Adam Pendleton grew up in Ohio’s Clermont County, where drug addiction was generational.
“My mom and dad are both drug addicts; it’s a rite of passage,” Pendleton said. “Everybody in my neighborhood was a drug addict. All my friends were drug addicts, and we normalized that type of f***ed-up thinking from a pretty early age.”
By 12, Pendleton said he knew how to weigh “powder” on a digital scale, and it just progressed from there. In 2000, during what Pendleton said was the OxyContin craze, he started using the narcotic at age 14. By 15, he had started “shooting dope,” also known as heroin.
Over 20 years later, drug trends have changed. Heroin has moved down to No. 4 on the list of most-seized types of drugs across Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties, according to data collected by the Northern Kentucky Drug Strike Force. The drug that NKY organizations like the Life Learning Center, BrightView Health and the NKY Office of Drug Control Policy said is most prevalent today?
Fentanyl.
Data that the NKY Drug Strike Force collected since Jan. 1 of this year show that fentanyl is the most-seized drug in the three NKY counties, followed by methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin and crack cocaine.
A significant issue that has come up with the rise in popularity of fentanyl is other types of drugs being laced with it. A continuing trend, according to the NKY Drug Strike Force, is counterfeit pills containing fentanyl or methamphetamine. The pills are pressed to look like OxyContin, Percocet, Vicodin and other medications.
Even with fentanyl being the most-seized drug in the area, according to the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy’s Fatality Report, the state saw a 5% decrease in overdose deaths in 2022.
Director of NKY Office of Drug Control Policy Amanda Peters said she is cautiously optimistic about those statistics because, though the state saw a decrease in overdose deaths, Peters is predicting more accidental overdoses this year.
“Our drugs are changing,” Peters said. “We’re getting different drugs; everything is laced with fentanyl, and so I think we’re going to see a lot more accidental overdoses this year, which is scaring me.”
Peters said what drug dealers do is buy a pill press off Amazon for $5, take whatever product they have, press it into a pill, and sell it for whatever someone thinks it is – Adderall, Ritalin or Xanax, for example. Since Jan. 1 of this year, the NKY Drug Strike Force has seized 20,079 counterfeit pills valued at $662,607.
Our region is logistically in a power position, Peters said, for how drugs are coming in.
“We’re getting them from every highway,” she said. “They come down from Michigan, they come down from Columbus, they come up from Georgetown, up from Louisville. They’re up from Tennessee – any way that they can come in.”
Peters said they have also seen a resurgence of methamphetamines in the area over the last couple of years and said a lot of it is laced with fentanyl.
“So, we now have folks that have never typically had any kind of history of substance use disorder with opioids or drugs get some kind of pill, and they think it’s something else, and some of them are lucky, but some of them are overdosing,” she said.
In 2022, according to the state’s fatality report, there were 41 overdose fatalities in Boone County, 35 in Campbell County and 65 in Kenton County. Those numbers are out of population numbers of 139,093 residents in Boone, 93,300 in Campbell, and 170,313 in Kenton, according to the 2022 Census.
The NKY Office of Drug Control Policy also tracks EMS calls to Boone, Kenton, Campbell and Grant counties, and Peters said it is seeing at least three runs a day. She said the runs are typically for non-fatal incidents, but not always.
“That doesn’t include the folks that self-administer Narcan to their friends or family members or the folks that go to the emergency department,” Peters said. “So that’s just part of the data. That’s kind of the sticky part about this. We don’t quite have accurate data.”
She said pushing out Narcan is wonderful because it saves lives, but officials miss the intervention or interception point where they can reach folks for help.
The “it doesn’t affect me” mentality goes out the window, Peters said, when it comes to fentanyl.
“If you’re not a person who has been in that realm and is really thinking about that,” Peters said, “or maybe you’re a college student, just trying to get through your tests to study, and you’ve taken Xanax before to help … they could end up dying, and it’s hard to get that information out there.”
A nurse practitioner at the Erlanger Branch of BrightView Health, Summer Trenkamp, said the top two drugs she sees at the addiction treatment center are fentanyl and methamphetamine. Trenkamp said she doesn’t see a lot of heroin anymore.
“You’re not just seeing one thing that people are addicted to, because they keep getting other things in the stuff they feel like they’re purchasing,” Trenkamp said.
She echoed what Peters said in that someone aware of current drug trends is more cautious of their drugs being laced with fentanyl.
“They’re aware that there’s fentanyl pressed in Percocets and Xanax and everything,” Trenkamp said. “What they’re doing is getting fentanyl test strips, seeing what they’re taking, but we’re also seeing a lot of patients overdose because of the magnitude of how strong the fentanyl is. It’s a sad thing. You’re not just getting one thing anymore.”
At the height of his addiction, Pendleton said, he and his friends were “shooting really good-quality heroin,” but at the end of his run, he said friends were starting to die.
“I started going out because the heroin was starting to get more and more cut with it (fentanyl),” Pendleton said. “But that fentanyl sent me out a couple of times. That was heroin cut with fentanyl. Now, things are changing where it’s fentanyl cut with heroin. The heroin is just the cut. It’s not even the main thing.”
Pendleton said “going out” is like a white-out version of an overdose. He said you pass out, and someone puts ice down your pants or smacks you to bring you back.
Now, the region is starting to see people using fentanyl mixed with xylazine. Xylazine is a drug used for sedation, anesthesia and muscle relaxation in animals such as horses and cattle. It allegedly enhances the fentanyl high.
“We’ve seen it in the jails; they’ve seen it in the recovery community centers like Life Learning Center,” Peters said. “Our emergency department has seen it. They’re seeing it at our harm reduction syringe access programs.”
President and CEO of Life Learning Center Alecia Webb Edgington said the center has seen two episodes.
“Your body should not be consuming drugs that were made for an animal, so your body begins to repel that in different ways, killing nerve endings and resulting in open wounds, and they are horrific,” she said.
Peters said though xylazine may not be in the region at the level it is being seen in the Northeast – particularly in Philadelphia – it will be here soon. She said if the Northeast is seeing a drug trend, then it will hit the NKY region in roughly six months.
“We keep seeing these pills out on the market, and the market is so flooded right now with just very potent, cheap drugs that you can get it really kind of anywhere,” she said.
People can access fentanyl test strips through the NKY Office of Drug Control Policy’s Syringe Service Programs — though Peters said the strips are not foolproof.
Not only are people getting access to Narcan and test strips through the program, Peters said they also receive education and vaccines and are getting tested for things like hepatitis C and HIV.
“What’s interesting about our Syringe Service Programs is that this is the first time many of these folks are making a positive step in their health care,” she said. “What we know is it’s about five times more likely for folks to go to treatment if they’re engaged in a syringe access program.”
The number of fatalities from overdoses from 2021 to 2022 increased in Boone (from 35 to 41) and Campbell (from 24 to 35) but decreased from 91 to 65 in Kenton County. Peters attributed that to Narcan distribution but also to more diversion efforts happening in Kenton County.
While she said some diversion efforts have happened in other counties, they’ve been occurring longer in Kenton and are building momentum.
Life Learning Center, based in Covington, has aided in those efforts. Its mission is to help the at-risk population — whether it is someone struggling with addiction, poverty, mental health issues or a combination — with an education and care continuum.
Webb Edgington said Life Learning Center utilizes a 12-week course that focuses on essential skills built on the five pillars of life — physical, financial, emotional, relational and spiritual (non-ideological). She said those pillars have been recognized as the key areas for individuals to build recovery capital.
Recovery capital includes building essential skills, reducing risk, building resiliency, getting money back into their pocket, finding a place to live and rebuilding relationships.
The organization collects data from every person who walks in the door, whether they qualify for enrollment or not, and from that, it does weekly aggregate data reviews. From those reviews, 83% of the people it is seeing right now suffer from substance use disorder. About 77% struggle with mental health issues, and 81% have a criminal background. Webb Edgington said everyone who enters the door is 200% below the poverty level. Further, she said many people there have not drawn a paycheck in a year.
Life Learning Center social workers first work with individuals on what Webb Edginton calls the “big five” — safety and security, food, clothing, transportation and habits. She said that within the first hour, social workers are helping individuals complete paperwork to regain identification, birth certificates and Social Security cards.
“We start getting those things, because if you don’t, then when it does come to an opportunity for employment, you can’t fill out an I-9 (form to verify the identity and employment authorization of individuals hired) without two forms of identification,” Webb Edgington said. “So, you can’t get a legitimate job even if you want one.”
The organization has over 130 partners that help it do everything from tattoo removal to getting people glasses and contacts.
When someone gets checked into the program, they get a hot meal right then and there and then get a food box to take back to their sober living facility. Life Learning Center coordinates sober living with Kentucky Access to Recovery dollars.
Those who are on medically assisted treatment and have been released from detention continue their treatment with Journey Recovery Center.
From head to toe, hygiene, clothing, permanent housing, food, bus passes and other essentials are provided, Webb Edgington said.
The organization connects with individuals through detention centers, courts, public defenders, prosecutors, intensive outpatient programs, other nonprofits in the community, faith-based organizations, walk-ins and word-of-mouth from other graduates.
The organization’s demographics are 56% male and 44% female, with an average age of 38. About 83% of the people it sees identify as Caucasian, 8% identify as African American, and 2% identify as Hispanic.
When it comes to ethnicity, Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy data shows a decrease in fatalities among white Kentuckians but an increase in fatalities among Black and Hispanic Kentuckians. Peters said there has been a lot of outreach to Caucasians, but others aren’t consistently engaged due to the different ways that different ethnic groups consume drugs.
“One thing Kentucky has done is some great work on harm reduction,” Peters said. “But we know that our folks that are people of color and different ethnicities, they use drugs differently. So, Syringe Services works great for those who are using drugs intravenously (more common among Caucasians), but if you smoke them or do them in a different way, or if they’re doing crack cocaine and it’s laced with fentanyl, those folks aren’t showing up at syringe programs.”
As far as the younger population struggling with substance abuse, Peters said they are seeing it less often.
“I think prevention is working,” she said. “The data is showing less adolescents going into this.”
Peters said that addiction is a multigenerational issue — something Pendleton is all too familiar with.
When Pendleton was 18, he went to prison for the first time.
“It’s just what happens where I’m from,” Pendleton said. “All my friends are dead, have been to prison or are in prison. My little brother’s doing life right now for heroin. I buried my dad 10 years ago from heroin. My stepdad died a few years ago from heroin. My mom is doing eight years in a joint right now for manslaughter because she was with her best friend last year, and they were shooting dope, and her friend died.”
During his addiction to heroin, Pendleton was attending high school. He said he would tape a “rescue kit” to aid his addiction underneath a toilet tank lid in a secluded bathroom in the school where he could go.
“You got to think how f***ing deluded and addicted and sick do you have to be, at 16 or 17 years old, and that be your life?” he said.
Pendleton did not graduate from high school. His senior year, he said, he was doing $300 worth of heroin a day. He was funding his addiction through an embezzlement scam he ran with a woman.
She was caught, and Pendleton said that although she didn’t give him up, it was one of the few times he realized he didn’t want that to be his life anymore. He took a job and got on a Greyhound bus to Las Vegas, intending to get clean.
One thing about addiction, though, Pendleton said: The Devil is on your shoulder anywhere you go. Before he ever made it to Las Vegas, he ended up in Denver, where he shared a needle with a stranger and got hepatitis C. He said he spent about 90 days in Las Vegas but ultimately came home because the heroin quality was better in the Cincinnati region.
Shortly after returning home, he found himself in prison at 18 and again at 19.
“My best friend, childhood best friend, died (from an overdose) while I was down (in prison) the second time,” Pendleton said. “Super, really f***ing hard, really hard to come home to, you know – missed the funeral. And this is how sick you can be. Imagine you go to prison, and you have nine months clean. And they release you with a $135 Greyhound ticket, and you take the Greyhound money straight downtown and call your drug dealer.”
When people enter Life Learning Center, Webb Edgington said, often they have nothing, especially when coming from the detention centers.
“If you put yourself in their scenario, and you’ve just been released from detention, with whatever clothing you had on your back when you were arrested, and people say, ‘Well just go home,’” she said. “Well, let’s say there is no home to go to because while you were in detention, either the person you might have been living with is gone, or they are telling you, ‘You can’t come back.’ So, you’re homeless, you’re penniless, you’re foodless. The anxiety is exponential.”
The organization also immediately conducts a behavioral test for grit, hope, resiliency, leadership and ostracism.
“If we can start to rebuild resiliency, it lowers risk exponentially,” she said.
Webb Edgington said they also measure recidivism rates. They base those rates on whether one of their program graduates has been rearrested. She said their graduates’ recidivism rate is 8% versus the national average of 83%.
This year, Life Learning Center has had 1,107 individuals referred to it; it has conducted 718 enrollments, and 353 were accepted. Of the 353 people who were taken, 261 were put in seats.
So, what happened to the almost 100 people who weren’t put in seats?
“It’s called free will,” Webb Edgington said. “And that free will of them saying, ‘I don’t care that I’m court-ordered. I don’t care if it would be the best thing for me.’”
Of the 261, she said 237 are on track to graduate. Webb Edgington said if people refuse to go into post-secondary education or start a career, they can’t graduate.
“Accountability and discipline involve drug testing, it involves having conversations, we want to lay eyes on you, we want to keep up with you,” Webb Edgington said. “Not because we’re trying to be ‘Big Brother,’ but these folks are very vulnerable, and we’ve got to know where you are because you’ve made some bad decisions historically.”
Over at BrightView, the Erlanger branch treats roughly 700 patients a year.
“We help them medically with medicines, if appropriate, we have case management services that help them with their social needs and can be a good liaison between probation and parole and things like that,” Trenkamp said. “They also get individual or group counseling with every visit.”
BrightView also sets up case management with its patients to work with them if they don’t have insurance. Trenkamp said BrightView can work with patients to get on Medicaid or figure out a payment plan.
After Pendleton got out of prison for the second time, he said, things started really going downhill for him.
“I didn’t have the hustle,” Pendleton said. “I didn’t have all the licks; the game had changed a little bit, and for whatever reason, s**t was not easy for me. So now I was finally getting to experience what it was like to be dope sick. Not just running around getting money and being able to stay high all the time.”
During this time, he said he began shooting cocaine with heroin, which caused him to “go out” a lot.
Pendleton said he had one friend throughout his whole life whom he called a saint. He said she came from the same background as he did but remained on the straight and narrow. Pendleton said she was the only one who wrote to him while he was in prison, and he always stayed in contact with her.
“This is the second time after getting out of the penitentiary, my friends are dying, having the worst struggle I’ve ever had,” Pendleton said. “I’ve been addicted to dope for years and years at this point. I look like s**t, I feel like s**t, my existence is f***ing awful. I have about a $500-a-day addiction. I’m doing scandalous s**t to get money, and this girl was such a pain in the a** because she was like the one person in my life who was like, ‘I believe in you.’”
That friend is the reason he went to rehab.
Pendleton said she made it a mission to glue herself to him. She used her own money to get him into rehabilitation centers. Pendleton said one time he sat through five hours of intake at a methadone clinic and then left and took his friend’s money and went and bought drugs with it.
“She had to go through some real s**t, and she tried that again, a second time, and the craziest thing happened because I went through with it,” Pendleton said.
In 2006, Pendleton got clean, and he has now been sober for 17 years. His friend who supported him through it is now his wife of 16 years, and they have two children.
Webb Edgington said that once people get treatment, they have to build recovery capital.
“Every time you do that, it’s like watering a plant, and it’ll grow a little more, and then it grows a little more, and then the next thing you know, you don’t have to worry so much,” she said.
In the first week of staying clean, Pendleton said everyone he thought was his friend, including family members, vanished.
“It was like, this time in my life, I’m like two weeks, a month sober wanting to have somebody to tell, somebody to be proud of me, and there was f***ing nobody,” Pendleton said. “Except for my one friend.”
Now, Pendleton does things like co-hosting relapse prevention sessions and sponsoring students.
“I always tell people if you can step out on faith, if you can embrace the suck — and it’s so hard to do, it’s just easy to say — but if you have really been hitting it hard, you’ve really been living in a black hole, if you can get two or three days under your belt, if you can get five under your belt … the whole world opens,” Pendleton said.
“We just don’t do that as opioid addicts. We don’t get there because it’s such a physically addictive drug. So, f**k all the mental s**t before you even get to the mental s**t, you have a lot of physical issues to address.”
When it comes to addiction, those who work around people with substance use disorders say it is not just the guy on the street corner struggling. Webb Edgington said a lot of people who struggle with substance use disorders are educated people. She said 65% of those that Life Learning Center serves have their GED or some college, and these disorders cut across all socioeconomic demographics.
Peters said they see a lot of people who are already in the workforce struggling with addiction.
“These folks are dealing with multigenerational trauma and probably a history of mental illness and drug misuse in their own families,” Peters said. “So, the internal family system is all out of whack.”
When people ask her what she does, Trenkamp said, they get a picture in their mind of someone who is suffering from substance abuse as a homeless person or thief and that they don’t care about themselves or other people.
“It’s actually the opposite,” Trenkamp said. “These people, most of the time, are trauma-driven from childhood or domestic violence. Things make them just squash down those memories and traumas they’ve experienced.”
Webb Edgington said addiction is a severe brain illness.
“We as a society have to understand that with these serious illnesses, people are going to relapse,” Webb Edgington said. “Not everybody, but there will be relapses, and we can’t just give up on people when they do that.”
Since the early 2000s when he received treatment, Pendleton said he has seen many treatment centers pop up, especially in rural areas. He would drive to Lawrenceburg, Indiana, from Clermont County, Ohio, to receive treatment. Whether people like it or not, Pendleton said, addiction has to be treated like a disease.
One of the biggest problems in the region when it comes to addiction, Peters said, is stigma. She said the NKY Office of Drug Control Policy has treatment on demand, re-entry programs, attorneys on standby to help people with legal issues, Narcan, prevention efforts and community partners. Still, people are afraid to reach out because of the stigma.
“This is not going to be solved in my lifetime, but I think we can reduce a lot of the harm, we can reduce the fatalities, we can do better with our families, and we can prevent more generations from going into it,” Peters said.
Some people, Pendleton said, need a hug and a pat on the back and to be told that it’s OK, like his wife did for him 17 years ago.
“Some people are never told they can get right, that it can be OK,” he said. “And that’s f***ing huge. You don’t have to believe it. Just get them to believe it. Looking back on how paramount it was for my wife to be that person in my life. Who was like, ‘Yo, I think you can do this. I think you can not be like this. I think you can work this out. I think you can kick this. I think you can live differently. I think you can become something.’ Approaching addicts with that type of approach is really huge. We already don’t see ourselves as people, so you have to remind us that we got a fighting chance.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with a substance use disorder, you can contact the NKY Office of Drug Control Policy’s helpline at 859-415-9280. Contact BrightView Health at 888-502-4571 or go to BrightViewhealth.com. Or contact the Life Learning Center at 859-431-0100.