Pictured are (l to r) Daisy Carter, Executive Director of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Addiction, Central Mississippi; Dr. Scott Hambleton, Mississippi Physician Healthcare Program; Trey Crawford, pharmacist and owner of Diket’s Professional Drugs; Michael Jordan, State Opioid Treatment Authority with the Department of Mental Health; Bryan Bailey, Rankin County Sheriff; Marshall Fisher, Commissioner of the Department of Public Safety; and Steve Parker, Deputy Director of the Mississippi Board of Pharmacy.
A town hall meeting in Brandon on May 23 addressed the growing impact of opioids in communities across the state. The meeting was hosted in a partnership with the Department of Mental Health, the Bureau of Narcotics, the Board of Pharmacy, and the Jackson Division of the FBI.
It is one of several that will be taking place throughout the state in the coming months. A panel discussion at the meeting also included a physician, a pharmacist, and Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey, but the featured speaker of the night was Aden Giles, a Jackson metro area resident who shared how her family and her life had been tragically impacted by addiction and opioids.
First though, Lt. John Harless with the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics made sure attendees knew just how large of a problem opioid addiction has become as it has worked its way into the lives of Mississippians and Americans, leaving a trail of broken people and families in its wake.
“I’m about to start my twentieth year with MBN,” Lt. Harless said. “When I started, heroin was something that maybe we saw a little bit of back in the ‘70s. When I was trained, nobody told me we’ve got to get ready to see heroin. We were dealing with the crack epidemic, and then we dealt with the meth labs, but illegal opioids are growing, and they continue to grow.”
Heroin is the most common illegal opioid, but that’s not the limit of the current problem. The problem ranges from prescriptions like hydrocodone and oxycodone to powerful synthetics like fentanyl, and even to newer synthetic drugs that have popped up. One such synthetic is known as U-47700, which first showed up in Mississippi in Rankin County not long before this town hall meeting.
Mississippi has the fifth highest rate of hydrocodone prescriptions in the country, Lt. Harless said. In Rankin County, there were 14 overdose deaths from 2013 through 2016, with 11 of those caused by prescription drugs.
Michael Jordan, State Opioid Treatment Authority for the Department of Mental Health, said that a recent survey of high school students showed it was easier for them to get a narcotic than it was to get alcohol.
“Think about that. It’s staggering. This is not a national problem. It’s not a Mississippi problem. It’s a community problem,” he said. “Together we can make an impact on the lives of Mississippians.”
The most powerful presentation of the night was from Aden Giles, a resident of the Jackson metro area who spoke about how she and her family have been impacted by opioid addiction. While she struggled with alcohol and drugs for much of her adult life, her son Mitch grew up to face struggles of his own with an addiction to opioids.
Her addiction led her to lose everything she said she cared about – relationships with her siblings, her parents, and her job. A little more than two years ago, she decided to enter treatment. While she was beginning recovery, her son’s addiction began to get worse.
It didn’t happen right away, but he eventually began to turn his life around. He became known as the poster child for recovery in his treatment program. In one letter Giles read from, her son wrote her to thank her for the life she had given him, and talking about his hopes for a life in recovery. He was happy to be brought back together in sobriety.
Months went by until one day Mitch saw one of the people he used to get drugs from. Several hours later, his family was notified that Mitch had died of an overdose.
“I couldn’t believe it. I was shocked,” Aden said. “But you know, I’ve never been angry with him relapsing and being weak at that moment, because every alcoholic and drug addict knows that thought comes across your mind every so often.”
She would never give up the six months she got to spend with her son in recovery, she said. It was six months of happiness she and Mitch would have never had. Her own recovery has brought back the relationships she had lost with the rest of her family. It has shown her a life that she never knew was out there.
“As they tell me all the time, just stick around until the miracle happens,” she said. “And it happened to me.”
