National statistics have shown that heroin and opiate addiction are becoming epidemic nationwide, permeating small-town America and big cities alike. Family and Youth Initiatives, in partnership with the Clark County Sheriff’s Department, Families Of Addicts, and the Clark County Prosecutor’s Office hosted a symposium on addiction last week, which recognized that the epidemic has hit New Carlisle, and offered insight into the mind of an addict through a lecture from nationwide heroin addiction expert Brad Lander.

Assistant Prosecutor Dan Carey acted as master of ceremonies during the symposium held last Thursday at Sacred Heart Church in New Carlisle. Carey presented an alarming statistic, saying that the entire state of Maine had declared a heroin epidemic due to the amount of heroin-related deaths in 2014. Carey said that 57 people had died as a direct result of heroin use in Maine in 2014, but noted that so far this year, Clark County has seen 47 heroin overdose deaths alone, with another 12 cases still pending.

“The death rate would be a lot higher if it weren’t for Narcan,” Carey said, stressing that the number of people becoming addicted to heroin is skyrocketing because “It’s cheap and it’s everywhere,” he said, adding that many Clark County marijuana dealers are now giving away a free cap of heroin with every purchase in order to expand their clientele base.

Carey also discussed the amount of crime driven by heroin users who turn to stealing in order to support their habit. He said that 70 percent of crime in Clark County is fueled by addiction, with addicts “filling up our jail,” Carey said.

Carey pushed for the implementation of a drug court in the county, saying that such systems have been proven to lower the rate of re-offense in users released from jail. He said that between 60 and 80 percent of criminals will re-offend after being released from a jail-based treatment program compared to the 30 percent rate of re-offense among those who participate in drug court.

Clark County Sheriff Gene Kelly spoke at the symposium, saying that Clark County has seen 230 overdose deaths since 2010. Kelly spoke at length on the amount of deaths that occur when addicted inmates are released from jail and immediately begin using heroin again. He said that their bodies have gone for several weeks without the drug so they crave it intensely, leading many to inadvertently overdose as soon as they are released, as they cannot physically handle as much as they were once used to.

Kelly used the example of a young woman who was released from Marysville on Monday morning, and took a bus to the Southern Village shopping center in Springfield, where she called a relative for a ride to Enon. While riding in the car, the woman abruptly stopped talking and breathing, and her relative pulled over at the intersection of Dayton Road and Old Mill Road to call for help. Medics arrived and administered Narcan, which immediately revived the woman. Sheriff Kelly said the woman somehow managed to find heroin that quickly upon her release from jail, and although she reportedly only took a half of a dose, Kelly said it was almost enough to kill her as her body was not able to handle those amounts after being incarcerated.

“We have multiple people who get out of jail and think they’ll shoot up like they did before,” said Kelly, who also pushed for a drug court, saying that addicts “need keepers—someone to stand next to them and push them.”

Brad Lander, PhD in addiction treatment at OSU’s Wexner Center, offered some insight into the mind of an addict, saying that addiction is based in the most primitive of human feelings that seek out pleasure and avoid pain.

“The biggest problem with addicts is our expectations of them,” said Lander. “No one wants to become an addict—no one wants to live that way,” he said, adding that you wouldn’t demand that a schizophrenic stop hallucinating, and that you cannot demand an addict to stop craving their drug immediately.

Lander said that every single cell in the human body is motivated by the desire to “feel better,” noting that lab studies have found that single-cell organisms will migrate toward beams of light in order to feel more comfortable, even though they do not have brains or cognitive function.

Lander stressed that sensations are not felt in the sight of stimulation, but in the brain, which controls all perceptions of pleasure and pain. He said that heroin addiction and opiate addiction are so similar because the brain cannot differentiate between heroin and Percocet, for example, as it just receives the same pleasurable stimuli.

He also said that studies done on rats showed that the rats would not cross a painful stimulant in order to get food and water, however, they would cross the painful barrier over and over again to access a pleasure lever, which ultimately overcame their desire for food and water and led to their deaths.

Lander said it was frightening to consider why such a “potentially-deadly” function would exist in the human brain, but said that our innate search of pleasure was linked to our pleasure receptors focused on “survival mode,” meaning the receptors triggered by quenching hunger and thirst, as well as reproduction.

Lori Erion of Park Layne started Families Of Addicts as a support group for those indirectly affected by heroin use. Erion has struggled with addiction herself, and now deals with her daughter’s substance addiction. She said that the day she learned that her daughter was using was the day that she began “this roller coaster ride” of dealing with the disease. She said that stigma and shame often overwhelm the families of an addicted person, and they hide their struggle from their friends and neighbors.

Families Of Addicts was started in November of 2013 as an outlet group for families affected by addiction so that they are aware of resources and other manners of support.

Pat Banaszak, Executive Director of Family and Youth Initiatives, said that just one drug was ripping families apart nationwide, saying that proactive measures must be taken to prevent drug abuse in the next generations before it was too late.

“You know the destruction of the family as we’ve seen too often in Clark County, Bethel Township, and nationwide,” Banaszak said.

“The results of this one drug are devastating. If we do not act, it may kill someone you love and it’ll be too late.”