On Nov. 8, acting on a tip, police officer Gene Gillock
gingerly stepped through the open front door of a scruffy
one-story house on Northeast Sacramento Street. Inside
the sparsely decorated dwelling, he found a disturbing
sight: the corpse of 32-year-old Nyshelle Reynolds stretched
out on the kitchen floor, her arms folded across her chest.
Someone had cared enough to place her body on a blanket,
but not enough to call 911.
When Multnomah County Medical Examiner Karen Gunson
saw the corpse, she felt a chill. Just six months earlier,
Gunson had signed the death certificate for Nyshelle's
mother, 47-year-old Joyce Larsell. The cause of death
was the same: heroin overdose.
Stories such as this prompted more than 100 counselors,
cops, probation officers, treatment providers, teachers,
bureaucrats, parents and recovering addicts to attend
a "heroin leadership" summit Friday to grapple with
this year's dramatic surge in heroin deaths.
The mood was grim, in part because new figures released
last week show that the epidemic continues to rage.
According to the medical examiner's office, Multnomah
County racked up 106 heroin deaths in the first nine
months of 1999, a 56 percent jump from the first nine
months of 1998. Statewide, the number of overdoses from
all illegal drugs may approach 300 by the year's end.
Those statistics, and the official apathy they appear
to inspire, frustrated many participants.
"If three hundred people were dying in Portland from
salmonella poisoning, the federal government and the
CDC would be parachuting in here with spacesuits," said
panelist Ed Blackburn of Hooper Detox. "This problem
can be solved if we have the political will to do it."
The sharp spike in the number of local overdoses remains
a vexing puzzle. Certainly, dramatic fluctuations in
the potency of the black-tar heroin prevalent in Portland
have contributed to the death toll. But a county task
force investigating the deaths has produced a draft
report that contains some additional statistical clues
to the epidemic.
Although they didn't know it, both Nyshelle and her
mother, Joyce, were at risk of overdose--ironically,
because they both had recently given up the drug. The
county task force has found that many overdoses occur
following a period of abstinence: 19 percent of victims
overdosed within two months of getting out of jail or
prison, and an additional 11 percent had been in drug
treatment immediately before their death.
Nyshelle had been released from a short stint in the
Washington County jail just two weeks before her death.
Joyce had graduated from an outpatient drug-treatment
program the day before she overdosed. In fact, she was
so happy about completing the program that she brought
over her certificate, which bore the governor's signature,
to show her 80-year-old mother.
Three hours later, she was dead.
It's likely that both women had lost their tolerance
for the drug. "When they're trying to get clean and
then shoot up, that's when they get into trouble," says
sociologist Shelley Kowalski, one of the report's authors.
Nyshelle's death points to another of the task force's
findings: the fear of calling 911. Roughly 75 percent
of the 18 current or former heroin addicts interviewed
for the report said they would be reluctant to call
911 if a friend or associate suffered an overdose, for
fear that responding police officers would arrest them
for drug possession or even murder.
The task force also found that 36 percent of heroin
deaths involved other drugs as well--mostly cocaine.
Many observers suspect that benzodiazepines such as
Xanax or Klonopin, usually prescribed for anxiety disorder,
are an important factor in heroin overdoses. Although
only 1 percent of death certificates listed benzodiazepines,
Kowalski says these records "severely underestimate"
the popularity of benzodiazepines among addicts and
therefore may obscure the drugs' role.
Finally, the task force has found that almost 17 percent
of victims showed signs of mental illness or suicide.
Four left suicide notes.
The task force plans to issue a final report next month,
but the Recovery Association Project, a group of recovering
addicts, says the preliminary findings should prompt
action. Last month the group extracted a promise from
County Chairwoman Bev Stein to launch a publicity campaign
warning addicts of the dangers of overdose and encouraging
them to call 911 if a companion overdoses.
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Willamette Week | originally
published December 15,
1999
