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Overdose deaths on the rise in Clark...
Connie Long checked into Winchester's Day's Inn on March 4 prepared to party.
Accompanied by two friends, Long, 40, brought prescription bottles filled with Valium and Lortabs that police say she had purchased through the Internet and picked up at a Lexington shipping hub the previous day. At some point during the night, police believe an unidentified man delivered some cocaine to Long's room.
Throughout much of Saturday night and into the early hours of Sunday morning, police say Long used a hollowed-out ink pen to inhale crushed pills and a syringe to inject pills or cocaine, possibly both.
Perhaps Long didn't know her limitations. Perhaps on a high from the drugs she was taking, she didn't think about how much she was taking. All that's known is that at approximately 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 5, a motel employee entered room 112 and discovered Long lying face down on the floor between two full-size beds. She had been dead for several hours.
Even for Sgt. Berl Perdue of the Winchester Police Department, who led the investigation, the scene was sickening. Long's face was caked in blood that had seeped from her mouth and nose, and she was lying in a pool of vomit containing fragments of crushed pills she had ingested. Police discovered needle marks in both arms and on her abdomen.
Drugs and drug paraphernalia littered the room. White specks of crushed pills covered one of the beds. A syringe was discovered in a nightstand drawer. A spoon, still covered with cocaine residue, used to cook the cocaine, was sitting atop the nightstand, a few inches from the pen she had used to inhale drugs a few hours earlier.
Toxicology tests would reveal Long died from combining several drugs: cocaine, Hydrocodone (Lortab), Diazepam (Valium) and Trazodone (an anti-depressant). Traces of alcohol were also found in her system.
Police believe she died alone. Her friends had reportedly left the motel early Sunday morning and returned at approximately 4 a.m. to find the door locked and dead-bolted. One of them told police she looked into the room from an outside window and saw Long in one of the beds, either asleep or passed out. The girls told police they waited in the motel lobby before calling a taxi to take them home.
Perdue believes that at some point, Long awakened and and unlocked the dead bolt before collapsing on the floor and drawing her last breath.
Perdue had known Long and her family more than 20 years. She rarely had been in trouble with the law. Her criminal record reflects a conviction in February 2005 for shoplifting and alcohol intoxication, for which she was sentenced to 14 days in jail. Other than that, her criminal background consisted entirely of minor traffic violations.
A few days after her death, on a cloudy late-winter day, a Clark County Road Department crew carried a simple casket with Long's body to her final resting place at the county cemetery, where she was buried in a pauper's grave that still is unmarked.
Just one day before Long's death, on March 4, Joshua Bridges, 25, was pronounced dead at the emergency room at Clark Regional Medical Center. His death was also attributed to a drug overdose.
At the time of his death, Bridges was facing several misdemeanor drug and alcohol charges, including third-degree possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a controlled substance not in its original container.
Between January 2005 and March 2006, Clark County averaged one overdose death every 32 days. It's possible other deaths involving drug use were attributed to suicide or heart attacks.
The coroner's office has confirmed three overdose deaths in Clark County through March of this year. A fourth Clark County resident, Billy Wiseman, 31, was pronounced dead from a drug overdose in February at the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington, according to the Fayette County Coroner's Office. Three other recent deaths in Clark County are being investigated by Coroner David Jacobs as possible overdose deaths, pending toxicology results.
During 2005, 11 people, ranging in age from 19 to 52, died from drug overdoses in Clark County, according to Jacobs. That was more deaths than any other category investigated by the coroner's office with the exception of heart attacks. Eleven deaths from overdoses were more than the combined total attributed to motor vehicle crashes and suicides in Clark County in 2005. Nearly as many people in Clark County died from overdoses in 2005 than in the previous two years combined. The coroner reports seven people died from drug overdoses in Clark County in 2004 and six in 2003.
"None of those people woke up one morning thinking, 'I think I'll take enough drugs to kill myself today,'" Ron Kibbey of Comprehensive Care, which runs an outpatient substance abuse program in Winchester, pointed out recently. “They all got up with whatever plans they had, thinking today was going to be just like yesterday, and it didn't happen. And it left people who love them in shock and in tears."
The number of deaths in the past 18 months could have been much higher. The Winchester Fire/EMS Department has documented approximately 125 emergency calls since Jan. 1, 2005 related to drug and/or alcohol overdoses. Seldom does a week pass in which that number doesn't grow higher.
Law enforcement officers, prosecutors and judges, in addition to family and friends, are left wondering why the number of deaths from overdoses has nearly doubled in the past two years, and, more importantly, what can be done to prevent more deaths.
One explanation for the increase in drug deaths, according to Kibbey, is the accessibility of prescription drugs from so-called Internet pharmacies.
"It's permeated our community," Kibbey contends. "It's not that hard (to purchase drugs online). And what I've heard people talk about doing is that they will order what they can get if it's not their drug of choice, and they will sell it to other people so they can get what their drug of choice is."
Despite a year-old state law that prohibits shipping prescription drugs to Kentucky by companies not registered with the state, purchasing narcotics such as Lortab, Valium and Xanax remains a relatively easy way to obtain drugs, according to law enforcement officials. Such was apparently the case for Long. With the relative ease of buying prescription drugs on the Internet, Long's drug habit apparently went undetected until she died after one night of unrestrained drug use.
County Attorney Gardner Wagers, whose office prosecutes misdemeanor drug offenses, said the increase in drug-related deaths is partly a result of the nature of drug addiction.
“Substance abuse demands that the abuser engage in increasingly risky consumption of various substances," Wagers explained. “Tolerance increases with each high. It is simply a matter of time before the addict takes an assortment or quantity of drugs that results in respiratory or cardiac failure."
Kibbey agreed drug tolerance leads people to increase their dosage over a long period of time, sometimes to lethal levels. "There are a lot of people who are addicted who don't care about anything but getting a buzz. Š So I don't think they're conscious about what it's doing to their bodies. I think sometimes they might get a rude wake-up call if they're lucky."
Charles, who asked that The Sun not use his last name, is one of the lucky ones Kibbey referred to. The 43-year-old obtained prescriptions for pain medication from as many as seven or eight doctors at the same time. Over the past 20 years, he says he's been addicted to Xanax, Lortabs, Oxycontin, Methadone, Percacet and Valium, among others.
Twice, he said, he ended up in the hospital from accidental overdoses. In 1992 he spent 30 days in a coma resulting from an overdose. On two other occasions, he attempted suicide by drinking antifreeze while he was high on Fioricet.
“I wouldn't know what day of the week it was. I would get up, and my wife would have four (pills) at the top of my bed with a glass of water every morning when I got up. I had to have them," he said.
One time, desperate for prescription pain killers, he shot himself in the arm in order to get a prescription. He still carries a deep scar from the bullet wound. Typically, however, he would use a practice called “doctor shopping," in which he would visit several hospital emergency rooms concocting phony symptoms in order to get prescriptions for pain medication.
According to Charles, even locked up in jail, he was able to obtain pain pills by pretending to slip in some spilled Kool-aid on the floor. He was transported to the hospital after feigning a back injury. He recalled returning to jail with a supply of pain medication.
Charles said his drug habit cost him his marriage and children, two of whom were taken by the state and put up for adoption. He is currently in counseling for his addiction, and he claims he has been drug-free for the past 18 months.
Kibbey's office on Highland Street counsels hundreds of people with substance abuse problems. With a growing caseload and limited staff, unless it's an emergency, there's usually a six-week wait to see a counselor.
"The more people you have using and abusing, the more likely the chance that Š somebody's going to overdose. That's what you have today. The number of people using pills is astronomical," Kibbey explained.
Kibbey said he has been to the funeral home more times in the past two years than in the previous 10 years combined. In almost every case, he said it was a result of somebody dying from a drug overdose.
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