The feeling of helplessness grew and grew as the addiction took greater hold.
Justin Phillips had spent years watching her son, Aaron Sims, struggle with drugs. What started as smoking marijuana and taking ecstasy evolved into an opioid pain pill habit, then finally he was using heroin.
Every time it seemed like Sims was making progress in overcoming his addiction, the drugs would worm back into his life.
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“When you love someone who’s struggling with addiction, you’re just devastated most of the time,” Phillips said.
Sims was 20 when he died of a heroin overdose in his bedroom in 2013. The pain and heartache of his death has shattered his mother, but at the same time, she has harnessed the tragedy and vowed to use it to help others crushed by opioid addiction.
Shortly after Sims died, she formed Overdose Lifeline, a nonprofit organization focused on helping individuals, families and communities deal with opioid addiction. The group’s educational programs give students a first-hand look at the dangers of opioids.
Members of Overdose Lifeline train first responders, family members and others to use naloxone, the drug better known as Narcan that can reverse overdoses and save lives.
As the opioid epidemic has worsened, Phillips and others with Overdose Lifeline have worked to make their voices louder and louder in calls for a solution.
“We’ve tried to insert our voice whenever possible,” she said.
Phillips is still haunted by her own lack of understanding about opioid addiction, and wonders that if she knew five years ago what she knows now, her son might be alive.
In order to overcome this epidemic and truly start healing people with addictions, the entire community is going to have to become educated to find a solution, she said.
“He asked for help. I was working on it, but I wasn’t working as urgently as I might have had it been another disease. He couldn’t tell me that he was already using, so instead it was, ‘I’m going to use.’ I should have been less in denial,” she said.
<h2 style="text-align: center">Solving the issue</h2>
That’s symptomatic throughout Indiana, Phillips said. The statewide approach to opioids is lacking, and finding a solution is incredibly complex.
Solving this issue is going to take a comprehensive, collaborative approach, she said.
“We need to get rid of the ‘Every-man-for-himself, I’m the expert,’ and come together better. We’re not doing that,” she said.
More training is needed for those who work in addiction; so many people involved in recovery therapy don’t understand the intricacies of opioid addiction.
“We need to treat this like a disease, and we’re not doing that,” she said.
Sims’ older brother caught him with a bottle of the drugs, and family members started to notice pills missing from their medicine cabinets.
More and more, Sims was in trouble at school and with the police. He dropped out of Lawrence North High School after a fight, was smoking marijuana, and was a suspect in a home burglary.
From what Phillips has been able to piece together, Sims started using heroin sometime after he turned 18. She can look back and point to a frightening change of behavior: angry outbursts and baffling mood swings, days at a time when he was tired and sick.
More evidence of a heroin addiction mounted, including a family friend calling Sims’ parents to let them know that he had been seen at a known heroin dealer’s home.
His parents confronted him, and Sims denied that he would ever take the drug. But months later, overwhelmed by the spiraling addiction, he admitted that he had a problem and couldn’t stop on his own.
Addiction was not a new concept in Phillips’ family. She had struggled with alcohol dependence, and had been in recovery for more than 20 years.
Even that experience did not allow her to understand the particular evils of opioid addiction.
<h2 style="text-align: center">Becoming educated</h2>
“Because of how naive I was, I decided to do something. It’s naivety, or denial, or both,” she said. “When (Aaron) went for treatment, we weren’t prepared.”
Sims agreed to enter an in-patient drug recovery center, where he stayed for 42 days. When he left the treatment center, he seemed stronger and healthier than he had in many years, Phillips said. He found work painting apartments, and surrounded himself with a new group of friends working through recovery together.
But in December of 2012, Sims relapsed and started using heroin regularly again. The death of a friend from a heroin overdose convinced him to work toward sobriety again, but by the summer of 2013, he was taking prescription opioids again.
Phillips could see that he was sliding back toward his addiction, which led to tense confrontations between her and her son. She admits that getting angry wasn’t the best approach, but it was so difficult seeing him fall into the same deadly habits.
“I love you and I don’t want you to die, so I fight with you because I don’t know what else to do about it,” Phillips said.
Ultimately, the addiction won. On Oct. 9, 2013, Sims’s body was found in his apartment. A needle and spoon was sitting near his body, and the shoelace that he had used as a tourniquet was still wrapped around his arm.
His death was intensely difficult for Phillips. But she vowed to use her experience to help others in addiction.
About the same time as Aaron’s death, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police was starting its pilot program administering naloxone to people who had overdosed.
That was Phillips first introduction that there was a medication to reverse the effects of opioid overdose. The drug kicks opioids off the brain receptors, allowing the central nervous system to work again.
<h2 style="text-align: center">From tragedy to hope</h2>
She formed Overdose Lifeline to make this life-saving drug more available.
The organization trains people to use the nasal form of the medication, which requires misting it into the nose of someone who is suffering an overdose.
The training lasts for about an hour, as Overdose Lifeline representatives give some context about addiction and teach how to administer the drug.
“We’re trying as much as possible to reach families and caregivers, in addition to those who are using themselves, because we know that’s really the best place for a life to be saved,” Phillips said.
Phillips also was instrumental in convincing Indiana lawmakers to pass Senate Enrolled Act 406-2015, better known as Aaron’s Law.
The legislation provides increased access for family members, friends or others to naloxone. A statewide order issued in July 2016 allowed for any individual, family member or friend to get the drug from an Indiana pharmacy without a prescription.
Overdose Lifeline has done about 50 public trainings on naloxone, and distributed about 9,000 kits to first responders and community leaders.
Of the people who have been saved by naloxone treatment, 67 percent are males. Almost half of the people who have been revived during an overdose — 49 percent — are between the ages of 25 and 34.
The progress that has been made has been encouraging. But the opioid crisis is only getting worse.
Phillips recently completed her degree in counseling from Indiana Wesleyan University. In about a year, she will be able to apply to be a licensed clinical addictions counselor. Her hope is to continue advocating for changes to the treatment and recovery system for opioid addiction, continuing to work with legislators, medical experts, community leaders and others to overhaul the approach to the epidemic.
“We can’t pretend it doesn’t exist. The impact is so enormous and so average-everyday-person that we can’t say, ‘It’ll never be me, it’ll only be them,’” Phillips said. “Some families we’ve worked with have lost more than one child. It’s devastating, but it’s still a public health crisis that we’re not willing to acknowledge as enormous as it is.”
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<strong>Addiction:</strong> Addiction is considered a brain disease and a chronic, relapsing condition. Opioid drugs change the brain.
<strong>Stigma:</strong> Families affected by cancer, Alzheimer’s Disease or Parkinson’s Disease get help and support from the community. Families affected by addiction often struggle in silence due to the stigma attached to addiction, which is an obstacle to recovery.
<strong>Number of deaths:</strong> 32 in Johnson County in 2017, not including people who die at an Indianapolis hospital.
<strong>Hospital visits:</strong> 105 people in Johnson County went to emergency rooms for treatment of an overdose in 2015, which is similar to numbers reported from other, larger counties, such as Allen or Hamilton counties.
<strong>Prescription rate:</strong> For every 100 residents in Johnson County, 84 opioid prescriptions were written in 2016.
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[sc:pullout-title pullout-title="<strong>About this series</strong>" ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
The United States is in the midst of the worst drug epidemic in history.
Opioids, including prescription painkillers, heroin and fentanyl, are killing Americans.
The Daily Journal is taking a yearlong look into the public health crisis that touches nearly every segment of our community and crosses all socioeconomic lines, from families who lost loved ones to health and law enforcement workers on the front lines.
Addicted & Dying will also explore solutions and a path forward.
Our project starts today by looking at the number of deaths in 2017, how the crisis is touching the community and its roots.
Got an idea for our project? Contact us as <a href="tel:(317)%20736-2770" target="_blank">317-736-2770</a>.
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