Hating Heroin: I meet the Americans battling with addiction

With the United States in the midst of a heroin and opiate epidemic, India Rakusen travelled to Ohio to meet the people and families whose lives have been consumed by addiction. (The full documentary is available onBBC iPlayer).

'I HATE HEROIN' stands out in bright white capitals on Blake’s black plastic wrist band. "I completely hate heroin, and everything that it does. Heroin consumed my life probably for the past four years,” he calmly tells me. He’s two years clean now and has given up everything, even caffeine, to keep on track.

Blake wears this affirmation on his arm pretty much daily, and with pride. I’m amazed how frank he is with me, about his addiction and what it drove him to do: dealing to kids, robbing a dealer and stealing from people he knows, are some of the examples he recounts.

Yet this honesty is something I'm finding right across this small community - from the mayor or the coroner to the young and impressive Jim Coyne (who set up a group to help people), there’s almost a warmth in the eagerness of people to talk about it. To be so loud and clear about the problem that they'll wear it on their wrists.

I meet Blake in the library in Avon Lake High School. It’s a very good school in Lorain County in the north of Ohio. Like most counties across America at the moment, it’s being stung by the heroin and opiate epidemic.

The classic story is that someone gets hooked on prescription opiates dispensed to them by their doctor for pain relief, and ends up on the cheaper and deadlier option of heroin. On an average day in America, over 650,000 opiate prescriptions are dispensed… and nearly 4,000 people start abusing pills.

According to Greg Mehling at the Lorain County Drug Task Force, the US has 5% of the world’s population, and consumes 95% of world’s pain medication.

Every day in America, 80 people die from taking these heroin and opiate painkillers.

Blake’s is not the first rehab wristband I’ve come across this week. On my very first day here, I drove with 26-year-old Mason to rehab for the seventh time. He’s been trying to defeat drug abuse for 10 years. At First Step Recovery where I drop him off, they give out these wristbands too. These ones say ‘Dopeless Hope Fiend’.

When I spot it on Mason a week later when I go back to visit him, I’m actually pretty moved by it. That might sound ridiculous - it’s a corny pun - but by that point, nearly two weeks into my time in Ohio, I’ve met so many people simply exhausted and broken by the grasp of heroin and opiates that it’s a relief to see this slither of hope on Mason’s wrist.

He’s got another one from his last visit. It says, “people can change, addicts can recover, families can heal.” It’s been on his hand the whole time, even when he’s been using, but flipped inside out – just showing its acid green underbelly.

“I didn’t want to look at it and it just shows how you turn the other way when you start using. It sucks. You just become discouraged, you become beaten down and you start to lose that hope. That’s why I put the bracelet inside out, because it reminds me of what I did and my actions, and I don't need to look at that every day."

These bands really intrigued me, reminding me of all the people I’ve met who put huge, exhausting effort into keeping themselves or loved ones clean, and I was really taken with it. Or that was the case, until I met Lisa.

Lisa Wolanski’s son Daniel died last year. She bravely wrote about his addiction in an online obituary. It’s really worth a read, external. She lays bare the truth of their horrendous battle with Daniel and his addiction. The funeral director asked her if she was absolutely sure if she wanted to publish it, but she did. She gets contacted a lot now by people going through the same thing. She sends letters of support to those who lose a child or loved one.

Daniel’s heroin problem was a constant worry for Lisa and her husband Mike – even when they tried to get Daniel into rehab, he was always vulnerable. The drug dealers would come right up to, and even inside the rehab facility he was in. Or dealers would strike up business with people in Narcotics Anonymous meetings…

And then she tells me something that makes my skin turn cold.

“The boys told us that they’ll wear bracelets, those stretchy bracelets from rehab and go to the mall and… the dealers look for it.”

I can’t quite believe what I’m hearing, but in the same blow it makes total sense. My mind races back to Mason's new bracelet, and to his old one he used to keep on – turned inside out. I feel again how precarious Mason’s position is, walking a delicate balance between turning his life around, and being swallowed once more by his addiction.

I’ve been speaking to Mason for over a month now. Last time I spoke to him he was clean and back at work. He’s still wearing two bold, and in their own way beautiful affirmations that he's fighting an addiction he hates. It's just a sad irony that this same affirmation works as a silent siren for dealers, waiting to corner a user.

Today marks US International Overdose Awareness Day. For more information, visit www.overdoseday.com, external. You can seek support from bodies like The Mix, external or The Samaritans., external