COLERAIN TOWNSHIP, Ohio — The first time I spoke to Kevin Norris, he asked if we could pray. He wanted to tell his story, and he asked God to help me hear it.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” Norris said.
And then in the next sentence, he told me he's trying to stop saying that. Because now, almost seven years after losing both legs, he believes the opposite is true.
WATCH: One man's remarkable recovery journey
When I meet Norris outside his home, he asks if I want to see how he gets inside. Then, he climbs half a dozen steps by pushing his body up one step at a time. On his living room floor, he does a few push-ups. He pulls himself up onto his walker and then does some more.
I ask if I can see his scars.
“I got gutted like a fish all the way up to here,” Norris said, pointing to a long line down his thigh. “I had 94 sutures that went in there.”
He's sitting in his wheelchair now, and he looks up.
“So do you want to get into telling the story?”
This isn’t the beginning of his story, but we've waited long enough. Norris overdosed in 2019. He’d been clean, but he and his fiancée fought. He says they both used, and then he passed out in the bathroom.
“I hope you feel better. I love you.”
Those were the last words he remembers her saying. When he woke up hours later, she was sprawled on top of him. He tells me his legs were swollen, and he had to use his arms to move them to try to give her CPR.
“She was black and blue,” Norris said.
He crawled down a hallway that felt never-ending, looking for his phone to call 911. When he woke up in the hospital, he remembers hearing somebody say "DOA." And he remembers his family being in the room.
He remembers being surprised because they had restraining orders against him at the time.
“I lost everything,” Norris said. “Including my legs.”
Since then, addiction experts say overdose deaths in Hamilton County have decreased almost every year. But in May, preliminary data shows at least 27 people overdosed and died — more than double the number of people who died in May last year.
“The only thing predictable about drug supply is how unpredictable it is,” said Meagan Guthrie, director of the county’s Office of Addiction Response.
Officials say fentanyl-laced drugs — as well as stimulants, synthetic drugs and animal tranquilizers — could have been responsible for the dramatic increase.
At a treatment center in Colerain Township, Norris points into one of the rooms.
“I remember being in that room and being so sick,” Norris said. “I can’t believe I’m still here.”
Then, he trips while walking down the hallway and smiles.
“Sprained an ankle,” Norris said.
Alexis Deatherage is an outreach coordinator at BrightView. She starts to answer one of my first questions and then stops. A tear rolls down her cheek. She tells me most people have no idea the amount of strength it takes to walk through the doors here.
“For Kevin, there were probably many days when death was the only thing that felt like peace,” Deatherage said. “But still he has chose life.”
Deatherage is not the only person Norris makes cry while I'm with him. On a bench outside the school where Norris played his first baseball game, one of his childhood friends asks to stop our interview.
“Sometimes, when the world is against you, all you got to do is believe in God and believe in yourself,” said Jason Anevski, who has known Norris for more than a decade.
Anevski has heard his friend's story before. But in the car, he tells me he lost eight of his childhood friends to overdose or suicide.
“To see him still here, that’s why it’s so inspiring,” Anevski said.
Throughout the day, Norris records Facebook Live videos. He does this every day, multiple times a day. Sharing parts of his story because he wants to try to help other people with substance use disorder. On the day his story airs on TV, he is sharing his story at a detox center.
At a prosthetics appointment, he asks for the Wi-Fi password so he can record another video.
“If you know somebody still struggling, make sure they watch this,” Norris said. “Because I guarantee it will get them thinking."
