Eugene weekly., July 21, 2016, Page 13, Image 13

Overprescribed
Opiates
THE RISE OF HEROIN ADDICTION
AND THE EFFORT TO END
O V E R D O S E D E AT H S
BY C O R I N N E B O Y E R
I
n 2014, Crystal Webb left Alabama, landed in Eugene and moved in
with a friend to kick her opiate and crystal meth addiction.
Making the decision to get distance from an environment in which
she found herself intertwined with drugs and dealers was a significant
step if she wanted to get clean. Webb says she locked herself away for
a month and slept.
“It was painful, but so was using, so I guess maybe I might have
been a little conditioned,” she says. “When using, every come-down
was painful, so I knew what to expect, just not how long it would take.”
Webb says she slept on the floor for about six months because she
was scared of sleeping in the same bed as the woman who is now her
wife, as Webb suffered from night terrors, withdrawal and hypnagogic
hallucinations.
After coming to Oregon, Webb started working with Occupy Medical,
a free universal health care nonprofit, where she met her wife. As she
became more involved in the Eugene community by helping people
suffering from addiction, Webb encountered a man passed out under a
tree with a needle in his arm. Seeing “something like that, it takes you
back, and you relive that misery over and over,” she says. “And that’s
where cravings come into play, which I still get.”
But Webb says she’s lucky. She has brain damage from an overdose
of methamphetamine and the prescription drug Dilaudid, but her doctor
says it’s healing. And as her brain heals, Webb has noticed changes.
“Just out of the blue I’ll be so sad; I could cry all day long.”
Webb is only one of millions of opiate addicts across the
country and thousands in Lane County. On April 21, Prince
was found dead in his home, and when an autopsy was con-
ducted the following day, the 5-foot-3-inch singer weighed
112 pounds, according to the Associated Press. Prince died
from an overdose of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.
In 2014, Lane County saw 156 overdose deaths and had
"a fatal overdose rate of 15 per 100,000 residents,” accord-
ing to NorthPoint Recovery Center.
Prescription opioids are derived from the opium plant.
“Some opioids, such as morphine and codeine, occur natu-
rally in opium, a gummy substance collected from the seed
pod of the opium poppy,” according to the Center for Ad-
diction and Mental Health. When the chemical structure is
altered, it becomes a semisynthetic and forms opioids like
oxycodone and hydrocodone. Synthetic opioids like fen-
tanyl are not derived from poppies, but heroin is also syn-
thesized from the poppy plant, according to the National
Institutes on Drug Abuse.
As the amount of overdose deaths from prescription and
non-prescription opiates has escalated in what has become
a silent epidemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Pre-
vention, Oregon Health Authority and local health profes-
sionals are changing their prescription practices and ways
to treat chronic pain.
In June, the Oregon Health Authority announced it will
adopt the CDC’s guidelines for prescribing opiates for
chronic pain. The CDC’s newest prescription guidelines
for doctors notably change the outdated view that addiction
was only possible for “high risk patients” to “opioids pose
risk to all patients.”
THE GROWTH OF
A SILENT EPIDEMIC
Not only was kicking the habit hard for Webb, but beat-
ing addiction comes with a plethora of obstacles. Ten years
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