On Tuesday, the National Association of Broadcasters and the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids will hold a press conference to announce a national campaign to address the opioid epidemic in the United States. Among those who will speak at the Washington, D.C., press conference are NAB President and CEO Gordon Smith, Marcia Lee Taylor, President and CEO, Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, and Hubbard CEO Ginny Morris.
You can’t be serious about this epidemic!
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How Opioid Addiction Caught San Diego Communities Unaware
An undated illustration of a man suffering from an opioid addiction.
Photo by Ben Chlapek for inewsource
Above: An undated illustration of a man suffering from an opioid addiction.
Monday, September 12, 2016
By Leo Castaneda / inewsource
Midday Edition
How Opioid Addiction Caught San Diego Communities Unaware
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Leo Castaneda, reporter, inewsource
Midday Edition airs Monday – Friday at noon on KPBS Radio.
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Aired 9/12/16 on KPBS News.
Opioid addiction has claimed thousands of lives in San Diego County. Understanding who is dying and how addiction has changed over the last 15 years is central to confronting the region’s epidemic.
High school, 1997, was off to a great start for Mark Gagarin.
He had been bullied some in middle school, but he was determined that his time at Poway High was going to be different.
“I met this awesome girl, I was playing baseball. I had a lot of friends around me,” he said. He was hanging out with the cool kids, the ones who hung out in the quad.
Baseball had always been a part of his life. Now he’d earned a spot as the second baseman and leadoff batter for the freshman team. This is at a school that has produced professional baseball players, including Tony Gwynn Jr., who is now on the Dodgers broadcast team, and Alex Dickerson, a Padres outfielder.
But there were some jagged edges. Maybe he had learning disorders, maybe he just wasn’t smart enough. Alcohol and cocaine blunted them.
Baseball, once a relief, became another pressure point. It stopped being fun; it felt like the games mattered more to the parents than the kids. Ball players weren’t even allowed to skateboard during the season to avoid injuries.
“We wanted to have fun, and that’s why we did it,” he said. “But they wanted more than that.”
He and a few other players walked away from the game. Then he dropped out of school his junior year. At 17, he was arrested for breaking into homes looking for things to steal and sell; he said he did it to get money for drugs.
An undated illustration of a pill bottle.
PHOTO BY BEN CHLAPEK FOR INEWSOURCE
An undated illustration of a pill bottle.
Gagarin didn’t know it, but he was on the leading edge of a wave of prescription pill and opioid addiction that would sweep through San Diego County in a way no one had anticipated.
Opioid deaths had long been common in downtown San Diego and in City Heights, and those numbers stayed steady. But starting around 2007 deaths spiked in communities where people rarely had died of opioid overdoses. Although the numbers weren’t huge, they were a significant increase.
Seven people died from opioids in Poway between 2000 and 2007. Twenty-four died between 2008 and 2015. During those same time periods, Oceanside went from 51 deaths to 93. Clairemont went from 13 deaths to 33. Many of those dying were young, most were white and most were men.
At 17, Mark Gagarin went into treatment through the McAlister Institute, a network of addiction service providers, including residential and outpatient programs. Around that time, he broke his ankle skateboarding. A doctor prescribed Vicodin.
“It was one of those things where it was like, cool, a doctor can give these to me and I can feel better than ever on them,” he said.
Then at 18 and on probation for that break-in charge, he entered the Sharp McDonald Center, his second rehab stint. He liked it, a vacation stay. The center had volleyball courts and meditation gardens. He was doing cocaine at the time and decided that was the problem, so he gave up cocaine.
But he didn’t stay sober for long.
“I ended up doing a lot of different cocktails or just different things to try to find something that I could still have fun, not get in trouble and live a somewhat normal life,” Gagarin said.
That’s what he did for the next 10 years.
By 2012, Mark Gagarin, 5-foot-7, former star baseball player, was down to 130 pounds, with a relentless twitch in his left eye. Now 28, he was living with his parents, without a job or money.
“Nobody even knew I was living anymore,” he said. “I had no drive or ambitions for anything, and the craziest part about that was, I remembered when I did.”
Those ambitions — play baseball, start a family, do something with your life — melted away, replaced with some 200 milligrams a day of opioid painkillers, tranquilizers and muscle relaxants. It was the first time he wondered, how did I get here?
“It was just like quicksand stretched around me and it was just me in this abyss of just, hell and darkness and struggle.”
It was all coming to a head in early 2012. When Gagarin went to sleep on Feb. 28 he knew he was running out of time. He didn’t care.
Had he died that day, he would have been one of the thousands of victims of a national epidemic.
Very astute, Walter. And timely, too.
Considering the carnage and the tens of thousands who are being crippled or killed because of talking and/or texting while driving, this campaign might lead some observers to go, “Huh?”
This is unfortunate. I don’t have chronic pain. I don’t use opiods. But for my WPHT CBS Radio show I’ve read the CDC study (not a light read) and all the material I can find and guess what? There is no epidemic. Point 06 percent of prescribed pain killer users die from related events. 11,073 annually die of some combination of prescribed Opiods which includes Methodone and morphine. It usually happens when someone in pain can’t receive the proper dose from a doctor and is forced to “cut” their meds with street drugs.
88,000+ die of alcohol related poisoning or accidents.
The bulk of the study, by its own admission is based on 4 grade—unreliable data. All deaths are tragic. This push removes a doctor’s ability to relieve chronic pain when other options fail. Your grandmother can have writhing pain and her doctor won’t be able to relieve it.