‘I could have easily died’
New Mexico seeing uptick in fentanyl use, overdoses
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — He had been sober for years, a beacon in the recovery community who inspired dozens of people to get clean.
When the pandemic hit, the Narcotics Anonymous meetings that served as a sanctuary for him and so many others were shut down or went virtual.
Then, as those in recovery sometimes do, he faltered and started using again.
The man had told colleagues in the harm reduction community he was going to straighten up and wanted to get back to work.
But the 44-year-old never got the chance. He was found in a West Side parking lot in August, dead from an unintentional overdose after someone sold him a bag of heroin laced with fentanyl.
Last year, the New Mexico Department of Health recorded 304 fentanyl overdose deaths between January and November, a 135% increase over 2019. From 2018 to 2019 officials had tallied a 93% jump, from 67 to 129, in fentanyl overdose deaths as 74% of overdose deaths in the state involved opioids.
The steep rise saw fentanyl-related overdose deaths catch up to meth overdoses, the largest contributor, for the first time. Full 2020 and 2021 data is not yet available.
But Dr. Robert Kelly, substance abuse epidemiology section manager at the state Health Department, told the Albuquerque Journal that fentanyl overdoses continued that pace into the summer of 2021.
“We’re seeing deaths in people because they don’t know there’s fentanyl in there,” he said.
Oftentimes, other drugs are found alongside fentanyl in overdose patients, mostly cocaine and benzodiazepines like Xanax.
As fentanyl overdose deaths spiked there was a slight drop of 2% in those involving heroin. Kelly said some people turn to fentanyl because it does the same thing as heroin but “more and faster.” Others don’t know what they’re getting.
“There are two groups of folks. And some of the folks who know how to use fentanyl, they go out and that’s their drug of choice. … It’s the folks who don’t know that they’re getting fentanyl that’s the problem,” Kelly said.
In 2019, New Mexico had the 12th highest drug overdose death rate in the nation, with unintentional overdoses accounting for 85% of deaths.
Between 2015 and 2019, Bernalillo County had the highest number of unintentional drug overdose deaths and opioid-related overdose emergency room visits in the state. Rio Arriba County had
by far the highest rate of overdose deaths, nearly double that of second-place San Miguel County.
In that time, use of the overdose reversal drug Narcan went up more than 1,000% in the state — from 8,158 to 94,743 doses. Its recorded success, however, rose only 432% — from 779 to 4,144. Those who hand out Narcan to opioid users and often revive people themselves say the reversal drug doesn’t work as well, and sometimes not at all, for a fentanyl overdose.
‘HERE TO STAY’
Dr. Brandon Warrick, an associate professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of New Mexico Hospital, put it bluntly: “Fentanyl is here, and fentanyl is here to stay.”
He said overdoses from the drug come into UNMH on a daily basis, and they have seen the numbers “ramping up very fast” since 2019.
“I have never seen such a rapid increase or shift in an illicit drug source — or come anywhere near what we’re seeing with fentanyl,” said Warrick, whose work has centered around drug abuse for more than a decade.
He said a recent troubling trend at UNMH is fentanyl overdoses in children.
In the past year and a half, the hospital has treated 10 children for fentanyl overdoses. Before 2020, the hospital had treated only two children.
None of the children died, but one child suffered significant brain damage from the drug. Warrick said the children, some as young as 1 and 2 years old, often take pills that were left sitting out.
In other cases, kids have become hooked.
In Carlsbad, such an incident led to charges against a mother and a grandmother.
Alexis Murray and Kelli Smith, 35 and 55, were charged with child abuse in the Sept. 28 death of Murray’s son, 12-yearold Brent Sullivan.
Police found the boy unconscious from a fentanyl overdose in his grandmother’s backyard. Smith told officers she tried to give Narcan to Brent but it didn’t work.
Murray told police she and Smith dealt fentanyl regularly and Brent had been stealing the pills from her for months.
“The last thing that the person remembers is they were in their sweet spot, they were feeling good. The whole period of them being unconscious — near death — is experienced by everybody but the person who overdosed.” — Dr. Brandon Warrick, an associate professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of New Mexico Hospital