Since the beginning of the opioid epidemic in 2015, more than 325,000 people have died due to opioid overdoses with the majority of those being from fentanyl. Illegal fentanyl is typically smuggled across the US-Mexico border putting New Mexico on the frontlines. The state, which has already faced issues with drug abuse, ranks 11th in terms of opioid deaths per capita.
Jasmine Pena knows the dangers of fentanyl well. Having previously been addicted to the drug she knows how brutal addiction can be.
“It gets from being a fun start right like let's do this for fun and then it gets to a point where you can't stop. It's a necessity at that point your body then relies on it so at that point it’s too much,” Pena said.
The widespread epidemic we see today goes back to 2015 when fentanyl from China and Mexico started to replace heroin. Jasmine says that she remembers this well.
“I unfortunately was homeless at the time living in Albuquerque and I have unfortunately done a range of drugs. At the time I was on methamphetamines and heroin and I went to receive the drugs that I was getting at the time and suddenly everyone had it. Everyone had it, that was all they had. It came out of nowhere it was like a burst of fentanyl all at once,” Pena said.
It seems that this was not a unique experience. In 2021, more than 539,000 people abused fentanyl. With this massive amount of abuse comes a massive amount of people trying to quit. Jasmine says that her experience quitting was unlike anything else.
“The withdrawal process from fentanyl itself is excruciating. It’s not nice, it's not pretty. The process and the physical attributes that come from fentanyl are relentless. You can't eat, you can't sleep, you can't process your own thoughts, you just can't function,” Pena said.
Zia Recovery Center founder and CEO Ryan Brewer says he started the center back in 2017 to fill a need in the community. After his own experience battling addiction, he says that fentanyl is unlike anything else.
“I have dealt with addiction myself and it is nothing compared to what these people are going through off of fentanyl addiction with the withdrawal and the detox and things like that. The comfort meds barely scratch it. You have to sit with these people and just hold them through their detox,” Brewer said.
Withdrawal symptoms from fentanyl can include physical symptoms like nausea, vomiting and sweating and mental symptoms like anxiety and depression. Because of this, success can be rare.
“We are still trying to find the best solution for this and I know we are not alone. I have talked with several treatment centers throughout the nation that are dealing with the same thing and their success rate with fentanyl, getting people off of it and to stay in treatment are about the same as ours which is 15 to 20 percent,” Brewer said.
Ryan remembers the start of the epidemic as well. In 2015, he was in treatment and got a tragic look at what fentanyl can do in California.
“I remember just knowing people I was in treatment with and they would leave treatment and all of a sudden they would just drop off. Pass away. Quicker than heroin, quicker than anything we have seen before,” Brewer said.
Rehab centers are not the only places that are being affected. Paramedics like Joseph Sepulveda say that calls for overdoses are becoming more and more common.
“It’s up there now with the chest pains, the abdominal pain, headaches where it is just another regular call for us. I can say at least once every single shift, once a day once a night, we probably have at least one overdose at the very least,” Sepulveda said.
Much of the danger behind fentanyl comes from its potency. Since fentanyl is 100 times more potent than morphine making it extremely dangerous when used incorrectly.
“It is very very strong. We are noticing that in the conditions of these patients that they are getting harder and harder to treat. Even when we have Narcan we are requiring sometimes three times, four times the normal dose of Narcan which was unheard of in EMS,” Sepulveda said.
Other first responders like police have also noticed a spike. According to data from LCPD, nearly 70,000 pills were seized in 2022 and nearly 50,000 were seized in the first eight months of 2023.Police Chief Jeremy Story says that it is the worst thing he has seen in law enforcement.
“Some people are dealing with it multiple times in a day but that's just luck of the draw but it is very frequent. When I started, let's use heroin to contrast. It is another opioid. I didn't see it for my first three or four years as a cop. Now, fentanyl is everywhere,” Story said.
However, fentanyl does not just affect those who use it. Story says that it may be behind many issues that we deal with in Las Cruces.
“It is really responsible for this increase in crime. From 2018 when we first saw fentanyl to 2022 we have had a 73% increase in violent crime and a 71% increase in property crime. Those are huge increases and a lot of that, not all of that, but a lot of it is tied to fentanyl,” Story said.
Fentanyl can lead to many problems in the community. However, it can often be easy to forget about everyone that suffers from addiction.
With such an unprecedented rise in fentanyl use, many people have been left playing catch up to find new ways to help people and stop the nearly 200 daily deaths nationwide attributed to fentanyl. With the epidemic growing, it appears that there is still a long fight ahead.
