The woman approached Savannah Brenneke before she began her program on the opioid antidote naloxone, which included free doses of the drug for anyone who needed them.
She wanted two doses, she said, one for her and one for her mother, but couldn’t stay for the whole presentation.
The woman, who lives in Porter County and declined to give her name, said her son, just shy of 18, is addicted to opioid pills. Because the woman has small children at home, she won’t let her son stay there, though she sees him regularly. He stays with his grandmother, who lives nearby.
“He’s scared of heroin thus far but I also know it doesn’t take much to get hooked,” she said, adding her son has been addicted for about a year and has overdosed on other drugs. She wanted naloxone, which can reverse an opioid overdose, “so that I have it if I need it.” Brenneke provided it to her.
The woman was one of about 40 people who came to the American Legion Hall in Valparaiso Saturday to obtain free naloxone doses, provided by the Porter County Substance Abuse Council through Overdose Lifeline Inc., which received a state grant to provide the antidote.
“Research has shown when you give the opportunity for someone to live, you can get them into treatment,” said Brenneke, a policy and research associate with Overdose Lifeline. She training Hammond, Munster and Crown Point police officers on how to administer the drug Monday, she said.
The substance abuse council had 100 naloxone doses to give away. Those who wanted the drug were asked to anonymously fill out a sheet about whom the antidote was for so Overdose Lifeline can collect demographic information.
“There’s such a great need in the community. We see this happening every day and I thought we needed to do something to help families have something on hand in case there is an emergency,” said Dawn Pelc, the council’s executive director.
Among those attending the program was Mann Spitler, of Valparaiso, whose daughter Amanda died of a heroin overdose in 2002 at age 20. He found her in the bathroom of their family home.
“I’m trying my best to understand the full spectrum of addiction and this last-ditch emergency effort to save someone’s life is part of the spectrum,” he said. “If I had naloxone the night I found my daughter, I certainly would have used it, but it can take multiple doses of naloxone to save them.”
While naloxone saves lives and potentially gives heroin users a chance to get clean, the opioid antidote doesn’t solve the county’s heroin problem, which Porter County Sheriff David Reynolds said can only be done through education and prevention.
“It’s not the answer,” he said. “It’s about education. We have to somehow work together to knock out the drug.”
No one argues about the scourge of drug abuse in the region. Lake County Coroner Merilee Frey said last month the number of deaths from drug overdoses there increased from 48 five years ago to 114 last year. There were 32 overdoses for the first two months of this year, half of which were heroin related.
In Porter County, 47 people died of drug overdoses last year. Heroin use alone caused 20, Porter County Coroner Chuck Harris.
Still, 33 lives were saved from overdoses by the use of naloxone, and 28 police officers from six Porter County departments administered the drug in 2016.
“It’s so important to give them a second chance,” Harris said. “Everyone deserves a second chance.”
The coroner’s office and the sheriff’s department see the need for the naloxone giveaway more clearly than other agencies because they experience the cost to the community firsthand, Harris said. It’s a “very necessary program,” he said.
“It can provide that one layer of safety. So many times, a loved one is the first one to find someone who’s overdosed,” he said.
Per capita, Porter County has a larger scale heroin problem than Lake County, he said, something he doesn’t think a lot of people realize. Having naloxone at the ready puts it at the fingertips of a heroin user’s loved ones.
“There’s so much stigma that goes along with substance abuse, but it really is a disease,” Harris said.
Reynolds, who recently took over the county’s drug investigation task force from the county prosecutor’s office and who put out a video focusing on the county’s heroin problem that’s shown in local schools, said he’s not opposed to the naloxone giveaway, but it’s not even “remotely close” to what the county needs.
“It highlights what a severe epidemic we have,” he said.
Like needle exchange programs in other parts of the state ravaged by drug abuse, Reynolds said the naloxone giveaway is a response to a serious problem, but not the solution.
He called the doses “like Russian roulette” for heroin users who think that if they overdose, naloxone can save them.
“Is this the message we want to send?” he said. “It’s just a sad commentary that we’re in this situation. We need to continually work on education and prevention.”
Amy Lavalley is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
