The CDC reported in March of this year that the Midwest now sees higher rates of heroin overdose deaths than any other region of the country. The rate for heroin related deaths in the Midwest increased nearly 11-fold between 2000 and 2013.
Members of Missouri Law Enforcement said that opiates, including prescription drugs and heroin, have become more commonly abused in recent years.
According to the St. Louis County Health Department there were 113 heroin related deaths in 2014. And according to the St. Louis City Department of Health there were 123 heroin or opiate overdose deaths in the city.
Here a lawmaker, a treatment expert and families talk about the impact heroin and opiates are having in Missouri.
Representative Steve Lynch, R-Waynesville has sponsored multiple bills over the past two years related to the heroin and opiate problem in Missouri. He pushes for wider availability of naloxone, the heroin overdose antidote.
“When you start seeing how many people are being affected and how many people are dying. Just hundreds across the state and it's a growing problem. My belief was to save as many lives as I can hoping that they will get treatment someday or that someone will come in and touch their life in some way or another to get them out of it,” Lynch said.
Lynch sponsored bills during the last legislative session that would have made naloxone more available to the family and friends of addicts.
“But it's tough,” Lynch said. “The relapse percentage for people on heroin or opiate drugs is really high. Even though they might be recovering addicts, there's a good chance that they're going to relapse.”
Ashley Cancienne is from Farmington. She said she knows firsthand how addicts struggle with relapse. She is only 21 years old, but in the last 14 years she has lost her grandmother, her aunt and her mother to heroin related deaths.
While her grandmother died of a cardiac arrest related to cocaine and heroin, both her aunt and mother died by overdosing on heroin after periods of sobriety.
“With heroin or pills… it’s literally like every time you do it, it’s up in the air of you could overdose and die this time,” Cancienne said. “Especially nowadays you don’t know what you’re getting.”
Cancienne now works with several anti-heroin groups. She said she is always very open about sharing her story and losses with addicts because she hopes it will help them realize she cares.
“It’s just like religion. You don’t want to shove it down their throat and be like “You need to do this,” but I’m going to talk about it around you, so that you have to hear it and maybe eventually you know that I’m here for you, I’m one of the people that are against this thing, and that you can talk to and I have resources,” Cancienne said.
One of the largest resources for addicts and families who have experienced loss are these advocacy groups or treatment facilities.
You can't cure addiction,” Brockman-Knight said. “It's a chronic disease. It is a lifelong disease. It's like diabetes or high blood pressure. You manage it.”She said there are many misconceptions about addiction, and many people look at addiction and relapse as a moral failing. But that just isn’t the case.
"You can't cure addiction. It's a chronic disease. It is a lifelong disease."
She explained that the problem with opiate use disorder is that the drug usage actually changes the brain and affects the dopamine receptors or “feel good receptors.” Over time, as more heroin is used, the brain begins to compensate and releases less dopamine into the body.
Knight says that it takes a long time for a former addict to feel normal again – an average of three years after discontinued use.
Kathi Arbini lives in Jefferson County. Her son, Kevin, graduated at the top of his high-school class, but was just 21-years-old when he died of a heroin overdose in 2009.
She know speaks with parents and kids about the devastating effects of the drug. And hopes that by sharing Kevin's story, she can save the lives of others.
“I know when he died, he knew that I loved him," Arbini said. "But I think hopefully his death can save many lives because I put it out there, I talk to parents about it. I’m not ashamed that my son was a heroin addict. I’ve never been ashamed of him. I just wish he would be here to see life does goes on and people do recover. They just have to want to. They have to want to. And I think the disease was just bigger than him.”
