By Mark Hansel
NKyTribune managing editor
The battle against addiction continued in Northern Kentucky with the Hope 4 Boone County Town Hall meeting at Crossroads in Florence.
Ockerman Middle School teacher Carrie Judd talked about her struggle with her son’s addiction (photos by Mark Hansel).
Hope 4 Boone County is a community coalition that focuses on eliminating heroin use & opioid painkiller abuse among the children in the region. Florence City Councilman Duane Froelicher is a member of Hope 4 Boone County and helped organize the event.
Some of the region’s leading advocates joined educators, students and those in recovery to discuss the ongoing scourge of addiction that grips the region.
Carrie Judd, a teacher at Ockerman Middle School, talked not about how addiction had impacted her school, but how it hit closer to home.
Judd has two sons, Adam and Dylan, aged 26 and 24, respectively.
Dylan Judd graduated from Ryle High School and went on to NKU hoping to become an attorney.
“Then, a couple of bad decisions,” Carrie Judd said. “He started spiraling out of control, his grades went from As and Bs to Ds and Fs and incompletes, all within a year.”
It didn’t take a mother’s intuition for Carrie Judd to see that her son was struggling, but at first, she attributed it to trouble adjusting to college life.
Some of the region’s advocacy groups were on hand at the Town Hall to provide information on treatment and recovery.
Dylan came home, but soon moved into his own apartment, and Carrie saw pictures on social media of her son drinking and he started coming home less and less.
Eventually Dylan dropped out of college and after what Carrie Jud describes as a wild night of drugging and drinking, that led to fighting, wound up in the hospital with a broken ankle and other injuries.
“Needless to say, that was a big old sign that we had gone way beyond teenage struggling,” Carrie Judd said.
She met with a friend who had chronicled her own struggles with a child’s drug abuse. The friend told her that if she suspected abuse, it was probably happening.
Judd was skeptical, but the friend told her of warning signs to look for and her son finally confided to her that he had experimented with drugs, including heroin.
“I knew if he had admitted to some, there was a lot more going on,” Judd said.
Judd reluctantly used Casey’s Law, which allows the parents, relatives, or friends of an addicted person to seek court-ordered treatment, to get help for her son.
Tasha Brown shared her story of undergoing treatment for heroin addiction while pregnant, with the help of St. Elizabeth Healthcare. Brown has been in recovery since February 1.
“Of course he yelled and screamed and said ‘I’m going to disown you and never speak to you again,’” Judd said.
Like many addicts, the first attempt was not successful. Dylan Judd got kicked out of a Transitions treatment facility and was jailed for 10 days after a relapse.
“One of the worst things in the world is to see your child walk out in that striped jumpsuit and those shackles,” Judd said.
This time, however, the treatment at the Healing Place in Louisville was successful, and Dylan has been clean and sober for three years.
“I share this with you because this happens, it happens to Commonwealth Diploma graduates, it happens to kids from Ryle and Cooper and Boone and Conner (high schools),” Judd said. “If you find yourself in that situation, make sure you talk to people and reach out. It’s not something you can take care of alone.”
Her personal experience has helped Judd work to implement programs at Ockerman Middle School. “Truth and Consequences” a program that encourages people from throughout the community to come in and tell students about the impact of drug use, was introduced at Ockerman and will also be implemented at Gray Middle School.
Tasha Brown, who is a recovering addict, talked about how Baby Steps, a program at St. Elizabeth Healthcare, helped her find her way to sobriety.
“Heroin found me – and I say it found me because you don’t go out looking for it – in the summer of 2016,” Brown said.
Brown had already lost custody of her son because of her addiction and continued to use drugs even after she found out she was pregnant in October of last year. She wanted to quit and even as she continued using, felt guilt over the impact drug use might be having on her unborn child
At a doctor’s visit, Brown saw a pamphlet about the Baby Steps program and after receiving a positive drug test admitted that she had been using heroin. The doctor offered to get her into the program and Brown took that first step.
A slide shows the vast array of resources available for those seeking treatment or support in the fight against addiction.
“That gave me hope that somebody was on my side,” Brown said. “Because it’s truly a dark place and you have no hope whatsoever. You know you have family, it’s just a scary thing to say, I’m a heroin addict and I’m pregnant, and what do we do now.”
What Brown did was go to a recovery center in Louisville and then to St. Elizabeth, where she was given Suboxone, which is used to treat people addicted to opioids.
“If you would have told me last year that I would have been up here speaking about this, I would have told you, you were crazy,” Brown said. “I hope that anyone who knows someone who is pregnant and using – they are a great program, they treat you like family. They come to your home if you need them…they are real people, they get it.”
Brown has been in recovery since February 1 of this year and gave birth to a healthy daughter.
Other speakers at the Town Hall included Don Black, Darrin Smith and Kellie Smith of the Boone County Resilient and Ready Cohort and Bryan Padilla, a Boone County School Board Student Member.
Pastor Terry Phillips, of Crossroads, delivered a Message of Hope and a closing prayer.
NKY Hates Heroin, one of the region’s leading advocacy groups in the fight against addiction has information about education and treatment here.
Contact Mark Hansel at mark.hansel@nkytrib.com
