Narcan use up, but it's just the first step in reversing opioid epidemic, panel says

Lindy Washburn | NorthJersey

PATERSON — More people are being saved from overdose deaths than ever before, but Narcan – the overdose antidote now carried by emergency medical workers, police, and even some families of drug users – is only the first step toward solving the opioid crisis, Passaic County's top law enforcement official said Thursday.

"It's a very good tool, but that's all it is," said Camelia M. Valdes, the Passaic County prosecutor, at a community meeting in Paterson. She said Passaic County has seen a "dramatic spike" in Narcan reversals of drug overdoses.

"If we're not talking about root causes, if we're not talking about what led to addiction in the first place," the overdoses will recur, and the problem continue, she said. "We're still not treating the addiction."

Valdes hosted a panel of health professionals, an insurance executive and a recovery specialist at Eva's Village, a nonprofit social-service organization with a variety of recovery, housing and vocational programs, Thursday evening. About 100 law enforcement, social service professionals and community members attended.

New Jersey is on track to have more than 3,000 opioid-related deaths this year, with 1,669 recorded on the state database through July 22. That compares with 2,200 last year.

In Passaic County, 114 people have died this year of suspected overdoses, according to state data.

"It is not a city issue," Valdes said. "It is an issue affecting many communities in New Jersey" – suburban, rural and urban.

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Nor is it limited to young adults, though those aged 17 to 30 have the highest number of deaths. The age group with the second highest number of deaths in Passaic County is 51 to 60 year olds, Valdes said.

Police and EMS workers have administered Narcan more than 6,300 times statewide so far this year, according to data from the New Jersey Attorney General, including 388 times in Passaic County. Each one of those is a death averted.

But those numbers don't reflect private use of Narcan, by a family member or friend, said Dr. William Kernan a panelist and professor of public health at William Paterson University.

And the same drug user may be treated with Narcan repeatedly, Valdes said, sometimes within hours of a previous overdose reversal.

Joshua Copeland, a recovery specialist at Eva's Village and now a full-time college student, described his own history of drug abuse. He was prescribed narcotic painkillers after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, he said. He did not know their addictive potential, nor that his body would develop a tolerance and need higher doses for the same effect – all vital information that should be part of a patient's education, he said.

His attitude toward the pills was, "If one feels good, two feels better," he said. "By the time I figured it out, I was highly addicted. And once I got addicted, I didn't know there was a way out."

Copeland stopped using five years ago.

"As an addict, I've done a lot of bad things," he said, "but I'm not a bad person."

Now he is one of 23 recovery specialists for Eva's who visit patients in hospital emergency departments after a Narcan reversal, encouraging them to get treatment. They are available around the clock and provide referrals and help whenever an addict decides he or she is ready.

"The most beneficial thing for my recovery," Copeland said, "is to help somebody else get to the other side."

Other speakers included Dr. Stephen Peskin, an executive medical director with Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey. He described the insurer's newly flexible limits on the number of days it covers for addiction treatment, and information Horizon supplies to physicians to alert them to patients who may be headed towards addiction, based on the prescriptions they've received.

Removing the stigma from addiction is crucial to getting people help, Valdes said.

"Addiction is a disease," said Dr. Mark Rosenberg, chief of emergency medicine at St. Joseph's University Medical Center in Paterson. Rather than make judgments about patients as "drug seekers" or people who are trying to wrangle an opioid prescription, he said, "We need to treat it as the disease it is."

Email: washburn@northjersey.com