‘Taboo’ goes mainstream & takes toll
ON STATEN ISLAND, home is where the heroin is.
Statistics from local law enforcement show that 80 of the 90 heroin-overdose victims in the borough last year died inside their own homes and apartments.
Their average age was 38, the deadliest day of the week was Saturday, and most died while the sun was shining, between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.
As it has in much of America, heroin has gone mainstream on Staten Island. “In the old days, heroin was really taboo. It was in the back alleys, under train stations,” said Staten Island District Attorney Michael McMahon.
“And now the majority of our overdoses are occurring in people’s homes. It’s unfortunate (but) it’s gained a level of acceptability, as well as accessibility.”
McMahon has seen the problem upclose. In November 2015, just days after he was elected DA, a 22-year-old heroin addict collapsed and died on the front lawn of his own parents’ house. It happened on McMahon’s street. The 18 months since have offered a steady stream of cases showing the havoc prescription painkillers and heroin are wreaking on Staten Island, as well as more hopeful stories of lives saved.
Cases from a single week in April: l A 41-year-old man was found dead in a fourth-floor hallway with a half-dozen bags of heroin in his pockets. l Three twentysomething men were found unconscious, then revived by naloxone, a medication that reverses the effects of opioids. l A 24-year-old man collapsed in a bathroom and his girlfriend called emergency medical technicians, who saved his life. l And the capper: A 25-year-old man, found unconscious at 7:36 p.m. in an apartment building hallway, was revived by cops, then treated at Staten Island University Hospital and released. Just before 5 a.m. the next day, he was found dead in the Staten Island Ferry terminal — and brought back to life once more. All it took were two hits of naloxone, three rounds of cardiopulmonary resuscitation and a shot with a defibrillator.
Staten Islander Andrew Winslow, 31, is one of the lucky ones.
He said there were times when death seemed a better option than living on opioids. At different points along his downward spiral, he was popping 25 pills or going through 40 bags of heroin a day.
“Nobody wanted anything to do with me anymore, and I was praying for God to take my life,” Winslow said.
A good student in high school, he became a college dropout as his drug use moved from pot to cocaine to oxycodone, and, finally, to heroin.
His addiction led him to a two-story suburban home on Staten Island’s South Shore, where seven junkies shared the place with two large dogs.
It was a few minutes and a world away from the house where he was raised.
His roommates were friends from childhood. His mother knew their parents.
“We all hang out upstairs in a room, and we’re all getting high in the room, not really doing anything with our lives,” he recalled.
Winslow was shooting up by then. Soon he was dealing — a career that ended when cops arrested him in front of his mom.
Finally, on his 30th birthday, Winslow nearly overdosed. He was out for 45 minutes when his mother called, and the ringing phone miraculously snapped him out of it. “Her voice brought me back,” said Winslow (photo inset), who now works as a recovery coach at the addiction resource center Carl’s House.
He’s coming up on his first anniversary in sobriety. It would be nice to think his case is typical.