Category: Awareness

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More teenagers dying from fentanyl. ‘It has a hold on me, and I don’t know why’

The summer before 14-year-old Alexander Neville would have entered high school, he sat both of his parents down at the kitchen table in their Aliso Viejo home and told them he’d been taking Oxycontin pills he bought on Snapchat.

He had self-medicated with pot in the past, but this was different.

“It has a hold on me, and I don’t know why,” he told them in 2020.

Alexander’s mother, Amy Neville, said they called a treatment program the next day and were waiting to hear back on rehab facilities. Alexander got a haircut, went to lunch with his dad and said goodnight to his parents before going up to his bedroom at the end of the day.

Read the full article on the LA Times web site.

As fentanyl drives overdose deaths, mistaken beliefs persist

Lillianna Alfaro was a recent high school graduate raising a toddler and considering joining the Army when she and a friend bought what they thought was the anti-anxiety drug Xanax in December 2020.

The pills were fake and contained fentanyl, an opioid that can be 50 times as powerful as the same amount of heroin. It killed them both.

“Two years ago, I knew nothing about this,” said Holly Groelle, the mother of 19-year-old Alfaro, who lived in Appleton, Wisconsin. “I felt bad because it was something I could not have warned her about, because I didn’t know.”

Read the full article on the AP web site.

Do You Know What A Pill Press Is?

Drug counterfeiters can acquire a pill press and a counterfeit pill mold to churn out counterfeit medications for less than $500. Unfortunately, “garage manufacturers” are not careful about manufacturing controls, and their products often contain fatal doses of fentanyl or other drugs. Since 2015, bootleg prescription drugs made with machines like these have killed unsuspecting Americans in 37 states.

The Partnership for Safe Medicines has more information about Pill Presses on their web site.

Widow and mother of late MLB pitcher Tyler Skaggs speak out against fentanyl

For the first time on camera, the widow of Tyler Skaggs and his mother are sharing their story of loss after the 2019 death of the Los Angeles Angels pitcher. Skaggs was just 27 years old when he was found dead in his hotel room after taking fentanyl-laced oxycodone on the road with his team.

Over three years after Tyler Skaggs’ death, his wife, Carli Skaggs, and mother, Debbie Hetman, spoke to ABC News about what justice looks like to their family.

Read the full article on the Good Morning America web site.

Substance use disorder stigma impacts individuals, families

Lori Ashenfelder, whose son died last year from fentanyl, said substance use and its impact on a family are very difficult to talk about.

“You tend to stay isolated, a lot more than you normally would,” she said. “For me, it was a lot about staying in the shadows, staying in the background, don’t talk about it.”

Last Thursday, the CARE Coalition of Transylvania County hosted“Transylvania CARES: Stories of Addiction and Hope” at the library to share the many unexpected ways substance use disorder stigma impacts the lives of individuals and their families.

Read the full article on the Transylvania Times web site.

Download Article PDF

The Chad Prather Show – Fentanyl PSA

North Carolina, where a babysitter just got sentenced to a minimum of four year years in prison for the fentanyl death of a toddler.

Haley Godshall is the now-former defendant in question. Haley was babysitting a friend’s baby for the day, but was also hanging out with one of her friends … a girl with the unfortunate name of Daisy Bare. But here’s the thing: Fentanyl, as we know, doesn’t take a whole lot to kill a person. A few grains of it can be lethal under the right circumstances, and that’s for an adult! I think the pretty obvious first place to land on this is: Don’t do drugs around children, and especially don’t do dangerous drugs that can kill you around them.

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