Memorial hosted for heroin deaths

Two dozen people mourned by candlelight Sunday night inside a Mount Auburn church during a memorial service for those lost to heroin addiction.

The Church of Our Savior on Hollister Street partnered with the Cincinnati Exchange Project for the first "Light in the Darkness, Bread for the Journey" service "for lives cut short or made uncertain by addition."

"There's so much shame and so much silence, and the silence weighs a thousand pounds," said Libby Harrison, Exchange Project manager, after welcoming the group. "What we are going through today with addiction, especially with the focus on opiates, reminds me of the early days of AIDS when we didn't say their names."

Paula Jackson, rector of the Church of Our Savior, explained the service came about because the church hosts the Exchange Project in their parking lot once a week.

"We have to acknowledge that addiction is a disease. It doesn't do any good to tell people just to get over it. It takes not only a social support and a family support network, but it takes intense treatment," Jackson said. "The disease itself resists treatment. The disease tells the person they don't need treatment."

During the memorial, Jackson read Psalm 130 and asked those gathered to acknowledge, either silently or aloud, those who had passed or were suffering because of addiction.

"Amy," a quiet voice said. Others sat in silence as the name echoed through vaulted rafters above their bowed heads.

"It's a very isolating feeling to know that you put your own life in danger and hurt the people around you, and you want love and sympathy and you feel like you deserve none of it," Harrison told the crowd. "The families are so ashamed to say why their child, their parent, their aunt, their uncle, their friend died because we don't have a lot of room in our culture for empathy. They wear it in their hearts, and they wear it in their eyes, the pain and the sorrow and the exhaustion."

Toward the end of the service, candles were lit to remember those who had died. The number of candles lit outnumbered the people in attendance.

After the service, Harrison explained that the heroin epidemic has shown no signs of slowing down. Last year, 2,482 people died from drug overdoses in Ohio, according to the Ohio Department of Health

"Our clientele base is continuing to grow, from what I understand arrest rates are continuing to grow, so we aren't at the tipping point yet," she said. The Exchange Project allows drug users to exchange used syringes for new ones utilizing a "harm reduction model" with the goal of making the drug-using community healthier while increasing drug treatment enrollment.

Harrison said she hopes the widespread nature of the epidemic will change attitudes about addiction.

"We've spent the last 150 years calling it a moral weakness when it's a brain disease," she said. "I think when it hits home, it's hard to judge when it's someone you love."

Jackson agreed, recalling a man she baptized last year who died just a few months later.

"He was so loved, such a beautiful young man. He was so generous-hearted and such a giving person," she said. "It really was crushing to us. These are real people. There may be aspects of the illness that make them not themselves at times, but they're still people created in God's image."

Jackson and Harrison hope to make this a regular event at the church.