Why keep saving addicts who don’t seem to want to save themselves?
Sadly, it’s a question that some are asking as the number of heroin overdoses keeps rising.
Why? We found 13 reasons. We met with 13 recovering addicts on a Saturday morning in Middletown, a town, like many, hard hit by the drug epidemic.
It was a Middletown councilman, Dan Picard, who suggested a “three strikes and you’re out” policy on emergency services using the rescue drug Narcan.
It was the county sheriff there, Richard Jones, who has boasted that he won’t let his officers carry Narcan.
It’s an attitude that’s not exclusive to Middletown or to Butler County. You see it on social media and you hear it in conversation: Why save the repeat overdoser?
Melanie Couch can tell you. She abused drugs for 11 years. “I destroyed myself,” she told us. “I felt less than human.” But she survived and has pieced together “a beautiful life” today.
“It’s never too late,” she said. “As long as someone is breathing and their heart is beating, there is hope.”
There are many others like her.
Please watch and share this video to see what hope looks like.
