ASHLAND – What are we already doing as a community in response to the drug epidemic, and what can we do better?

That was the central question on the minds of the approximately 40 people who spent Saturday afternoon at Ashland University to take part in a community conversation called “What Can We Do About the Opiate Epidemic?”

The event was the second in a series sponsored by the Center for Civic Life at Ashland University, the Mental Health and Recovery Board of Ashland County and the Ashland County Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse.

Participants rotated through four sessions, each focused on one type of response to the issue. Sessions included education/prevention, law enforcement, first responders and treatment. Participants heard from the professionals and then had opportunities to ask questions and provide suggestions. 

Ashland Fire Department Capt. Tony Coletta showed groups a syringe of naloxone and explained how he uses it to revive a patient after an overdose. He said the number one thing he needs from the community to help him better treat victims is honesty.

“Don’t sweep anything under the rug. We don’t care that they took something, but we need to know what they took because then we can treat them and give them the proper treatment,” he said. 

Registered nurse Amanda Nichols, who is also co-founder of the faith-based recovery organization Project One, explained how health care providers work first to stabilize a patient and then to connect them to social services resources in the community, such as counselors from Appleseed Community Mental Health Center. 

“Does that always happen? No,” she admitted. “Sometimes we have a situation where they’re waking up from this overdose and they’re angry and upset that you took their high away.”

Alcohol and Drug Prevention educator Kris Hickey of Ashland County Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse spoke about various outreach efforts including the “Too Good For Drugs” program the agency has in schools throughout the county. The program is in about two thirds of Ashland City Schools’ kindergarten through sixth grade classrooms. 

ACCADA’s Dennis Dyer shared that the agency provided clinical services to 528 people last year and explained how the agency determines whether someone needs a low level of care such as outpatient treatment or a high level of care such as detox. 

Many participants, including event organizers, said they learned something new about a program or service they didn’t know existed in the community. 

Conversations from each session were documented by moderators, and the notes will be summarized and shared with participants and public officials. 

Following the breakout sessions, everyone came back together to determine what the next steps should be for the group.

Louise Fleming, one of the planners and facilitators of the event, said the committee behind the series of events had planned to host future sessions about resilience and building stronger families. 

That idea was met with push back from several of the participants, who said they wanted to see the scope of the discussions narrowed rather than widened. 

“What I haven’t seen yet is a clearly defined goal… What perhaps brought us together is the fact that people are dying from an overdose of heroin. So is that our goal, to prevent people from using heroin?” asked Dan Phillip of Transformation Network. 

Judy White of the Center For Civic Life suggested one goal of the group could be to consolidate and share diffuse information about community resources related to drug issues, but Diane Karther of Ashland County Family & Children First Council said a list already exists on the health department’s website.

Retired Ashland County Prosecutor Bob DeSanto said he believes the goal should be to drive down drug use. 

Jon Schnittke, a local resident whose daughter died of a drug overdose last October, said the goal should be to reduce the stigma associated with addiction. 

“Until we get a handle on the stigma, it doesn’t matter what we do… That’s the thing I heard from my daughter again and again, ‘People hate me. People want me to die,'” Schnittke said. 

Kathy Cleghorn, who lost a son to addiction, said she just wants people to understand what drug addiction does to families and what it feels like to be a parent of someone with an addiction.

“I just kept running into so many brick walls,” she said, adding that even when her son was in a rehab setting, he was finding and using drugs. 

Going forward, Fleming said she will put the planned resilience programming on the back-burner and will next form a committee to set a vision and/or goal for the group. All participants at Saturday’s event were invited to volunteer for the committee, and Fleming hopes the committee will include a cross-section of people with differing professional and personal relationships to the issue.