72 | HealthLinksSC.com CHARLESTON COUNTY MEDICAL SOCIETY FACING THE FENTANYL REALITY By Theresa Stratford It happened the week after he got home from a six-month stint overseas in the U.S. Air Force. Meeting up with friends, he was looking forward to getting high and having a good time. There was one girl in particular he was looking forward to hanging out with. She promised him that she had a connection and could supply him with cocaine. They met at a hotel. The cleaning crew found his body the next day when he failed to check out. The cause of death was a fentanyl overdose. He was 23. For another young man, it all started after his motorcycle accident. Dealing with chronic pain, he was fine when the doctor was prescribing him pain medication. But when the refill limit was reached and the doctor couldn’t renew the script, in desperation, the young man took to the streets and found a heroin dealer. Some say it wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t an addict. He was just looking for pain relief. His girlfriend found his body in the garage. His cause of death was a fentanyl-laced heroin overdose. And then there are the truly innocent ones: the children who find what they think are rainbow-colored candies unsafely stored by an irresponsible, drug-dealing adult. The “candies” are pills, and the pills are fentanyl. There are countless stories like these: teens who think they are taking an attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder pill given to them by a peer; the homeless who are knowingly taking it to find some respite from their reality; the seemingly normal celebrities duped into taking a substance laced with a deadly concoction of fentanyl and a drug that they are already taking.
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