction counselor at Detox of La Plata County, said he sees a spectrum of people go to detox trying to withdraw from heroin.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have seen 18-year-olds, I\u2019ve seen 50-year-olds, from all walks of life, poor people and wealthy people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
They started coming in regularly in the last 12 months, he added.<\/p>\n
Shane\u2019s story<\/p>\n
In junior high school, Shane Gibson played basketball and football. He was well-liked, his mother, Debra, said, and had no trouble making friends, though like many young people, he struggled with adolescent insecurities and self-doubt.<\/p>\n
The summer after eighth grade, he experimented with marijuana and then with prescription painkillers.<\/p>\n
\u201cAddiction usually starts very innocently: Friends\u2019 parents have OxyContin in their medicine cabinet, and it seems safe because it\u2019s a prescription from a doctor. \u2018My dad takes this,\u2019 and they\u2019re curious. Kids think they are invincible,\u201d Debra Gibson said. \u201cIt\u2019s only down the tunnel that you can see the cause and effect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shane\u2019s prescription painkiller addiction became full-blown while he was a young teenager, when such pills still were cheap and plentiful.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really didn\u2019t know he had a drug problem,\u201d his mother said.<\/p>\n
Then the price for prescription painkillers increased, and prescriptions were harder to obtain.<\/p>\n
Shane turned to heroin.<\/p>\n
Debra Gibson recalls, with rueful hindsight, how she unknowingly watched her son withdraw on the family\u2019s couch, how she took him to the emergency room for baffling ailments such as being out of breath. She remembers how, when Shane\u2019s heroin problem started dominating their lives, she tried sending him to in-patient rehabilitation facilities, kicking him out of the house \u2013 the relief she felt when he spent five days in jail.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt a kind of peace because I knew he was safe there,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was just this horrible life that he had, like this demon that was always there. We had such a hard time understanding what was wrong with Shane \u2013 how he went from healthy kid to always having the flu.\u201d<\/p>\n
The horror of Debra Gibson\u2019s tale is familiar to parents of addicts, who, like desperate chemists, struggle to find the elusive combination of support, boundaries and tough love that saves their child\u2019s life. But the brain\u2019s physical need for the substance it is addicted to often proves more powerful than love \u2013 even a mother\u2019s love for her son, or a son\u2019s strong desire to live.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople don\u2019t want to think that about Durango. We all have our blinders on. We think it won\u2019t happen to our kids,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Increasingly, the victims of heroin look like Shane: In the first decade of this century, heroin deaths of teenagers and young adults tripled.<\/p>\n
In America, the unprecedented increase in overdose deaths parallels a 300 percent increase in the sale of prescription painkillers since 1999.<\/p>\n
Gorman, with Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas, said increasing rates of heroin use are a grim function of supply and demand, and an unforeseen consequence of tightening the rules of prescription opioids.<\/p>\n
He said prescription painkillers are expensive relative to heroin, spurring opiate addicts to graduate to the illicit drug.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy spend $80 on a prescription when you can get high for $30?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Drug court<\/p>\n
At drug court in the La Plata County Courthouse on Monday evening, men and women in prison garb shuffled toward their seats in shackles before a gallery packed with onlookers. There, the face of drug addiction was young, human and creased with effort. Judge Martha Minot, who presided, ran the proceedings with an eagle eye for detail and unrelenting good cheer, asking whether one young woman was making enough time for herself, telling another young man he\u2019d soon get into a treatment program.<\/p>\n
Minot said drug court could be depressing, watching people struggle against a life-shattering disease only to lose their footing and stumble back into the narcotic wreckage.<\/p>\n
She said in her experience, recovering heroin addicts face an experience that is neurologically excruciating.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll your dopamine is totally suppressed,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s no normal pleasure, no pleasure after sex, or \u2018I just went for a run\u2019 pleasure. It\u2019s heartbreaking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Minot said the trajectory of opiate addiction \u2013 start with a back problem, end up a junkie \u2013 could be jarringly steep. The road to help, meanwhile, is made longer because whereas alcohol is broadly socially acceptable, most heroin addicts are deeply ashamed of the drug they\u2019re dependent on.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a positive side to it. There are people who are doing so much better,\u201d Minot said. \u201cBut there\u2019s an endemic problem in our society about the way we manage pain and then the way we exclude them when they have a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Debra Gibson, who is weeks away from the anniversary of her son\u2019s death, put it another way.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople just don\u2019t want to know,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n