Trumbull coroner's plea to youth in heroin crisis: DON'T START.

April 24, 2015 at 1:57p.m.

HOWLAND

Coroner Dr. Humphrey Germaniuk updated the numbers on Trumbull County’s heroin overdose crisis, saying there have been 16 confirmed overdose deaths so far this year, probably 27 more that have not been confirmed, for a total of 43 — which would be nearly three per week.

By comparison, the county had 39 such deaths in all of 2013, which spiked to 54 in 2014. Dr. Germaniuk said the number would reach 125 by the end of 2015 at the current rate — almost double the record high of 64 in 2007.

“We’re getting killed over there,” Dr. Germaniuk said of the workload at the coroner’s office.

He spoke to more than 200 substance abuse professionals and others attending a day-long, first-ever Alliance for Substance Abuse Opiate Summit Friday at Avalon Inn.

It featured the staggering overdose-death statistics from Dr. Germaniuk, a more national overview from a recovering addict who is senior adviser to the federal Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration and eight other presentations.

Planning for the substance-abuse summit started a year ago, before Trumbull County offcials knew that its overdose deaths total had taken a dramatic upward turn for 2014 and long before the county’s current heroin-driven spike, said Lauren Thorp, who is with the Trumbull County Mental Health and Recovery Board and ASAP project director.

Dr. Germaniuk said some common characteristics of the drug overdose victims he sees are women 25 to 35 with two children, uneducated and no job. Men are frequently 38 to 45, unemployed or semi-skilled, “living in their mom’s basement,” he said. Almost all of them are white.

“My only goal for getting up in the morning is to get my next hit” of heroin, he said of many of the substance abusers who die. Because of the difficulty of escaping the grip of an addiction to opiates like heroin or Oxycontin, Dr. Germaniuk said his view is the best hope is education for people 13 to 21 with the message: “Don’t start.”

“Families have to be families again,” and people have to pick friends who won’t lead us to experiment with dangerous substances, frequently in the order of marijuana, pills, heroin.

“You don’t do it yourself. Someone usually shows you or helps you,” he said.