Sittenfeld: Here's how city could help addicts

P.G. Sittenfeld is a Cincinnati councilman.

As Cincinnati was shocked last week by a terrifying spike in heroin overdoses – an estimated 174 in just six days – my thoughts inevitably turned to my cousin, Seth Mnookin.

Today, Seth has all the pieces of a happy life: a strong marriage with two children, and a career as a journalist and professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Recently, I spent a day with him and his family, and saw how healthy a life he lives.

But he would be the first to acknowledge how unlikely this outcome once seemed. In his early 20s, Seth became a heroin addict. He later described these dark years in a piece he wrote for Salon: “When you are a heroin addict, the only frame of reference is heroin. What time is it? Heroin. What are you doing tomorrow? Heroin. Why are you going to the hospital? Heroin. What are your plans when you get out? Heroin.” Seth continued: “If I didn’t use every six hours, I became violently ill, vomiting, shaking, with a horrible aching in my bones. Day and night, I wished I would die, or at least fall asleep for a very long time.”

Many of us know someone whose life has been engulfed by addiction – or know family and friends whose lives have been shattered as a result.

With heroin-related deaths in Ohio rising every year for the past decade, the challenge is indeed enormous and daunting. But we are not helpless.

Our ultimate approach must center around prevention: stopping substance abuse before it starts.

But, today, in our country and in this city, we find ourselves already in crisis, and we must take concrete action – both through government and individually – to address this dire situation.

First, a number of community leaders have joined me in calling for the state of Ohio to appropriate meaningful emergency funds to support evidence-based treatment. Treatment is the proven method. Expanding access to trained addiction counselors, delivering key wrap-around services, and increasing residential detox bed spaces are pivotal for initiating recovery.

Much of the state of Ohio’s several-billion-dollar surplus is, in fact, money raided from the Local Government Fund. What could be a more worthy cause than to give that money back to the local communities that they were taken from in order to address this raging heroin epidemic?

Second, and even more urgent than building treatment capacity, is to focus on harm-reduction – reviving and stabilizing overdose victims with naloxone, or Narcan, as it is commonly known.

A number of my City Hall colleagues have expressed support for allocating money to ensure that our first responders are equipped with enough naloxone to meet the need. Those 174 overdoses aren’t statistics – they are real people, like Seth. They are parents and siblings and children. They are us.

Third, we can all be empowered to save lives. I am working with Talbert House and its CEO, Neil Tilow, on a program that will enable each of us to become more than bystanders in the midst of a crisis.

We would hold 20 community-based sessions – open to everyone – throughout our neighborhoods to provide training on how to safely and properly administer naloxone and to distribute naloxone kits to attendees at each of those sessions.

The modest cost of this outreach – including the naloxone kits – would total less than $50,000, and I call on my colleagues to support this spending. Further, I look forward to supporting the great work of the Hamilton County Heroin Coalition and its recommendations.

While our first responders performed heroically last week – and continue to do so as they pursue the dealers who spread this lethal drug in our communities – we must train more of the community to also be able to intervene and save lives.

In my family, we’ve seen someone we love go from the darkest point of heroin abuse to a place where, today, he is thriving.

Let’s not ask those among us who are struggling to walk alone.

Together, we must change the outcome.