News
Battling Heroin With A Hearse And A Prayer
By: Elizabeth Blair | NPR
Posted on:
Our Take A Number is looking at problems around the world — and people trying to solve them — through the lens of a single number.
In Huntington, W.Va., the number is 10. As in, the rate of babies born with a drug dependency there is 10 times the national average.
It’s a number that shows the magnitude of the opioid crisis in this blue collar city. It’s also one of the numbers that has prompted two very different people in this community to say, “Enough.”
Each in their own way, has set out to get heroin addicts into recovery. Their methods are unorthodox. One uses brown-bag lunches and the Bible. The other, an old black hearse and a casket.
Let’s start with Dwayne Wood. And his hearse.
A black, 1988 Buick hearse with the words “Inject Heroin. Reject life,” stenciled on the side. On the back, it says “Heroin kills. Is this your last ride?”
It’s an ominous sight, parked in a rundown neighborhood where there have been a number of drug busts. Huntington native Dwayne Wood drives the hearse thousands of miles through nearby Ohio and Kentucky to raise awareness about the dangers of heroin.
“There’s nothing around quite like this that I’m aware of,” he says with pride. “But I wish they were on every corner.”
Wood originally bought the hearse to carry his motorcycle. “I love my Harley. How cool would that be to see those ape hangers stickin’ out the roof of a hearse goin’ down the road,” he says.
“Radio airwaves once again filled with overdose and death,” Wood recalls, shaking his head. “And that’s when I knew the true calling of the car. The car that was designed to haul death was revamped to give life.”
Revamped with strobe lights, a Bluetooth player and speakers that sometimes blare a vintage sounding siren.
Wood says the hearse is “a photo magnet.” Images of it have spread online. He started the Heroin Hearse Facebook page, which now has more than 7,000 followers. He organizes fundraisers for treatment centers and talks to addicts directly.
“Dwayne’s actually the one that got us into rehab and here we are today,” says Thomas. “Six months clean,” his wife, Sarah, chimes in. For privacy reasons, we’re omitting Thomas and Sarah’s last names.
In 2016, police raided their home. They were charged with “maintaining a drug dwelling” and “child abuse.” Child Protective Services took their two children. After serving jail time, they started using again. A neighbor suggested they talk to Dwayne Wood.
I met Thomas and Sarah in a two story building that was once a small grocery store. Wood is trying to turn it into a community center for recovering addicts. Sarah says she was still using when she first met Wood. “When I walked in here he already had my Facebook page pulled up and pictures of my daughters,” she says. “The first thing I seen facing me was my daughters.”
Wood’s office looks like it belongs in a haunted house. With black walls, a mock jail cell with iron bars and a shiny black casket donated by a local funeral home, the effect is intentional. “This is where you’ll make your choice of life or death,” says Wood without without a hint of irony.
The son of a truck driver who makes his living building motorcycles, painting and other odd jobs, Wood uses a combination of compassion and fear to get through to addicts.
It worked on Sarah. “Walking into that office, you know, will slap you in the face because he has that casket and he’s not afraid to open it for you neither,” she says. Wood even adjusted the casket to fit her and her husband’s bodies.
“My first thought was ‘Is he going to put me in this casket?’ ” she recalls. “Because I don’t think I could do it. Thankfully he didn’t and all it took was for me to see it.”
But in a town like Huntington, where resources to fight the addiction are scarce, everyone needs to take ownership, says Mayor Steve Williams.
“When I hear people, they come and say one of two things. Either ‘Somebody needs to do something.’ And I’ll say ‘Look in the mirror,’ ” Williams says.
“Most people come and say ‘What can I do?’ ” the mayor adds. “That’s heartwarming.”
It’s also “heart-wrenching,” he adds, “because many of the people who say ‘what can I do?’ have either fought addiction themselves or lost someone to the disease.”
Medication Assisted Treatment has a higher rate of success, but Wood says any treatment is hard to find in the area. He doesn’t know if the people he’s helped are still in recovery.
As a recovering alcoholic himself, he says he’s compelled to help addicts because he relates to them: “They had dope sickness. I had alcohol sickness. Same symptoms they’ve had — when their legs were shaking and their stomach was tied in knots and everything else that goes along with it. I’ve been there. I’ve been beside them.”
Huntington is a mid-sized city on the Ohio River, where West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky meet. It is home to Marshall University, several healthcare facilities and an Amazon call center. A number of factors have contributed to the city’s opioid crisis, including the loss of factory jobs and a depressed economy. The mayor’s office calls the city “a prime location for drug distribution.”
Necia Freeman and Dwayne Wood don’t know each other. Freeman’s a Realtor, and she sees the personal struggles of Huntington residents every day.
“We are all just one bad choice away from being who we’re helping,” she says. “One bad choice.”
Freeman has taken a much different approach to helping heroin addicts — specifically, prostitutes working to feed their addiction.
Freeman grew up just outside of Huntington. Her dad worked in a glass factory for 38 years before it shut down.
“That place is specifically for babies born to addiction that aren’t able to come home,” she explains. “Our neonatal unit is so full that we’ve had to open up a whole new facility called Lily’s Place.”
Freeman is a devout Christian. About eight years ago she started “Back Pack and Brown Bag Ministries.” With help from her church, she delivers brown bag lunches and backpacks to poor children in local schools.
And that’s partly what inspired her to work with women who are heroin addicts.
One day she read a short item in the local paper. Just a couple of lines.
The body of a known prostitute had been discovered in a corn field near Huntington. She’d been shot.
The revelation made her want to reach out to prostitutes. So now, one evening every week, she delivers brown bag meals and scripture on the streets where they do business.
It took Freeman many years of trying before she got Heather into treatment (again, we’re only using Heather’s first name to protect her privacy). Like any new parent, Heather hasn’t slept much.
“I’m forgetful,” she says, “I cried yesterday because I felt like a bad person because I forgot his bottle.”
Others in her family are also addicts. She says the first person “to put a needle” in her arm was her father.
In the seven years since Necia Freeman has been trying to help her, Heather has been in and out of jail and relapsed after more than one treatment program.
Heather says she couldn’t believe Freeman kept trying to help her, even while she was in jail.
“She was trying to help me get into rehab while I was incarcerated,” she says. “They thought she was trying to help me escape or something.”
The two share a dark sense of humor that seems to come with the territory. But, in all seriousness, Heather believes Freeman is the reason she’s alive.
Freeman jokes that when she first started reaching out to addicted prostitutes eight years ago, she thought getting them into rehab would be easy.
“I’m just gonna give ’em a brown bag lunch and a gospel tract,” she thought to herself. “It hasn’t happened that way. Not even close.”
But, in a town where so many people need help, doing nothing is not an option for Necia Freeman.
9(MDI4ODU1ODA1MDE0ODA3MTMyMDY2MTJiNQ000))