Battling Opiate Addiction

Details: Created on Monday, 14 December 2015 14:42; Written by Camille DeLongis

Around the NEK - After a seven year battle with opiate addiction, 25-year-old Katie Bollman has now been sober for seven months. Amidst the Shumlin Administration's on-going conversation about what they call an "opiate crisis" in Vermont, this is the inside story of a recovering user.

Bollman has recently checked out of a sober house in St. Johnsbury. Her recovery includes methadone maintenance as well as taking trips to the Kingdom Recovery Center for peer support. She says she is doing well now, but she knows recovery is a life-long process.

"All I know is what they tell me," Bollman said, "And that's to take it one day at a time. My life got completely turned upside down from using drugs."

Seven years ago, Bollman was prescribed what she calls a "large amount" of percocets following a surgery. Percocet is in the opiate family -- along with heroin. She says she took them as prescribed, but believes she was over-prescribed.

"I didn't think I would become addicted...I didn't think it was going to become a problem," Bollman said.

Bollman finished her prescription, saying she then felt sick and her body hurt all over.

She said, "Somebody else was actually the one that was like, 'you are pill sick, like you're dope sick from pills.' I never thought that would happen."

Bollman said in order to get rid of all the pain she was in, she resorted to buying more opiate pain killers on the street. She used those for five years. Bollman said eventually the pills became harder to find and more expensive.

She said, "That's the same time when doctors were realizing they were over-prescribing their patients, so they started becoming more scarce."

Heroin was readily available, and much cheaper. Bollman says after being miserable for a number of days without pills, she finally caved in and bought heroin. She promised herself she'd only snort it once, but once was enough.

"I was hooked," Bollman said.

She continued to snort heroin for nearly two years. For a brief stint, she went to rehab and remained clean for a short period after leaving. One day, she missed a dose of her methadone maintenance, and relapsed.

She used heroin again, and eventually began doing it intrevenously. After two months of using needles, she got sick.

Bollman said, "I slept all day one day, and I slept all night. The next day I slept for hours and hours, and then I woke up and I was in this excruciating pain from head to toe."

This time, she knew it was not from withdrawls. She went to the hospital for several days in a row. Each time, she said, they continued to send her home, saying she was just detoxing. On the fourth day of going back to the hospital, she passed out in the waiting room. When they realized her organs were shutting down, they air-lifted her to Burlington, where they realized she had developed a blood infection from the needles. The infection spread to her heart, and required open heart surgery.

Since then, Bollman has remained clean. She does not blame anyone for her addiction. She remains clear, though, that no one ever wants to be a heroin addict.

"I'm not giving using any justice, but to me it's a sickness, I was sick," said Bollman, "It's a horrible, horrible disease."

Jason Goguen, the executive director of drug addiction treatment center, BAART, agrees that heroin addiction is a disease.

He said, "It can affect you, and it can affect me, it can affect anybody, at any given time. These are people that mow your lawn, that paint your house, that deliver your mail, that treat you in the hospital. There's a broad range from nursing to teachers to whatever it may be. It has no boundaries."

Both Bollman and Goguen agree that to combat the "opiate crisis" in Vermont, doctors need to prescibe opiate pain killers cautiously, and treatment options need to be made more affordable and available.

Opiates in the NEK from NewsLINC on Vimeo.