A face to the opioid epidemic

When I was first introduced to John Hallisy, 25, he seemed like any other college-aged, 20-something. What I didn’t know is that he was having battles outside of booze-related hangovers and the occasional final exam. Hallisy, now clean from herion for about three and a half years and completely sober for about one  year, was struggling with addiction.

Not many knew of this issue in his life initially. But when they did find out, he received the same stigmatism that many former addicts face. I remember people who I was close with were worried about if he was going to steal their things and pawn them for drug money. However, that is simply not the case. 

“It was really hard to come [to Kent] and pretend to be one of these normal college kids,” Hallisy said. “I really couldn’t relate to many people out there. Not many people have had to deal with what I have.”

Hallisy suffers from depression, which is what he attributes to fueling his addiction. According to the Mayo Clinic, anxiety, loneliness and depression are some of the leading factors that trigger and sustain drug abuse. 

“It was one of the hardest times of my life,” Hallisy said. “When you feed this dark thing inside of you, there is really no hope… I am so glad that I left that part of me behind.”

Fortunately, Hallisy was able to become clean before he had any major health issues stemming from his addiction.

“What really got the idea of being clean into my head was my first overdose,” Hallisy said. “I don’t know why it took me that long to see what I was doing was going to kill me and quickly.”

After being rushed to the hospital via ambulance, he knew something had to change. Hallisy said he was able to become sober on his own without any treatment centers or doctors, but does attend regular addiction-related meetings, like ones offered by the SMART Recovery program.

Chris Hollins runs addiction recovery meetings in Mentor, OH. He said that each meeting has its own “tag” and can be a public, specialized or private meeting. A “tag” is simply how the facilitators of the meetings organize them based on specificity, if needed. 

As it is listed on their website, public meetings are open to anyone, specialized meetings are open to people who meet a specific demographic or tag and private meetings are only available by approval or invitation. They also offer online meetings to those who cannot make the live ones.

“All of the meetings are based off of the SMART recovery program,” Hollins said. “We first try to isolate four parts of the addiction sickness: what does it do for them, what do they hate about it, why will they like when they give it up and what won’t they like about giving it up.”

Hollins said they offer many different worksheets on the SMART website that can help users begin the process of dealing with addiction, even if they don’t want to attend meetings. 

SMART Hierarchy of Values Worksheet by William Kovach on Scribd

“After people attend a couple meetings, we are able to gauge where they are in the recovery process,” Hollins said. 

Addiction is a sickness and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has released some reports on the matter. According to their 2017 report on the annual surveillance report of drug-related risks and outcomes, the number of drug overdose deaths have tripled from 1999 to 2015. Also, the report states that “most persons using herion have had a history of misusing prescription opioids first.”

This is how Hallisy got into herion. After a car accident in late 2013, he was prescribed opioid-derived medication for pain. 

“The next thing you know,” Hallisy said. “I started this downward spiral and started using [herion].”

Like many others, the prescription was limited and eventually cut off by his doctor. The pain medication was too expensive to buy on the street and he eventually turned to heroin to cope. 

However, most of this former problem is long-gone. I could hear the emotion and struggle in his voice while conducting the interview. Addiction is not an easy subject to talk about, especially in the state of Ohio. 

According to a study by the Ohio Alliance for Innovation in Population Health, along with Ohio University’s College of Health Sciences and Professions, in Ohio; more than 500,000 years of life were lost in a seven-year period due the to opioid crisis.