John Boyle

jboyle@citizen-times.com

Most of us are oblivious to the tidal wave crashing all around us.

That's because it's a tsunami of heroin overdoses, and most of us think we live in a world where this hard-core drug doesn't touch our lives. But talk to police or firefighters — or parents of children who have overdosed — and the wave starts coming into focus.

And it's scary as hell.

Sheri Barker and Bill Rhodes have lived it, and they want something positive to come out of the devastating loss they're enduring: the death of Barker's daughter and Rhodes' step-daughter, Elizabeth "Bethy" Brophy, 28. She died earlier this month from a suspected heroin overdose, the tragic culmination of seven years of addiction and a downward spiral that cost this lively, beautiful young woman everything.

Brophy, who attended North Buncombe High School but didn't graduate, could not have envisioned the toll addiction would take on her and her family. After leaving school, Brophy worked her way up to managing a local restaurant.

"She had her own apartment, she had her own car — she was on top of the world," said Barker, 50. "And within a year of her starting to use — which we believe she was using pills at first and she switched to heroin at a later time — she lost everything. She literally lost everything."

While working at the restaurant, Brophy entered into a relationship with a man who "was very abusive," Barker said. From reading her daughter's journals, Barker knows this is when her daughter started using, "trying to make that relationship work and trying to keep from being hurt."

That was in 2010. Rhodes and Barker, who has three other children, all older than Brophy, had no idea the descent into hell that awaited them. Barker and Rhodes have been together four years and married two.

"There was a lot of family conflict," Barker, an office administrator, said quietly, tightly holding Rhodes' hand. "Addicts get to a point where they don’t care who they steal from or who they hurt, because they’re not thinking of anything other than getting their next fix."

Sometimes, the drug dealers visited Barker and Rhodes' home, demanding money that Brophy owed. They stole electronics and a camera. On one particularly uncomfortable day, Barker had three drug dealers standing on her front porch, demanding money and threatening to kill her, her husband and Brophy, if they didn't pay up.

"It takes you into this horrifying world, and I have learned more about crime and drugs and addiction than I ever wanted to know," Barker said. "And I would do it all over again, if I thought I had one more chance to save her life."

Brophy tried repeatedly to get clean. She went to her first treatment center in 2014 and maintained her longest period of sobriety after that, for eight months. She returned to Asheville, and Barker and Rhodes believe within three weeks she was using again.

Looking back now, Barker sees a clear link between mental illness and her daughter's addiction, but when Brophy was a teenager, doctors and others told Barker her daughter would grow out of it.

Utilizing her parents' insurance after her addiction set in, Brophy went to treatment centers in Florida, Texas, Nevada and Tennessee. Repeatedly, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and finally borderline personality disorder.

Still, the real "Bethy" surfaced every now and then, the one her oldest brother referred to in her obituary as "the most intelligent person I've ever known, super funny, scrappy as hell and tough and nails." But the heroin had sunk its hooks into her, and the downward spiral pulled her further down, until late last year she ended up in a public housing apartment in Asheville, sharing space with other addicts.

The last time Barker talked to her daughter was Saturday, Jan. 28. Barker talked to or texted Bethy every day, but around Christmas her daughter had gotten mad and cut off communications for several weeks.

"I had dared point out that she was nodding off at the lunch table," Rhodes said of the tiff.

On that Saturday, Bethy was upset because her kitten had been gone missing. Rhodes recalled that Barker, for the first time in a long time, had not asked her daughter to go in for help, a plea that always came with a mother's assurance that she would do anything to help.

"Just this one time, I didn’t want her to fight with me; I just wanted her to know I love her," Barker said. "So that’s how our conversation ended — 'I love you; let’s have lunch this week.'"

But on that Monday, Jan. 30, one of Elizabeth''s friends sent a message to her father via Facebook that said, "Are you Beth’s family? She’s dead."

For Barker and Rhodes, the wave crashed right on them.

The Citizen-Times is working on stories about the heroin epidemic, and I've been out talking to a lot of firefighters and Emergency Medical Services personnel. One paramedic told me last week that Buncombe County had 68 overdoses in January compared with 16 in January 2016 – not all fatal but still a staggering number.

Through their grief, Barker and Rhodes want something positive to emerge, and they think what makes the most sense is a program called Police Assisted Addiction & Recovery Initiative, which started in Gloucester, Massachusetts in 2015.

The idea was that the Gloucester Police Department "would not charge any person afflicted with the disease of addiction if the person presented themselves to the police department and asked for treatment. The police promised to help every individual who came into the station, regardless of their city of residence and their insurance status," according to PAARI literature.

The effort grew, spawning the nonprofit PAARI, which estimates that Gloucester has placed 520 people into treatment. Better yet, 200 partner police departments in 28 states are running similar programs, and PAARI estimates 10,000 people have gotten into treatment because of it.

The New England Journal of Medicine published a study of the Gloucester program, called the Gloucester Angel Initiative, and found police-led programs "greatly outweighed other methods of addiction treatment and placement," PAARI notes.

Barker and Rhodes have approached the Asheville Police Department and Buncombe County Sheriff's Office about the PAARI program, but they haven't heard back. Late last week, I asked spokespersons for both agencies for comment, and they both said they'll get back to me this week.

PAARI is not a silver bullet, and Barker and Rhodes are realistic about treatment. They know better than anyone that treatment can fail, but they also know that the way North Carolina is treating mental illness and addiction isn't working.

Nobody, Rhodes said, is talking about legalizing heroin, or suggesting that police should stop pursuing arrests against drug dealers. He just wants them to decriminalize addiction and help addicts get treatment.

"I have nothing against police departments going against pushers and drug runners, but we know what we’re doing now is not working," said Rhodes, a retired photographer and an armed forces veteran. "So if we keep doing it, what’s the point? Let’s try something different."

At one point in her downward spiral, Brophy spent 30 days in jail on a larceny charge. She went into a mental health facility afterward, but she really needed intensive treatment for addiction.

I know from talking to local law enforcement officials in the past that they deeply understand just how serious the heroin epidemic is, and that they want to attack the problem and help addicts. Buncombe Sheriff Van Duncan has told me that we cannot "arrest our way out of this problem."

My hope is that they'll just consider this program, which also offers help with funding. You can read more about it at http://paariusa.org

Maybe it can be one more tool in holding back the sea of addiction, one more step in understanding that this problem is a physiological one — an illness of addiction, not a sign of character weakness.

"That’s one of the biggest problems — people think, ‘Oh they’re just scumbags’" said Rhodes, 58. "A lot of these people probably would never be prostitutes or thieves or burglars or armed robbers if they weren’t trying to feed their addiction. That’s what the police need to wrap their heads around: they can cut the crime rate more by helping these people get off the (heroin)."

If we don't use every tool possible, Barker says, the wave may inundate us all.

"We’re going to have people dying all over the place, and crime is going to go up," she said.

Since her daughter's death, Barker has heard from several of her daughter's former roommates in rehab. At least two said Elizabeth, who was always better at helping other people than taking care of herself, saved their lives.

Barker and Rhodes encourage addicts and their families to seek out help, but they hope law enforcement can step up, too, and take on a non-traditional role in the fight. They know no one can hurt Brophy anymore, but they also know another wave of addicts is right behind her.

"Something has to give, it’s that simple," Barker said. "It's that mundane, that basic — something has to give."

This is the opinion of John Boyle. Contact him at 232-5847 or jboyle@citizen-times.com

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