Opioid overdose numbers for Boulder County 2012: 20 involving opiates, six involving heroin 2013: 21 involving opiates, 15 involving heroin 2014: 21 involving opiates, 13 involving heroin 2015: 24 involving opiates, 11 involving heroin Cases may include overlap. Statistics via Boulder County Coroner’s Office

When Jacob Leon Wilson was a teenager, his parents started noticing a change in his behavior.

“We just thought he was sick,” his father, JW Wilson, said. Jacob couldn’t get out of bed, and he was sick to his stomach a lot.

“It wasn’t until he was 18 that we found out he was using.”

Jacob was an opiate addict. It started with pills when he was barely in high school, and when the pills became too expensive, he turned to heroin.

“He started messing with drugs when he was 13,” JW Wilson said. “It’s Boulder, kids were stealing stuff out of their parents’ medicine cabinets and trying to see how different things could affect them. He took some Oxycodone, and he was off to the races.

“He basically went drug seeking his whole life.”

Jacob was back at his parents’ home this summer when he went into the shower one evening and never came out.

“I woke up at 4 a.m. and I still heard the shower going, and I knew something was wrong,” JW Wilson said. “I couldn’t get in the door of the bathroom. I ran at the door a few times. I ended up hacking a hole in the door while my wife called 911. I went to the bathtub and he was passed out in about an inch-and-a-half of water.

“I kept giving him CPR. But the truth was, I already knew he was gone.”

Police later found the syringe. Jacob was 25.

Stories like Jacob’s are becoming all too common in Boulder County, which, like the rest of the state and most of the country, is battling an opioid epidemic.

There were more than 350 unintentional opioid-related deaths in Boulder County between 2001 and 2016, and those numbers may not include part-time Boulder County residents. Jamie Feld, with the communicable disease and emergency management division of Boulder County Public Health, said that overdose deaths surpassed motor vehicle deaths in 2005 as the leading cause of accidental deaths in Boulder County, and still is today.

According to the Boulder County Coroner’s Office, heroin overdose deaths locally peaked in 2013. In 2012, there were 20 overdose deaths involving some sort of opioid and six involving heroin. In 2013, there were 21 opioid deaths and 15 heroin overdoses.

The number of heroin overdoses has not been quite as high since 2013 — in 2014, there were 21 overdoses involving opioids and 13 involving heroin, while in 2015, there were 24 involving opioids and 11 involving heroin — but Feld said that could be due to better access to drugs that reverse the effects of opioids.

Regardless, Feld said it is a problem facing Boulder County and the rest of the state.

“We have seen an increase in death due to heroin in the past few years,” she said. “In Colorado, one person dies from a drug overdose every 10 hours.”

As communities across Colorado battle opioid addiction, people are also becoming increasingly aware that the old stereotype of a heroin user shooting up in a back alley no longer applies to all of those who struggle with addiction.

“The image of an addict has changed,” Debby Wilson said. “It’s your children, your neighbors, your friends.”

‘Death sentence’

JW Wilson has been around addiction his entire life. Both of his parents died of overdoses, and as the executive director at the Advanced Learning Institute, he has studied the science behind it.

But even he was unable to stop his son from becoming an addict himself.

“We’re probably ignorant at helping our own families,” Wilson said. “That closeness stops us from seeing reality. Here’s a guy like me, dealing with addiction for one way or another his entire life, and can’t see it right in his own house.”

Added Debby Wilson: “You hear about drugs, but you always think it’s not going to happen to you.”

Part of the other problem was that, while the Wilsons were expecting to talk to their son about drugs in high school, they were caught by surprise to find out just how early their son began using.

“You never think of your 13-year-old boy as being an addict,” JW Wilson said.

But Feld said the numbers from the county’s needle exchange program show that younger and younger people are becoming addicted to opioids. Feld said the average age of people using the program went from 42 in 2010 to 29 in 2016.

“One in seven Colorado high school students is misusing or abusing opiates,” Feld said. “And 42 percent of teens say it is easy to get prescriptions from parents’ medicine cabinets.”

When the Wilsons found out Jacob was using, they pulled him out of school, put him into a treatment plan and spent more than $100,000 on treatment. But his parents said Jacob never showed the motivation he needed to stay off the drugs.

“It was very painful and frustrating,” Debby Wilson said. “There is not much you can do as a parent except support them. It’s up to the individual to make that move.”

Added JW Wilson: “He was a good kid, and when he was not using he was the most honest, forthright, complete human you would want to hang around with, and he would come to your aid anytime you needed it.

“When he was using, he couldn’t find his own ass with both hands.”

JW Wilson said he’s not sure if people understand just how biological drug addiction is.

“Your brain structures for your drug of choice become very similar in biology to your need for air, food and water,” he said. “Most of us who don’t have the genes, or haven’t created the genetic response, we can’t really comprehend the amount of demand that is placed on someone’s neurobiology to use a drug until they die.

“The feeling to the addict is the same as if I tried to strangle you and wouldn’t give you oxygen. You would do anything you could to get that oxygen. That’s why addicts do things that in an unaddicted state they would never do.”

Jacob was actually clean in the weeks leading up to his fatal overdose. But JW Wilson always knew that his son’s addiction meant his life was in constant peril and that it would only take one slip.

“We recognized right away this could be a death sentence,” he said. “But just because you know your kid is in a war zone doesn’t make you feel any better when you find out they are dead.”

But as tragic as his death was, Debby Wilson admitted a part of her was grateful her son was no longer in pain.

“In some ways, it’s a relief,” she said. “He’s no longer battling that disease.”

Opioid resources Needle exchange program: www.bouldercounty.org/families/disease/the-works-program. Prescription disposal: www.bouldercounty.org/families/disease/safely-dispose-of-unwanted-medication-and-syringes/ Addiction recovery: 3180 Airport Road, 303-443-8500, www.mhpcolorado.org/Services/Detoxification.aspx. Recognizing and responding to an overdose: www.bouldercounty.org/families/disease/overdose-prevention-and-response/.

‘The problem was really about me’

Colt Smith was in the eighth grade the first time he smoked marijuana.

“That was the first time I ever got high,” he said. “And I fell in love.”

A few years later, in high school, Smith had a knee injury and was given pain medication.

“At first it would work, and the pain would subside,” he said. “And I’m not just talking about physical pain. I also mean emotional and spiritual pain, the fear and loneliness. But then it just didn’t work as well, and I would find myself convincing myself I was not on the right dose.”

It only took four or six weeks before Smith said he began “doctor shopping,” and not long after that he began circumventing doctors entirely.

“I was lying to one doctor, trying to double or triple my prescription,” Smith said. “I was asking for stronger doses, then stronger meds. Pretty soon, I was bypassing doctors and going down to Mexico to get pills. Then, I graduated through the meds and went to illegal opioids.”

Feld said this transition from legally prescribed medication to illegal opioids or heroin is not uncommon.

“We do see many individuals start using opioids from their doctor as prescribed, and then switching to using it recreationally after a certain time,” she said.

But now, as doctors have tried to cut back on prescribing pain-killing opiates and those pills have become more expensive, Feld said many addicts have turned to heroin.

While Boulder County statistics show the rate of hospitalizations due to prescription opiate overdoses has decreased since 2013, the rate for heroin-overdose hospitalizations has been increasing since 2011.

Smith overdosed at least three times from various substances in the years he used, and estimates he had probably two or three smaller overdoses that weren’t clearly diagnosed. Each time he tried to get clean, only to slip back into old habits.

“Motivation comes and goes; it’s not something that is static,” Smith said. “I would find myself in moments of very real commitment to recovery and putting one foot in front of the other. Then, in other moments, the desire to use was just getting so strong, the little voice inside me said using right now would take care of everything.”

It wasn’t until his third trip to rehab that he remained in therapy and was finally able to get clean, and he now works with iThrive, a program that was founded in Longmont and does early intervention work for teenagers.

“The teenagers may or may not be suffering from an actual substance abuse disorder; some have just found consequences as a result of their using,” he said. “We help them reduce their need to use and help them look at their decision-making.”

For Smith, he said it is about identifying what caused the person to use drugs in the first place. For him, he said using was a way to deal with the insecurities he had as a teen.

“A drug problem is really a drug solution to a Colt problem,” he said. “The problem was really about me, and not about the drugs. Loneliness, insecurity, fear, feelings of not being worthy. I don’t think that is anything unique to me; I think it’s something that a lot of human people really understand.”

The war on drugs

One thing that Boulder County officials agree on is that incarcerating drug users is not the answer. Lee Scriggins, the community substance abuse prevention manager for Boulder County Public Health, said while opioid addiction affects all people, the “war on drugs” targets certain groups.

“It has a really disproportionate impact on people of color and those in poverty,” Scriggins said. “The war on drugs creates an incredible health burden on certain parts of our population. Kids are losing parents and they are traumatized, and they themselves grow up to have a lot of struggles. We’ve destabilized communities with the war on drugs.”

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions released a policy memo in May asking prosecutors to “charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense,” a reversal of Obama-era policies. It was a move that was met with disapproval by many prosecutors, including Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett.

With the support of Garnett’s office, police say they have had more leeway when responding to drug cases. While talking to a gathering of people at an Overdose Awareness Day event in Lafayette on Aug. 31, Lafayette police Cmdr. Scott Emerson said that the department this year only issued two drug possession arrests.

“We’re not interested in that,” he said of arresting people. “What we’re interested in is getting people help.”

As part of that, Emerson said police have been trying to spread awareness of Colorado’s Good Samaritan Laws that provide some immunity for people who report overdoses. He also noted that all police agencies in Boulder County now carry naloxone — which can counteract an opioid overdose — and do drug take-back events to get unused prescription drugs away from children.

“We want to get those out of the house as quickly as possible,” Emerson said, adding that Lafayette police already have collected 200 pounds of drugs this year. “I truly believe that’s helped teens and some adults from getting addicted.”

Scriggins also noted the success of the Longmont Police Department’s Angel Initiative, which has helped get addicts treatment.

“That’s the kind of approach that we really need — partnering with public health and focusing resources in an effective way,” Scriggins said. “It’s pretty inspiring, especially in the face of the (war on drugs) rhetoric.”

‘Do not try to do this alone’

But while Boulder County has a lot of resources for dealing with drug addiction, JW Wilson says the goal should still be to prevent it in the first place.

“We’ve created this war on drugs without looking at why people are taking drugs in the first place,” he said. “It shouldn’t be a war on drugs; it should be a war on why people are taking drugs in the first place.”

That war, Wilson said, starts long before a person ever uses drugs. He believes that helping to prevent addiction starts in the school system and making sure kids can find meaning in their teen and young adult years.

“If you know what’s meaningful to you, you can self-stimulate dopamine, endorphins, serotonin,” he said. “The less able you are to direct your life around meaning, the more power drugs and alcohol can have over you, because they can stimulate very similar neural signatures as personal meaning.”

Scriggins also said that adults need not only talk to their children early and often about drugs, but set an example for them.

“We need them to see that we’re not turning to a drink for every celebration or difficulty in life,” Scriggins said. “In Boulder County, there is an alcohol culture. We kind of have this ‘go hard, play hard’ attitude. We’re kind of communicating a message that is pretty powerful for young people.”

But Scriggins said that there is also a fine line between helping parents prevent drug use and blaming them when it happens.

“Some people will just run into trouble,” Scriggins said. “It’s not about blame, because nothing is going to be 100 percent. We don’t want this to happen, but when it does we will not perpetuate stigma.”

After Jacob’s death, the Wilsons never hid the fact that their son struggled with addiction. His cause of death is revealed in the first sentence of his obituary.

“Here’s the deal: Because we haven’t understood drugs, we’ve wanted to lay blame,” JW Wilson said. “We want to blame the parents or blame the drug pusher. ‘Oh, your son is an addict; you must have been a bad parent.’ No, this is a biological system. You can’t treat diseases by hiding them.”

Added Wilson: “Do not try to do this alone, or your embarrassment about what other people think could kill your child.”

Mitchell Byars: 303-473-1329, byarsm@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/mitchellbyars