Vermont's Relapse: Efforts to Address Opiod Addiction Were Starting to Work. Then Potent New Street Drugs Arrived.
Seven Days
Amanda Bean's longtime opioid addiction took a turn last summer. The drugs she bought on the street were noticeably stronger but wore off faster — so she shot up more often each day. She also started to use methamphetamine, which had become cheaper and more readily available than the cocaine she preferred. She would sometimes go days without sleep, she said during a recent interview from jail, drifting further and further away from reality.
Then the overdoses began. Dozens throughout the fall and winter, until it felt as if each time she used, she was awakened by someone standing over her with Narcan, the OD-reversal medicine. In April, on Easter weekend, she overdosed at her mother's apartment. Each day the following week, she landed in the ER for overdoses, prompting a concerned doctor to finally ask her what the hell was going on. "I don't know," she recalled telling him.