- [Narrator] When you hear about opioid overdoses, (alarm wailing) you probably didn't realize half of the nation's overdoses happen in the exact same spot.

It's not here or here, it's happening right at home.

Georgians are accidentally dying in their own homes because people don't understand the dangers of taking an oxy or perc with a glass of alcohol for stress or to sleep.

Learn how to protect your family from opioid overdose at opioidresponse.info.

(gentle foreboding music) (machine hissing) (tense foreboding music) - [Sydney] Every 11 minutes, someone in America dies of an opioid overdose.

- [Officer] There you go, buddy.

Keep breathing, man.

(siren wailing) - America has an insatiable hunger for substances.

(police officers talking indistinctly) - We make up about four or 5% of the world's population, and we use 85 to 90% of the world's prescription drugs.

- We've seen an increase in overdoses, we've seen an increase in deaths.

- Please save him.

- Come back to us, sir, come on.

- It doesn't really matter your background, your history, where you grew up, how much money you have.

- It can be anybody, and it's everywhere.

(car humming) (tense foreboding music) (bell rings) - My freshman year, I passed out in the school bathroom.

The pill had fentanyl in it.

- The majority of the patients that we're seeing are unintentional overdoses.

- [Officer] Sir!

Sir!

(officers talking indistinctly) - [Officer] It's an overdose, you ODed.

- I cannot keep doing this.

- [Officer] God (beeps) man.

- But I cannot stop.

- I did things in addiction that I never thought I would do.

- I wasn't using it to feel good, I was just using to not feel bad.

- All it does is take... (dramatic music peaks) - They're just chasing something to cover up something, and what they really need is help.

(tense suspenseful music) (logo whooshes) (wind whooshing) (gentle music) - Hide-and-go-seek was my absolute favorite game to play, and I was really good at it.

I would hide in places that the other children were too afraid to hide in.

The scary places were my favorite.

In those moments, I did not realize that the thing that I was so good at would be the thing that I would spend many years of my life doing, seeking places to hide.

(gentle music) (gentle foreboding music) In the beginning of my life, my mother was very abusive toward me.

And when I told her about my addiction, she told me that I'm too strong.

That would never happen to me.

That hurt because addiction has a mind of its own.

(gentle foreboding music) - Imagine you just a little kid in your room, right, and you're just peacefully sleeping.

And then all of a sudden this closet door opens.

(gentle foreboding music continues) Out of that closet door comes this scary monster.

This monster that just comes and grabs you.

(tense menacing music) That's addiction.

- My dad died in '95, and it was a result of his heroin use.

My brother's name was James Edward Tyler.

His nickname is Peanut, (chuckles) you know, 'cause he is short or whatever.

He died back in March of 2021.

Excuse me, I'm getting a little bit emotional, but just a bright and intelligent, you know, strong man.

He fought with addiction and recovery for a long time.

(gentle foreboding music) - The verbal and physical abuse of my mother was severe.

I was locked in my room a lot.

And then my older brother began to sexually abuse me for years.

And I just remember being a child and always wanting to die.

All I wanted to do was die.

And (melancholy music) (Toyia sighs) so when I found alcohol at a young age, I felt good.

Didn't feel sad.

It sounds absurd to think that I drank so early, but I know I was trying to take the pain away.

- The opioid, what it does is it blocks the pain message.

It actually goes in and it binds itself to a protein which is on the nerve cells, but does its job to bind on that nerve cell and keep you from feeling the pain for the period of time that that drug can do that.

When the drug wears off, the pain's still there.

- Right elbow, let's go.

(basketball thumps) (sneakers squeaking) I played basketball in college.

I got a scholarship.

So, basketball was everything to me.

I ate basketball, slept basketball.

Everything, morning, noon, and night.

I won a national championship.

Just on my way to success, but the disease of addiction, it kept pulling me back in.

It just pulled me away from basketball, and I just didn't even care anymore.

The drugs, the addiction was even bigger than basketball.

- After having dental surgery, my dentist prescribed me Oxycontin.

Those little white pills not only silenced my physical pain, they muted the voice of my emotional pain, and they became a lethal hiding place.

I soon found a doctor who became my dealer.

This behavior soon had me feeling buried alive by the consequences of my actions.

One of those consequences was a loss of my teaching career.

I was devastated, and I crawled deeper into the pill bottle.

- I got to a point where I just did not even care, so I just kind of let basketball fall by the wayside.

(gentle music) (basketball thumping) (basket rattling) - When I got the call, you know, I just took it as just like a regular call.

"Hey man, your brother, he overdosed."

And I'm like, "Okay, well all right, cool, no problem.

I'll go pick him up."

I guess I kind of normalized it, you know, that's how often it had happened.

Unfortunately, he died on March 21st, but I don't think he was found until by like the 23rd or the 24th.

That's a tragedy.

- If there's anybody trying to think like, you know, "I might know how to beat this thing by myself," "No, you don't.

Sit yourself down because that big monster is strong."

- My brother had a hard time asking for help.

I think it started with shame.

He would say stuff like, and I'm not trying to be offensive, "Man, I don't trust that white man and that white man's system, you know, they enslaved us."

- Within the African American community, some of the stigmas are fear, some of them are shame and guilt, and some of them are really around generational myths.

Those things that we're not proud of, but we were taught.

- So, I knew my great-grandmother, and she would tell me basically how she was told by her mother, who was a former slave, like, you know, "You don't cry, you don't tell people.

Like you really don't seek help from white people.

And what goes on in our house stays in our house" because it was seen as being weak.

- "You don't seek assistance, you'll be fine.

You can pray about it, you talk to your pastors about it."

So, oftentimes, those things are barriers to us even seeking out treatment.

- And I know it's not just in my family.

I've heard it in other people of color's family, and it has kept us sick as a community, kept us sick.

(birds chirping) - If something happens around you, like somebody uses or somebody relapses, how does it affect you?

What do you do to keep your recovery strong in the middle of something like that?

I tried and I tried and I tried.

I went to eight different treatment centers, but I was trying to do it on my own wheel.

But see, I needed to grab a hold of my community.

I need to grab a hold of others around me.

And I needed to humble myself and ask, "Help me to attack this monster of addiction."

We are all in this together, and we can make it.

We can make it.

We will make it!

(audience clapping) We're standing and stable.

We partner with a few treatment programs in our neighborhoods, and we have a recovery meeting on Wednesday night.

- I want to really truly find who I am as a human being in this world independently and care for myself 'cause I never did that before.

- Recovery means to live again because I know that when I was in my addiction, I was just existing.

But now in recovery, I get to really live, you know what I mean?

- Thrive, not just survive.

- Come on, I'm thriving, not just surviving.

I love it.

- I say that all the time.

- [Woman] Thrive not just survive.

- I promised myself that, you know, I didn't die.

I didn't die with him, you know.

I live, and I live for him.

You know, to talk about opioids and opioid crisis.

I miss him, man, I miss him.

(melancholy music) - I would find pencils and crayons, and I would get newspapers and paper bags, and I would just write or draw on them.

And I would bury them underneath the ground, and I never allowed anyone to see any of my stuff.

So, for a long time I would draw or write, and I never showed anyone until one day I showed my grandmother, she started putting 'em all everywhere in her apartment, in her house.

She told me, "You're gonna be amazing.

You're gonna do something powerful one day."

So, I'm grateful to her, and I don't hide my things anymore.

(birds chirping) (gentle upbeat music) - Northwest Georgia is especially susceptible to drug overdose in a variety of different ways.

One is, there's very little options for gaining access for medications through opioid use disorder, which is where all the evidence lies in reducing drug overdose.

- Fentanyl is a very powerful substance.

- I don't think there's a such thing as heroin anymore.

It's all fentanyl.

- It went from being cut into heroin and into different things now being pressed into pills.

(melancholy music) When people think they're getting like a benzo or Xanax pill, and it actually has fentanyl in it, very, very small amounts is all it takes to kill somebody.

- One of the things that we started doing to empower people who use drugs is start a drug checking program to detect if there's fentanyl in it.

(plastic rustles) (melancholy music) (pill clicks) - Just a little bit.

So one line means positive, two lines mean negative.

So let's see what this ends up saying.

So, those pills are positive for fentanyl, which means they're fake.

Anyone could have bought them thinking they're the real thing and have gotten a hand grenade in the form of a pill.

- There's just not enough access to it, especially in the rural spaces, which is therefore gonna lead more people to continue to use unsafe supply in the community, which is gonna elevate their chance of overdose.

(melancholy music) - Narcan is an amazing drug.

I've personally witnessed multiple situations where it's saved someone's life.

- [Robert] And it has instructions on every kit, so everybody knows what to do.

- There can be controversy of people saying, "Well, this is enabling someone and this is like a lifeline they can carry because an addict feels safe."

Like, "Oh, if I do die, someone can use this Narcan, and it's like a failsafe for me."

But again, if they're breathing, there's hope.

If they're not breathing, there's nothing we can do for them anymore.

(melancholy music) - I take methadone every day.

And without it, I would probably use fentanyl every day.

It takes the receptors in your brain, and it tricks them into thinking that you've gotten this high that you seek.

- A lot of people think methadone is just another opioid, and, hence, it's something that should be avoided.

However, methadone is a way for people to wean off of their addiction.

(water glugging) - Shortly after I got on methadone, I was able to hold a job, and I have loved ones in my life that look at me like I'm normal.

(birds chirping) It's very hard to drive that far to get treatment, and it's already hard enough for us to convince us to go to treatment.

Like to get us to go to treatment, in general, is almost impossible.

But you want me to drive an hour on top of that?

- [Robert] Have you encountered anyone who's used a kit since we last saw you?

- [Women] There's been two.

- [Robert] Okay.

It's fantastic that you're able to help 'em.

- There's so many people out there that need the help but cannot get it because there's not enough places to help them, or they can't afford the care.

(gentle music) - This is Andersonville.

This is where I grew up.

(gravel crunching) This is one of the two churches in the town of 200 people.

(car whooshing) The stigma of mental illnesses in the south is still very real.

It becomes a question of moral character and strength of will rather than an actual disease.

Living out in, you know, out here, there's not really much to do.

So, essentially, you just kinda walk around.

That was kind of what I would do when I found what I needed.

The opioids, I would just kind of feel good.

So, I'd go for a walk.

(gentle music) (gravel crunching) (car whooshing) In my senior year of high school, I worked in a kitchen as a line cook.

Working in the kitchen, I had made these friends that had access to people's prescriptions and things like that.

So, really it was one of the guys in the kitchen that would continuously supply me with the hydrocodone.

So, that was how it started.

I was addicted after a few months, so I would get what I could get my hands on, not really understanding that I was using more powerful opioids.

I just knew that they helped me feel okay.

(gentle guitar music) (birds chirping) For me, the barriers are in finding affordable treatment.

And then the other big barrier is getting there because first of all you have to have a car, and then you have to have the means to buy the gas and get there.

And if you have kids, you have to have somebody.

You know, there's a lot of small little things that people don't think about really when you think about going to therapy regularly.

I've been diagnosed with depression, and that was never really addressed.

So, the turning point for me was when that got addressed because if you don't address the underlying mental illness, you're really just putting a bandaid on it.

(car whooshing) - You know, as a little girl, I remember just like looking out of the window at my mom's house and like wishing I was a bird, so I could fly away.

(wings flapping) Looked like chaos, disjointed and disconnected from the people that I love.

I went to places and did things that I would never have imagined myself doing.

(image whooshes) She was eight months when I went away to treatment the first time.

I wish I could say that I was a mom that was there all the time.

That is not the case.

I was fighting for my life a lot of that time.

I didn't think that I would ever get to see her or talk to her again.

(latch rattling) So if we could just take a moment to reflect with gratitude for each of us here and for others that we care about, and then we'll introduce a topic.

(melancholy music) (person sighs) Awesome.

Thank you guys so much.

My name's Katherine.

I'm a person in long-term recovery, and I was thinking about challenges and barriers that we find in early recovery and/or successes from those barriers.

So, I'll just kind of throw that out there and see who wants to open up.

- When it comes to barriers, gosh, y'all, I honestly struggled.

I mean, living in a town with one red light, we didn't, early on, I didn't have a license.

So, you know, you might can find somebody to drive you around the block to a meeting, but an hour or even 30 minutes away, it was a struggle for me.

- Before I knew that, if there wasn't accessibility to meetings or whatnot, I've been in situations, and I just wouldn't, I wouldn't go.

You know, I used that as an excuse to not recover.

- I love the space that I'm in because community is exactly what it's about.

And like the Change Center being the first of its kind in this area, it just makes the whole difference, like, for me.

- I'm so passionate about the work I do 'cause I look at my past, and I go, "What else would you do with that stuff?"

You know what I mean?

Like my past is the kind of stuff that people don't like to talk about.

(melancholy music) Man, if there was a way I could go back and redo it, I would, but I can't.

I can't rock her to sleep.

I can't take her to her field trip in kindergarten.

But I can be the one to answer the phone when she FaceTimes three times a day, or when she's talking about meeting a boy, or what job to get, or when she's talking about college, or like when she wants to come up and see me for the week because like I'm finally emotionally available (Kathryn sniffles) and desire more than anything to be her mom.

(melancholy music) Prayer.

- [All] God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change.

Courage to change the things we can.

- I'm very grateful that I found recovery.

Today, I get to tell a lot of women, we fought the same battle, and we're on the other side.

(gentle music) - It's not something you plan for, you know what I mean?

It's not something that you look for, that you think is going to happen to you.

So, we kind of turn a blind eye to it in our own families.

(gentle music) - She was very popular, well liked by her peers, super empathetic, funny, smart.

Around eighth grade, she became very, very insecure.

(image whooshes) (fire crackling) Madi first started smoking weed, It numbed some feelings and emotions for her that were painful.

Feeling insecure and just trying to like figure everything out, and, you know, I think, probably for once, it just made her feel normal.

By around 16, we had two years of everything just kind of like spiraling.

And there was kind of one night in particular that I confronted her about it, and I'm like, "This has gotta stop.

This is a problem."

And she got really angry, and she left.

(door thuds) (siren wailing) She got picked up by the police, and they brought her back.

(door pounding) I was just like, "Y'all, I need help."

- I tell families when I'm working with them that you didn't cause this, and you can't fix it.

Which can be a really tough pill, so to speak, when they hear that, right?

'Cause as a parent, or I think we're ingrained to, we protect our kids and our loved ones.

(camera clicks) - I have four children, Madi, and then she has three younger siblings, and for a long time it was kind of like damage control.

Like you're just trying to shield them from it.

(melancholy music) (inhales deeply) (exhales deeply) Trying to identify when it truly is a problem that you need extra help with is really hard, and you do everything you think that you can as a parent.

You take the phone away, you take the car, you take the door off their room.

- I think most families look at, "Okay, how do I fix this?"

The hard truth that I tell families too is, with addiction, your loved one might not ever be okay.

That's the harsh reality, but that doesn't mean that you're gonna stop loving them.

- The million dollar question is, do I have a teenager who is a little bit rebellious and may be going through things that would otherwise be considered normal, or is this a problem?

(melancholy music) (camera clicks) I did not understand addiction until my daughter became sick.

- This is a disease, and there's different factors that contributed to this.

Right?

There's different neurobiological things going on.

- A person who has addiction, you know, their serotonin levels might be at a four, and then they take that first pill, and it puts them up to a 10.

It puts them up to where somebody, a neurotypical person would be.

And then all of a sudden, they're like, "For the first time in my life, I feel like I'm me.

I'm not hurting."

I can tell you that the only choice an addict has is the first one.

And then after that, it's not a choice for them.

(phone buzzing) If you wanna know what it's like for an addict, put your phone down for 24 hours and every single time you think about picking it up.

that's what it's like to be an an addict 'cause they're constantly thinking about that drug.

(melancholy music) I really don't believe that any addict wants to overdose.

- A recent young female, she was probably in her early 20s, came in after using narcotics, we rushed her to the back and immediately gave her the Narcan and remedied her and thought she was better.

An hour later, she had another episode.

We gave her the Narcan again and resuscitated her.

And I got called 20 minutes later that they thought she was dead in the bathroom because she was again cyanotic and blue.

Well, it turned out that she had reused in the bathroom, and she had stored it in the lining of her bra.

So she had used, reused, and then reused again and almost died on three different occasions all in the emergency apartment.

- [Man] Bring the ambulance.

- [Officer] What?

- [Man] This person's dying over here.

- [Officer] There's a person dying.

- Someone that has an overdosed, they're comatose, essentially.

- [Officer] Got another one?

Another Narcan?

- No, I don't.

- So they don't know what's going on, and they come back, and they kind of look at you and say, "What happened?"

So, they have no idea what's going on with them when they have this narcotic overdose.

- Hey, hey, he's awake.

- He's awake?

- He's awake.

He's awake.

- There we go.

Come on, man, there we go.

There we go.

(gentle music) - There is a stereotype on who an addict is or what they look like.

And the truth is that addiction doesn't have a face.

Whoever they were before addiction took over their life, they're still in there.

The child with little sticky fingers and gummy smiles that you raised, they're still in there.

I'll never stop learning everything I can, I'll never stop talking about it.

I'll never stop raising awareness because my addict has a name, and her name is Madi, and she's my child.

And I will never ever give up on her ever.

(gentle music) - A lot of people when they think about the opioid crisis, they think of, quote unquote, "addicts" in the street in dark alleys.

And that's just very far from the truth.

- I'm seeing users that are 60 and 70.

I mean it, it goes across the whole spectrum.

- The elderly wanna maintain that independence that they've had their whole life.

And how do you do that when you're suffering from joint pain, or you're suffering from back pain, that limits what you're able to do?

- The first opioid addict I ever knew in my life was my grandmother.

Every night she would take her medicine.

It's just acceptable.

They have pain, they need their medicine.

(gentle music) - When someone comes and says, "No, I need the opioids for my pain.

This is what gives me comfort," how do you argue with that?

This gentleman who was elderly, he was prescribed tramadol.

He came out and said, you know, "When I first got this medicine, I was having pain, and I was taking the medicine as prescribed for the pain.

And now I don't have the pain, and I still wanna take the medicine.

- It's supposed to work for pain, but it creates a euphoria in the mind to where the brain is not thinking about the pain, but it never addresses the nature of the pain.

(gentle suspense music) Tolerance increases over time to where the milligrams have to be increased, the number of pills have to be increased.

(gentle suspense music) - My whole life was geared toward taking opioids, and so as it became more available, I took more of it.

- I missed my kids growing up, you know, I lost my first marriage, I lost my career.

- It took a lot of pain and heartache before I was really willing to take a look at my life.

- When our patients come into treatment, about 85% of them have been prescribed.

And they have been trying to treat legitimate pain rather than just getting high.

(keyboard typing) - Patients get medications regularly from maybe a chronic pain doctor, and at some point, that doctor leaves town.

Or they have insurance where they can't get in to see another chronic pain doctor, so what do they do?

Some of those patients resort to what's on the streets.

(gentle music) - I don't think there's ever been a time that it's been more dangerous to use opioids that you buy on the street than right now.

(cars humming) - There are a lot of times in which we run into elderly folks that are either feeble or their health is poor, and they're unaware or unable to tap into the resources that are available to them.

- The elderly have a lot of health issues.

There's a lot of them that do drugs.

It's really sad.

But I don't blame them, I say they're broken, and they're trying to medicate themselves.

(cars humming) - [Damian] We're going underneath the Truman Bridge.

There's a significant homeless population underneath this overpass.

Many geriatric folks in this population, which is sad to see.

- We are seeing fentanyl on the streets, and it's being delivered to our homeless camps.

And especially with that elderly, this medication can be very deadly.

- They're more at risk for side effects such as falls with fractures, confusion, or delirium, even higher risk of death.

(cars humming) - I'm gonna see if I can wake some folks up.

Good morning, good morning, wake up, wake up.

Anybody need to see the doctor?

Wake up, wake up.

(zipper rasps) (gentle music) - I had basically resigned myself that this was gonna be my life because I could not stand the idea of having to go through the detoxification process from opioids.

- Opioid withdrawal, it's a terrible thing.

I've been through it myself.

It can last anywhere from two weeks to two months.

Most people that have gone through it say, "It doesn't kill you, but you wish you were dead."

(slow tense music) - Obviously, all of us are are going to get sick at some point.

The whole purpose of me stopping the opioids is so I can live some sort of a a productive life.

(slow tense music) - Sometimes opiates might be the right answer, especially after an acute event like a surgery or an injury.

(wheels rattling) - Anytime that we can have one of their children, maybe their caregiver, someone else corroborate with that pain, that helps a lot in making sure that we're prescribing the therapies appropriately.

(gentle music) - Taking it as prescribed.

In other words, my wife holds onto it and doles it out as it's needed.

- Do they need it for such a long time?

Can they try a short term and see if it makes an improvement and then stop that therapy?

That in itself can prevent a lot of chronic opioid prescriptions and the overdoses that come along with it.

- I've been treated with opioids before for back pain and so forth, but I can't keep 'em at the house because if things get stressful, I don't know, I might go back to that.

- Safe storage is something that I talk about incessantly and that means you lock your drugs up.

Don't just put 'em up in the cabinet.

No, lock 'em up.

(gentle music) (door thuds) 70 to 80% of youth say that they get their drugs from their grandparents.

They don't go to drug dealer for prescription drugs in particular, they just go to somebody's house.

- You know, one of the things that we're taught when we become physicians is patient autonomy.

And I think patient autonomy plays a huge role in the elderly, and they have a right to decide as long as they're educated about the decisions that they're making.

- It's really our duty as clinicians to ensure that our patients are not suffering, and we are treating their pain at the end of life.

- It's what keeps you going, is holding onto those people that you see that their lives have changed, and it's what keeps me in this business.

(gentle upbeat music) (gentle guitar music) (Erika speaking Spanish) (gentle guitar music continues) (Erika speaking Spanish continues) (water rippling) - There's certain expectation when you first come to America that things will immediately get better.

And it's a real shock to a lot of people where that's not the case.

(Erika speaking Spanish) (keyboard typing) (Erika speaking Spanish) - I get lots of calls from families, saying, "I need a Spanish-speaking treatment facility," or "I need a Spanish-speaking therapist."

And in my experience, there's just not a lot of them out there.

- Another barrier that many immigrants and refugees face is affordability of services.

(gentle guitar music) (Erika speaking Spanish) - In many immigrant communities all across the country, that becomes a problem because they become prey for predators that take advantage of them with very high prices.

(bell rings) Children of immigrants end up having higher risk factors from birth.

They begin to be assimilated with the stressors that we carry in this country.

(Erika speaking Spanish) - [Ashly] I was mad and angry at my mom.

I had this anger for her 'cause she was never really with us, and we grew up with my grandma.

(Erika speaking Spanish) I was taking the pills.

I liked how it felt.

I had no like emotions, like anything.

(slow tense music) (heart throbbing) (Erika speaking Spanish) - I never did the pills again because I got scared.

(slow tense music) (Erika speaking Spanish) (knuckles rapping) (Erika speaking Spanish) (knuckles rapping) (Erika speaking Spanish) (siren wailing) (officer voice drowns by siren wailing) (Erika speaking Spanish) (officer faintly speaking) (siren wailing) (Erika speaking Spanish) (Erika inhales deeply) (melancholy music) - Immigrant and refugee communities need education in a culturally and linguistically responsive manner, so they can understand what it is that we mean when we say someone may be suffering from a mental illness or a substance use disorder.

(Dr. Pierluigi speaking Spanish) (woman speaking Spanish) (Dr. Pierluigi speaking Spanish) (man speaking Spanish) (Dr. Pierluigi speaking Spanish) (gentle guitar music) (Erika speaking Spanish) (gentle guitar music) - My mom is in AA.

My family has gotten a lot closer.

We interact more.

We go out more together.

We're just closer in a way that we weren't back then.

She started changing, and I started changing too.

(cars humming) (keys clacking) (gentle music) (keys clacking) - The opioid epidemic, it affects everyone.

Doesn't matter age, race, sexual orientation, gender identity.

It doesn't matter how much money you have and just as it does not discriminate, nor do we.

We make sure that anyone and everyone that walks through that door feels safe.

I'm going to help you stay alive.

We are filling a very, very large need from services that just simply do not exist in this area.

Welcome.

I'm putting in a "Bad Batch Alert," okay?

There's a whole lot of fentanyl in it.

See, how purple that is?

Be really, really careful.

Take it out of that.

- Okay.

- Yep, go ahead and pour those.

Excellent.

After you use each syringe, you will put it in here, and then this is what you bring back to us, and we continue to exchange.

Because this is your first time, I also have a little handout here.

One thing that I've learned is that somebody not having access to clean syringes does not mean that they are not going to use.

They use in more harmful ways.

We do enable people, we enable people to stay alive.

(cars humming) This doesn't have the roots yet, but give it a minute, and it sure will.

It will grow.

(chuckles) It will have different sprouts, and it it becomes something else.

It becomes something unrecognizable.

I am transgender, female to male.

What that means is I was born, raised, and socialized as female in a female body although I didn't connect with that.

Puberty was some of the hardest times of my life.

I wanna be clear here, like it's not that it was confusing, it felt wrong.

I was so unhappy.

When you are othered, it's easy to want to self-medicate.

(gentle music) It began initially with meth and very quickly went to heroin.

(slow tense music) Eighth grade was the last grade I completed.

I didn't go to high school.

I did drugs.

It opened a can of worms.

Institutions and prisons and just some really hard years.

- As a parent, it's been difficult.

I never stopped loving my son.

I distinctly remember him calling me and in his voice, I knew he was giving up.

I knew it was like he was calling me for the last time.

And I said, "Riley, you stay alive, you bury me.

That's how it works."

- I had many years of (sighs) passionately, like desperately wanting to stop using.

I just had this really deep feeling of hopelessness.

Y'all see those roots?

You see how beautiful that is.

Seriously, like I see God in that.

Let's set it here, just there.

(vase taps) - Honestly, there's just no way that he would be alive today without methadone and medically assisted treatment.

- The goal is stabilization.

Get to ground zero.

What really happened was like my faith in myself grew.

My heart had kind of always been in harm reduction.

We would go to a parking lot, and we would sling syringes out of the back of our car.

And Access Point grew out of that.

And to be able to walk into this space, it feels unbelievable that we have created this.

(gentle music) We serve people from 18 to 70s, but there is definitely, what I can see, a bit of an explosion of young adults.

It has become popular where people can buy pressed pills off of certain social media forms.

Pressed pills are so convincing that the kid doesn't know that it's not actually from a pharmacy.

- The potency of our narcotics seems to be impressively stronger than it used to be.

- [Riley] Fentanyl in the drug supply has been an absolute game changer.

- We're seeing it laced in all kinds of drugs, whether it's marijuana, methamphetamines, cocaine.

- If somebody walks into a bar and buys a pint of beer, but it has the alcohol content of whiskey, but they don't know it, when you pound that pint of what would be beer, ooh!

like that'd messed you up, right?

It's these bittersweet feelings 'cause like I hate what's happening.

I hate this opioid crisis.

I hate so much about it.

But then at the same time, I'm really glad that we're here.

(soft music) - It's been a long journey, and it's like, who would've thought, who would've thought that we would be doing this together?

I'm so proud of him because he's showing people with his courage not only to be alive, but have purpose.

(gentle music) - I am incredibly grateful (sighs) that we're both still here.

And that's that thing too, where I say that some of the people that we serve where if like, if all that we do is keep them alive, it's enough.

And I really do feel that.

I really do.

It is enough.

This one here, it's called Swedish Ivy, but it's also called a Pass It On Plant, which I really, really like.

I was given it from someone else they gave me just to start.

With harm reduction, this is what we do.

We get to take little piece of hope, and we get to learn how to take care of it.

(cars humming) (birds chirping) (uplifting music) - Very grateful that I found recovery.

Very grateful that I know where I'm going to lay my head down tonight, that I know where my belongings are.

Those things I guess a lot of people take for granted.

Right?

But they're a piece of my story.

And, (sniffles) you know, I think that's why I'm so passionate about what I do now 'cause I know what it was like, and nobody gave up on me.

- It's been four years since I've used any mind or mood altering substances.

I speak out about my recovery because it is my passion and my purpose to share the hope that I've found.

- So that person who might be still struggling right now living in active addiction, I just want you to know that there is hope.

- We as human beings are designed to get better.

We're designed for hope.

- [Nate] My son just turned four years old.

I think if it wasn't for him, I don't know where I would be because anybody knows that if you have kids, it automatically gives you hope.

- I want people to know that recovery is real.

Like it's no longer just about me.

I want everybody to know that we can recover.

We do recover.

The opposite of addiction is connection.

I miss that.

- I am holding hands next to other women who are walking this journey, and we're walking it together.

(birds chirping) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) (birds chirping continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) - [Narrator] When you hear about opioid overdoses, you probably didn't realize half of the nation's overdoses happened in the exact same spot.

It's not here or here.

It's happening right at home.

Georgians are accidentally dying in their own homes because people don't understand the dangers of taking an oxy or perc with a glass of alcohol for stress or to sleep.

Learn how to protect your family from opioid overdose at opioidresponse.info.