(dramatic music)
- From the very beginning, Jess was just an easy child.
I think we put her in time out once, and put her in the
corner and she got a book and started reading.
And I said, "Well, your time out is up."
And she looked at me and said "Well I'm not finished
"with the book," you know, so.
She just, I don't know, it was just easy.
(soft music)
- We have so many cards and letters and things that she
wrote to us over the years. She was a perfect
daughter for a very long time.
She overdosed before her 16th birthday.
And was on life support for six or seven days.
And that was when we really realized she was in trouble.
- [Narrator] Today, 91 more Americans will die from
an opioid overdose.
More people now die from overdoses than from
traffic accidents.
It is an epidemic.
By the end of this week, in Arizona alone, about 200
people will overdose on opioids.
More than 20 will lose their lives.
Jess survived her first overdose.
But she didn't stop using the drugs that almost killed her.
Morphine and Valium and Oxycodone,
and basically anything they could get
is what they were doing,
until the black tar came along, and then that was it.
Once Jess discovered heroin,
there was nothing else in her life. Nothing.
- I think it was like 870 BC where the first
documents that show that people would take these,
and they would actually reach sort of what they called
a higher state.
And so we call, today, euphoria in which a person
will feel good.
When we do things that are exciting even in life,
or eating food, we get a little bit of dopamine,
and that's our reward pathway.
Opiates override this, of course, now we don't need
the food or anything else.
We just need the opiate to get the dopamine release.
And that's why they can become very addictive.
- [Narrator] Once opioids hijack the brain's reward system,
the brain adapts and starts making less of its own dopamine.
As time goes on, opioid users need more and more
of the drug just to feel normal.
And that's when things get dangerous.
- And at higher doses, it actually sort of decreases your
own personal drive of breathing.
And by decreasing that breathing, of course, that's
how most people end up overdosing and dying.
- Does that hurt?
- It hurt. I could feel it,
right there, I can feel it. Definitely.
- OK. And that made the pain worse?
- Yes.
- And that's the pain you're complaining about?
- Yes. Yes.
- OK.
Well I actually remember when I was in medical school and
we got lectures about pain management.
One of the messages we were getting at the time is
don't worry. If the patient is in pain, they will not
get addicted to opioids if they are legitimately in pain.
But that's because we didn't know better.
It started in the mid- to late-80s
when certain pharmaceutical
companies pushed for opioids really hard.
I'm sure there was a component about
just relieving the pain,
but we cannot also ignore or completely discount
the financial gains from selling opioids.
- [Narrator] Prescription opioid sales quadrupled from
1999 to 2014, earning billions for pharmaceutical companies.
BJ spent most of those years battling cancer and
benefited from opioids power to stop pain.
Then, she watched the drugs destroy her daughter's life.
- Some of the things she's chosen to do, I would have
killed somebody if they had done them to her,
but she did them to herself.
There's nobody to kill, you know?
These are some of the things that Jess loved growing up.
When I look at it, I see a young, happy, vibrant young
woman doing all these things from the time she was born.
And that person doesn't exist anymore.
- [Narrator] BJ now has stage 4 bone cancer.
In 2017, she spent more than six months out of contact with
Jess, unsure if she'd live to see her daughter again.
Then, one day in late summer, she got a call.
- Wanted to know if she was still alive.
Was the big thing, and the second thing was
I needed help.
Can't wait any longer.
So, she's always been there.
I sucked it up, called one last time.
I've been here eight days.
Prior to that, I was at one friend's house for two days,
camping in the backyard.
I was at a friend's trailer for about
four days before that.
Prior to that, I was staying behind an abandoned
building at Grant and Swan for about two and a half weeks.
Right now, I'm trying to get into residential treatment.
So, fingers crossed. We'll see.
- [Narrator] Without opioids or adequate treatment,
Jess faces the dangers of withdrawal.
- It affects the GI tract, it affects the temperature
regulation of your body.
The autonomic neural system kind of regulates
many of these things that we don't think about.
So it just makes you kind of go through this process
where you feel like you almost want to die.
- I was sleeping on a sidewalk 104 degree weather.
I mean, rolling over and throwing up right there,
being too weak to stand up.
Even now, I still shake sometimes.
My thoughts race. I have a hard time
grabbing the simplest of words
and putting a sentence together.
And insomnia's kicking in. And that's the worst part.
Last night was the first time I've slept in four days.
They say you have to hit rock bottom.
I nailed mine real hard.
That parachute did not open and that sidewalk
was my rock bottom.
Been doing this more than half my life.
I have nothing to show for it, but a criminal record
and nothing.
I want a life before it's too late.
- [Narrator] In the grip of this epidemic, several states
have declared public health emergencies, including Arizona.
- We are back now with the deep dive into one of the
most serious crises facing people in this country.
- A recent surge in opioid addiction...
- Over 42 people die every day from drug overdose.
- It's not coming from the street, but from medicine
cabinets all over America.
(siren wails)
- [Narrator] Training and tracking requirements have changed
to keep better tabs on the crisis.
New guidelines encourage physicians to curb their
opioid prescriptions.
And some new laws force them to.
(siren wails)
- We're not trained to be detectives, we're trained to heal.
But we find ourselves in a situation that
we have to take on that chore.
So it's a balance that we're trying to achieve.
Between relieving pain and
the welfare of the entire community.
- [Narrator] It's unclear if these new steps to fight
the opioid epidemic will be enough, especially if
funding for the public health programs that are taking
those steps gets cut.
- It's everywhere.
It's everywhere. It's taking over.
There are people that I've come across in their
50s or 60s or 70s that are using heroin.
For 30 bucks on the street, you know, for
granny with arthritis, I mean, that could last her
three to four weeks.
There's no age, there's no race, there's no gender.
There is no bounds with this drug.
- How can we have this kind of problem and not address it?
They're just walking into something that's so dark.
And you just have no idea how dark it is.