Samantha Dittmeier, of Mattituck, lost her life in a motel room in January, 2013, when she took what she thought was cocaine — and ended up, instead, with a deadly batch of heroin.
Dittmeier was only 23 years old when she died, her heartbroken mother Karen Allar said.
Dittmeier’s death was one in a swelling number of overdoses attributed to the heroin epidemic sweeping across Suffolk County and creeping onto the North Fork. After the highly publicized death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman and a bust last month in Riverhead that nabbed drug dealers who were selling a potent “Hollywood heroin” in parking lots of businesses along Route 58, the escalating heroin crisis has been in the spotlight.
The problem, experts say, is impacting area youth; they have seen children as young as 13 in Suffolk County hooked on the killer drug.
But while statistics indicate that the number of actual heroin overdoses on the North Fork is low, experts say education and awareness are critical to protecting area youth from the heroin crisis.
According to Suffolk County health department spokesperson Grace Kelly-McGovern, in 2010 and 2011, there were no heroin overdose deaths in Southold, and one in 2011 in Riverhead. In 2012, there were two heroin related deaths in Southold, and one in Riverhead. In 2013, there were no heroin related deaths in Southold, and four in Riverhead. Also, she added, there are 39 cases classified as pending, or possible, drug overdoses, which could cause the number to increase for 2013.
In Suffolk County, meanwhile, there were 82 documented heroin overdose deaths in 2013, compared to 38 in 2010.
On the North Fork it’s about preventing the epidemic
Southold Town Poice Chief Martin Flatley said it is sometimes difficult to gauge the actual number of local users other than by arrests for heroin use in town. The number of those arrests, he said, “really hasn’t been that much more significant.” However, he added, “We know that in the last three to five years, heroin is definitely much more widely used and accepted amongst users and probably more easily attained. We are also aware of the fact that the average heroin user is no longer a skinny junkie with needle marks in his or her arms hanging on the street corner; it is the average teenager, the businessman, the mom — and this we experience more and more, unfortunately.”
Despite the low numbers on the North Fork, heroin has taken a human toll: Dittmieir, her mother said, was only 15 when a manager at the store where she worked — the family lived in Babylon at the time — offered her marijuana. Next, she moved on to cocaine, her drug of choice, Allar said.
After more than 15 stints in rehab, Dittmeir had been clean for months and working at Tanger when she found herself one night at a hotel on Sunrise Highway.
The next day, Allar said, she got a call from someone who had been with Samantha, saying, “Your daughter is blue.” She died after only a half hour, having mistakenly taken heroin laced with the deadly opioid fentanyl, used to induce anesthesia, rather than the cocaine.
“Drugs ended my daughter’s life,” Allar said. Allar said she has seen firsthand, among other young people, the insidious nature of heroin. “Heroin is so easy and so cheap, an easy fix. It’s an epidemic.”
Narcan, a drug that can reverse an overdose by chemically blocking brain receptors activated by heroin, was not available to her daughter, Allar said.
Kelly-McGovern said Narcan was credited with 594 opioid-related reversals for 2013 across Suffolk County.
Jessica Loren Zaleski Moisa of Riverhead said she lost one of her best friends to a heroin overdose four years ago. (The friend’s name is being withheld at the family’s request.)
“She was always intelligent, quiet, to those who didn’t really know her,” Moisa said. “I had literally known her almost all my life. We considered each other to be practically cousins.”
Her friend got drunk for the first time at 13 at a family party, sneaking beer and cups of wine, Moisa said. At 14, she tried cocaine. “She wasn’t a party animal or anything, either,” she said.
Later, as her friend got older, she began dating a young man who used heroin and she began using the drug, too.
The group of friends had moved to Brooklyn at the time. One night in 2010, Moisa said, she got the call that changed her life forever.
“My boyfriend and I got a call from her boyfriend. He was in a complete state of panic. He said something was wrong with her,” she said.
Racing to the hospital, Moisa said it was too late to save her best friend, who had died of an overdose after vowing that the it would be her last “hoorah” before kicking the habit; although her boyfriend allegedly warned her not to use too much of the heroin, her friend ingested the bag,, Moisa said. “When he woke up, she was lying on his lap, and she was gone,” she said.
Prescription painkillers: the gateway drug
According to Jeffrey Reynolds, executive director of the Long Island Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, while official data has been hard to obtain from New York State, during his five years at his current post he has seen a sharp uptick in numbers of clients served battling heroin addiction, from 100 in 2009 to 868 last month. The council has offices in Riverhead, Ronkonkoma and Mineola.
Reynolds said the jump in heroin users has also reflected a move away from prescription opioids to heroin, “with a significant drop in the overall age.”
The average heroin user is between 18 and 26 years old, with kids as young as 13 among those seeking treatment, he said.
Also, Reynolds added, someone who finally reaches out for help has likely been using the drug for some time. “Typically, they experiment with other drugs, become addicted, and begin using heroin. Then their life begins to fall apart,” Reynolds said.
The shift from prescription pills to heroin is attributed to the high cost of prescription drugs on the street, Reynolds said. While one Vicodin or oxycontin pill can cost about $25 to $40, heroin is is about $10 a bag, with some partial bags costing only $5.
“It’s cheaper than beer, cheaper than cigarettes,” Reynolds said.
And, while the vast majority of heroin users don’t begin by injecting — they snort it — approximately 20 percent of users have now progressed to needles, which poses additional dangers, including HIV and hepatitis C, he said.
Law enforcement officials indicate that the distribution of heroin on the East End and Suffolk County is directly tied to an uptick in crimes, including robberies perpetuated by young people trying to feed a drug habit, according to District Attorney Thomas Spota, spoke about the crime component at a press conference last month announcing the “Hollywood heroin” drug bust.
Flatley said some of the types of crimes that are committed, such as stealing change and belongings out of vacant cars, or stealing various metals and redeeming them at recycling centers, are usually associated with chronic drug users. “We experience these crimes on a regular basis,” he said.
While Hollywood heroin may make headlines, “overdoses happen with all forms of heroin,” Reynolds said. “Using heroin is a patently dangerous activity. The predictability of heroin and the batch you are getting varies widely. By the time it ends up with a user it’s been through thousands of hands, and someone has taken some and replaced it with something else.”
Another issue, Reynolds said, is that there are insufficient resources to adequately monitor the crisis. Many cases, he said, do not go through the county medical examiner’s office, due to a family’s wishes. And, he said, there are no accurate numbers reflecting the number of those who suffer brain damage after non-fatal overdoses.
But, he added, hope exists: Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone received state approval last year to register the county in the Opioid Overdose Prevention Program. The designation allows health officials to teach laypersons how to recognize an opioid overdose and reverse its effects with Narcan and has resulted in the almost 600 saves so far, Reynolds said. “That’s a step in the right direction.”
Reynolds believes that one way to solve the problem is by eliminating the demand through prevention.
The Catch-22, Reynolds said, is that in the current climate, school districts have fewer disposable hours, and with the Common Core curriculum, some students are suffering from accelerated symptoms of stress and anxiety. “They’re trying to medicate those feelings away with alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs,” he said. “It’s a prescription for disaster.”
He added, “Part of our job is to convince the school districts that it’s not an either/or situation,” Reynolds said. “If you’re worried about test scores, the reality is that kids who are dead of overdoses don’t do well on standardized tests.”
The average young person addicted to heroin, Reynolds said, may have had an “awesome trajectory” in school; their parents, he said, “have done everything right. And yet, they’re caught up in this terrible crisis.”
Parents, Reynolds added, need to address the issues at home, by talking to their kids, and not burying their heads in the proverbial sand or leaving the topic to educators at school.
Focus on education and raising awarenes
According to Susan Toman, executive director of the Guidance Center in Southold, education is key to prevention.
“When these drugs are in the bathroom cabinets or even in the parents’ dressers, teens find them. They’re curious, they try them, and they are highly addicting, for teens as well as adults. Men and women who had never had a social or addictive issue in their lives, may break a bone or have surgery and are then prescribed these highly addictive pain killers— in large quantities. These pain killers become a regular staple in their homes. Teens will use them and experience relief from the stress caused by the metamorphosis from teenager to adult. Should there be any other complex issues they will get relief from that, too.”
Toman agreed with Reynolds that when the pills are no longer available, buying them on the street gets too pricey. “Heroin does the same pain relief, and is much cheaper. Just as the adult who never had any real social or addictive issue, our teens who would normally experience the typical uncomfortability of maturing are getting addicted to the pain relief. Their use of the drugs causes situations that are most likely not typical for them, causing more stress, and from there, it’s a whirlpool into the abyss of addiction.”
While doctors have become aware of the rising tides of addiction and begun cracking down on prescribing prescription drug, there is the need to get heroin off the street, Toman said.
“Clearly by the huge drug bust in Riverhead there is a real supply and demand on the East End,” she said.
Addicts, Toman said, “may have created disharmony and dysfunction in their families, or have gotten into trouble with the law. Then there are those who will not get recovery and develop other medical issues due to the addiction: injuries from falls or car accidents, digestive disorders and mental health issues.”
She added, “The problem is local, the problem is national and the problem is global. We can no longer afford to not look at all the facts.”
Toman said that New York State Senator Charles Schumer last week issued a release about creating of a statewide database to help law enforcement and health officials get a better handle on the data related heroin-related crimes and trends, as well as overdoses and hospital admissions.
And locally, she said, The Guidance Center, in conjunction with the Southold
Communities That Care organization, will be offering a summer prevention program to be held in July for two weeks.
“It is important to bring our youth refusal skills, empowerment, and a connection to community,” she said.
To that end, Southold Elementary School has kicked off the “Too Good for Drugs” program in grades K through 5, with the prevention agency Alternatives available to present to all Southold schools upon request.
“That’s one way how we contend with addiction locally,” Toman said. “Empower our youth with skills and information, as well as resources. I hope they continue building on the skills they are teaching in prevention through to junior and senior high school. Prevention utilizing evidence-based programs works in reducing substance abuse and the anti-social behavior associated with it — that is a fact.”
Only a small percentage of teens had experimented with heroin in the Mattituck-Cutchogue school district, according to most recent statistics, Toman said. Education is key to keeping those numbers down.
“It will be extremely important to put prevention in place in schools, and heighten awareness in the communities. The community will need to be willing to stand up and say, ‘No way is this happening here.’ Many communities wish they had stood up to this. Now, they are hoping Narcan will save lives and treatment will return their family members.”
But for Allar, there will be no joyful reunion. “Heroin took away my daughter, my best friend. It killed her and it ended her beautiful, young, healthy life.”
