With the wreckage of addiction all around us, society needs a shift

Charnay Ducrest is living her best life. She has a rewarding career helping people beat drug addiction. She’s a mother and will pursue her master’s degree this fall.

It’s a life that her parents, a teacher and a musician, had hoped for her at birth. But the hopes quickly fell into ruin by a wrecking ball called opioid addiction.

Before her life spiraled out of control, Ducrest ran track and sang in the choir at a prep school. Less than 10 years later she would find herself going from tents to dingy hotels to homelessness, relationship to relationship, arrests, lying and stealing — even from her parents — all to feed a powerful addiction.

Opioid addiction and overdose is a national and local crisis, one that local health care workers, policymakers and educators need to aggressively tackle. But it will take time, a lot of money and a cultural shift before society treats this epidemic not like a temporary problem, but a killer of families, lives and potential.

How serious is it?

In 2022, more than twice as many people died of opioid overdose in the United States than from gun violence.

Before the judgment starts, these lives were not the “dregs of society.” They were young people experimenting; 20somethings taking what they thought was a prescribed painkiller from a “friend” only for their families to discover after their deaths it was fentanyl; and those struggling for years with addiction like Charnay Ducrest.

To talk to 37-year-old Ducrest today, few clues hint at a life once debased by opioids.

Like many who struggled with addiction, Ducrest’s substance abuse began with alcohol as a teenager, a battle she saw her parents fight. Yet, she managed to excel in cross-country and volleyball, even into her days at Montana State University-northern, where she majored in premed. “I kind of cruised through high school until college, where I had a penchant for hanging out and partying,” Ducrest recalled. Heavy drinking led to Alcoholics Anonymous at the urging of her father.

She discovered pain pills in college after breaking her leg.

“I had pills for three months in 2010 and when they quit giving them to me, I went straight to IV morphine. That lasted four months before it all fell apart.”

She checked herself into the hospital for treatment, only to test positive for HIV.

“I left the hospital and went to get high,” she said, using her 401(k) savings from a previous retail job.

Then came more morphine and Suboxone, and then heroin.

She overdosed three times: once with a boyfriend who took her to the hospital where she was revived; the second time a friend found her in the bathroom with a needle stuck in her neck. “By this time my veins in my arm were shot.” Her friend drove her to the hospital and dumped her off at the front, where emergency personnel gave her Narcan.

The third OD happened when she and her husband were hanging out. She told her husband afterward, “Man, that messed up my high. That’s all I cared about, not the fact that I had just had an overdose in front of him. But that being high was more important than being alive.”

Many who advocate for lenient drug laws often say jail won’t fix the problem, or that we can’t arrest our way out of addiction. But arrests can interrupt a cycle of abuse and, when it comes to drugs like fentanyl, an arrest can save a life.

I spent many years volunteering with Mariners Inn, a homeless shelter in Michigan for men battling addiction. Their stories were heart-wrenching, yet inspiring. They often ended with, “If I hadn’t been arrested, I would have lost …” fill in the blank: My job. My friends. My family. My life.

Getting arrested may work for some, but not all. The mere shock and embarrassment can push some users to seek help. For others, entry into the legal system creates another set of problems, including a record that can affect employment and housing.

Ducrest knows she’s one of the lucky ones. She said one of her arrests for stealing from her parents — orchestrated by them as part of an intervention — left her angry at the time.

“Being in jail really helped but also made me susceptible to overdose,” said Ducrest, who earned a bachelor’s in communication and is now a health promotion coordinator for her local county Health Department. “It does disrupt it and give you a chance to get help, but criminalizing addiction is not a solution. People lose their stuff or the place where they rent and become homeless.”

About 90% of people with addiction never seek treatment mainly due to fear of judgment and shame, according to James Apa, communications director for Seattle & King County Public Health. For any community to get a handle on the epidemic, getting rid of that stigma is a must.

“The biggest thing we can do is have compassion for individuals who are suffering from a disease that is ultimately fatal and destroys lives,” said Sean Soth, director of Health Integration & Innovation for Evergreen Treatment Services. “And understand it’s really difficult as a human to shift how we behave and change our lives drastically. That’s what we’re asking of people who use drugs. We assume that it is the individual’s problem. That it’s a moral failure and we don’t want to believe that it can be us or our kids that is impacted next.”

So looking back, what message would Charnay Ducrest of today have for Charnay, the college student of years ago?

“Hold on. You’re going to have some rough times but it’s going to end up really good. Everything I’ve gone through has made me the person I am. And I love my life. So just hold on. It’ll be OK.”