ST. TAMMANY PARISH, La. — The St. Tammany Coroner’s Office is now reporting six, likely drug overdose deaths in the past 11 days.
The deadly drug is described as a powder that looks like heroin, but it’s pure fentanyl.
“People are using a quantity of heroin that they would use and getting a much more powerful drug that they’re just unaware of in the fentanyl,” said Matthew Engler, Regional Director for Avenues Recovery Center in Covington.
Engler says he doesn’t see much heroin anymore.
“We have a lot of people coming in telling us that they are heroin addicts when in reality there’s no heroin in their system and it’s all fentanyl.”
Authorities warned that the fentanyl now being dealt on the Northshore is cheap, plentiful, and potentially deadly.
Jacie Griffin is 18 months sober and in recovery.
She now works with patients at Avenues.
“Us addicts, we do drugs because we’re lacking something in our lives,” Griffin said. “We want something to bond to, we want to feel something or not feel anything at all.”
She says addicts need the drug more than they care about dying.
“It’s just the fact of people not knowing what they’re buying and rolling the dice and taking that chance just for the high.”
To give you an idea of the scope of the drug problem on the Northshore, all 156 in-patient beds at the Avenues Recovery Center in Covington are full.
According to Engler, most patients over the past 6 weeks, have tested positive for fentanyl.
He says help is there for drug users who want to get healthy.
“We know that you don’t want to continue living the way that you’re living. It works. Recovery works, Treatment works.”
According to St. Tammany Coroner Dr. Charles Preston, drug abuse has now killed more people than both natural causes and trauma over the last 11 days on the Northshore.
If you need help with addiction you can reach out to the St. Tammany Coroner’s Office for information about treatment available.
You can also call Avenues Recovery Center at 985-465-5555.
Or the 988 Crisis and Suicide Lifeline.
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