SHELBY — Twelve years ago Crystal Oertle, 35, decided to stop using heroin and try to become a champion for struggling addicts.
“It was just time,” the Shelby woman said of her decision to stop using. “I was older. My children were older. There was damage done. I wanted to start being a good example. I was just ready.”
In November, she gave a TED Talk on recovering from heroin addiction.
The Cable News Network noticed her shameless recovery story and approached her about asking Bernie Sanders a question regarding addicts and how the United States treats recovering addicts.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention said since 2000, death by drug overdose has risen 137 percent, including a 200-percent increase in heroin and opioid pain reliever overdose deaths.
According to the Richland County Coroner’s 2014 report, 29 deaths were caused by drug overdose; 17 overdose fatalities were due to heroin.
“Those numbers are really awful,” she said. “It speaks for how badly we need more treatment centers, and how we need people to stop judging addicts as bad people.”
Oertle told Sanders at the CNN Town Hall Meeting in Columbus that she was fortunate not to be in jail.
Then she asked, “What do you plan to do with the failed drug policies that tends to incarcerate addicts instead of rehabilitate them?”
Sanders answered, “Today, in my state (Vermont) and in neighboring New Hampshire and all across the country, we have a massive crisis in heroin addiction, overdosing and opioid addiction as well. What we need to do is rethink the so-called ‘War on Drugs,’ which has been a failure.
“We have got to see addiction as a health issue, not as a criminal issue. Locking up addicts is not going to solve the problem.”
Oertle then received a Facebook message from President Barack Obama’s staff asking if she would like to be on a White House-supported Anti Drug Summit panel.
“Obviously, I said yes,” she said.
During the panel, she got to hear Obama speak about addiction as a disease.
“I was blown away when the president called addiction a disease. A lot of people think of addiction as a choice or moral decision,” she said. “My goal as an addict in recovery is to be an inspiration to other addicts. Addicts are the strongest people on the planet.
“Some people think addicts are throw-away people, but we’re not. Once we get through recovery, we can do anything.”
Oertle said the president putting himself into the conversation helps drive the nation’s progressive response to addiction.
“Where I go, the cameras follow,” she remembered Obama said at the panel in Atlanta on March 29. “It’s great he is dedicated to making opioid addiction nationally recognizable.”
In February, Obama requested $1.1 billion from Congress to aid the fight against opioid addiction.
“What we have to recognize is in this global economy of ours, the most important thing we can do is to reduce demand for drugs,” he said, according to a Voice of America report. “And the only way that we reduce demand is if we’re providing treatment.”
The president also announced the Department of Health and Human Services was proposing a regulation to make the anti-addiction drug buprenorphine available to more drug-addicted patients through qualified physicians.
The federal government will release $11 million to states in an effort for medication-assisted treatment services. That includes the purchase and distribution of the overdose drug naltrexone. A federal infusion of $94 million earlier this month to hundreds of community health centers across the country potentially could treat nearly 124,000 new patients, VOA reported.
“With me and active addiction, I have put myself into dangerous situations to get the drugs I thought I needed. There is a daily desperation to get drugs.” Oertle said. “(Drug addiction) doesn’t discriminate. It can affect any race or religion.”
Oertle said she has spent the last year with Medical Assistant Treatment and is doing well there. She admits to one slip-up, but noted working with the MAT system is the best she has felt.
