Reclaiming Hope: Women’s Voices from the Opioid Epidemic

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I had a cyst in my breast.

and they gave me a prescription for Vicodin.

I had maybe two pills.

Two weeks later, I was sitting at work and I picked up the phone and I called the doctor and I said, "You know what?

It still hurts a little.

It's still sore.

Can I get a refill?"

Gone.

I have fibromyalgia, which at the time, 35, 37 years ago, was like a non-known disease.

So nobody really wanted to treat it.

And at the time a medicine called Darvocet was out that was used mainly for severe pain.

And I took it, goodness, probably 10 years.

When I started using at 15, I started drinking.

And throughout my addiction, the only Native American people I seen was alcoholics and drug addicts.

Juanita: [ Crying ] She goes, "Mom, I love my baby."

"I know you love your baby."

She goes, "I want to save my baby."

And I go, "Well, you know what?

There's two babies here to save.

I want to save your baby and my baby."

I go, "You're my baby, Adrienne.

I will do anything to get you well."

Narrator: This country doesn't do anything with women in mind.

Everything from the design of office workspace and its temperature, original designs for body armor, scientific uniforms, even safety googles, were all based on the male body.

We also haven't designed a health care system that addresses women's needs.

It doesn't make me feel any better knowing that the problem isn't new.

In the second half of the 19th century, doctors, who were overwhelmingly male, began prescribing morphine, a derivative of the opium plant, for every pain women had -- from menstrual cramps to nervous conditions.

By century's end, two-thirds of opium users were white women, Now, 120 years later, it's happened again.

But this time, it's an equal-opportunity disease affecting women across all demographics.

Without considering how these medications might affect a woman's body, the still-predominately-male medical profession, combined with Big Pharma and retail drugstores, treated women's pains with handfuls of candy-colored pills.

When the agencies realized that there were such a high rate of people dying from overdoses secondary to over prescription of opioids, we saw a rise in deaths from heroin as the agencies were trying to control the number of prescriptions.

And then into 2015, when heroin was basically stable, we started to see an even steeper rise in mortality linked with the entry of synthetic, very, very powerful opioids like fentanyl, carfentanil, sufentanil.

And this has continued unabated.

Narrator: In 1977, due to concern over replicating Europe and Canada's thalidomide tragedy resulting in the birth of babies with deformities, the Federal Drug Administration recommended women of childbearing age be excluded from drugs' Phase I and early Phase II clinical trials.

This exclusion created a serious lack of information as to how medications impacted women.

In 1986, the NIH established a policy that encouraged but didn't mandate that researchers include women.

But it wasn't until 1993 that Congress wrote women's inclusion in clinical trials into law.

Women became dependent on painkillers much quicker than men, but for years it went inadequately addressed and treated.

Barbara: It was 1980, and I went to a treatment center.

It wasn't even a treatment center.

It was a mental institution.

My roommate welcomed me into the room, and she said, "What are you here for?"

And I said, "Because I take drugs."

And I said, "What are you here for?"

And she said, "I burned my house down."

Volkow: You know, when one looks at the history of research one realizes that women were neglected, and it was until very recently that it has been basically awareness that there is this huge gap, and the gap is deleterious, of course, for the health of women, because the treatments that were given are the treatments that were developed specifically for men.

Barbara: I grew up in New Jersey.

Wonderful family.

Two parents.

Older brother, younger sister.

It was a great childhood.

Lots of love.

I went to college in Washington, D.C., at American University, to be a elementary school teacher.

And it was during the '70s, and we protested the Vietnam War and we got tear-gassed, and we drank sangria and took quaaludes because that was the cool thing to do.

When I was in college I had been in a car accident and I had a back injury that was a herniated disc, and I got a prescription for Percodan from the doctor, and it was like "Ahhhhh..." It felt really good.

Now, it did do what it was supposed to.

It helped with my back.

But I crossed that line at some point.

One night I took it when I wasn't supposed to -- I didn't have the pain -- and it felt really good, and I liked that feeling.

One of the things that I've learned over the years is that the brain doesn't differentiate between physical pain and psychic pain.

So maybe you start taking OxyContin because you had knee surgery, and then you suddenly feel better psychically, like your spiritual/emotional pain goes away.

And so once the physical pain is gone, you want to continue to feel good.

And that's when people are hooked, you know?

Seppala: During the course of the last 25, 30 years, physicians started to prescribe more opioids.

As a result, more women took more opioids, more girls took more opioids, prescribed primarily at the onset of all this -- at this opioid crisis that we call it, they were almost all prescribed because, as physicians, we were told by the pharmaceutical industry that they were safe to use.

And the truth is they were even more dangerous.

They were more powerful, they lasted longer, and thus were more addicting.

Barbara: Since I was a smart drug addict with a master's degree, I decided that I didn't want to waste my time going to the doctor, getting a prescription, and then having to go to the pharmacy.

So I thought, well, you know what?

I'll call in a prescription.

I'll pretend I'll be the doctor.

And I drove to the pharmacy, And I ended up going in, and I promptly got arrested.

I spoke to my parents about it and got an attorney, who got me off.

I mean, nothing happened.

I didn't do jail time, I didn't have probation.

Nothing.

It was just dismissed.

And I got arrested one more time and I went to a treatment center in 1983.

And I was there also for 30 days, because most treatment programs are 30 days and that's it.

I was sober for six years.

I didn't take anything stronger than a Tylenol.

And life was good.

I took a six-year cake at a meeting.

The following week my back went out -- the herniated disc.

And I was literally bent over.

I couldn't stand up straight.

And I went to a doctor, and he said, "I can't touch you or treat you or anything because you're so stiff.

What do you usually take for this?"

"Percodan" came out of my mouth after six years of not anything.

That was a Friday.

I took the prescription as prescribed.

On Sunday I was back doing the urgent care run and going here, this urgent care, that urgent care, this doctor, that emergency room.

And I would go, and I would carry my MRI pictures of my herniated disc and I would say, "I have this back pain and I need these drugs."

So after six years it took two days to go back to what it was.

I even didn't think I was a drug addict for so many years, because "drug addict," to me, was somebody sticking a needle in their arm.

You know, that's what I thought, that I was different, and I wasn't.

Man: Shabbat Shalom [ Mid-tempo rock music playing ] Shabbat Shalom, Shabbat Shalom Here at Beit T'Shuvah we deal with the lies that people tell all the time.

To become addicted, we start with a lie.

People are looking to escape.

"I don't want to be in this life.

I can't stand it."

It's an existential spiritual malady, and Big Pharm said, "Here, we can take your pain away."

And that's the problem.

You cannot take a pill to get rid of that emotional pain.

Barbara: At one point I got bronchitis, and the doctor prescribed Hycodan cough syrup, a really strong prescription morphine-based cough syrup.

And it turned out that I loved that feeling, and I loved it even more than the pills.

So I started taking that.

And then of course it got to the point where I didn't have time again to go to the doctor and do the appointment and then go to the pharmacy and get it filled, so I stole a prescription pad once and took it and went to a pharmacy, and I got away with it.

I kept getting away with it.

And then one time I was at a pharmacy in Los Angeles.

I left the store, I thought I got it, and I got arrested.

I had to call my brother and his wife, and they put their house up for the bail money.

It was probably the worst feeling I had ever felt.

When they left, I went to my stash of prescription pads, wrote another one, and went to a 24-hour pharmacy.

That's how sick I was.

So I was gone again.

Gone, gone, gone.

And I had another arrest, and we went to the court.

And the judge looked at all my files, all the way back from New Jersey, and she said, "You know what?

I don't think you've learned your lesson.

You're gonna go to jail for 90 days."

Narrator: American Indian and Alaska Native women encounter significant barriers to accessing treatment, and they are at the highest risk of dying from a prescription opioid overdose.

I was placed in a foster home at four, and the stories I've heard from my sister are the only memories that I have of being placed in that foster home.

So I was in a total of four foster homes.

I have no pictures of my childhood, with the exception of one that was just sent to me recently, at six months old with my older sister, and after that when I was 20 years old and I was six months pregnant with my oldest child.

Stevenson: What's at the heart of all addiction for Indian people, and the opioid epidemic sort of included, is a multigenerational trauma, that we are one of the two original sins in this country -- slavery being one and the idea of colonialism being the other -- and that, for literally generations, from the time that the settlers arrived in the American lands, that our people have been subjugated, that they've been taught that they were less-than and told that they didn't have value as a people.

And anybody who knows anything about addiction knows that trauma is the underlying cause for how you end up there.

Carol: I am from the Grand Traverse Band of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians on my mother's side.

My mother's name is Tillie John.

And I'm from the Little River Band of the Ottawa Indians on my father's side.

And his name is Sylvester Gould.

All the foster homes that I was placed in were Caucasian.

I really believe there was... there was a point in my life, maybe when I was 18 years old that I realized I was Native American.

I was never exposed to the Native American culture.

It was never acknowledged that I was Native American.

And all my foster homes, my mother would come and visit, but she was always drinking.

And my foster parents would tell me... ...that she was an alcoholic.

And I grew up with that understanding and did my best to distance myself from her.

What is super important is to recognize the genocide that took place that is part of American history and the total erasure of a lot of Indigenous people, their families, the reverence of women, the sacredness of the female identity.

And so when that is passed on and there is that intergenerational trauma, how do you, one, think about accessing treatment in a way that feels safe to you, but then also not wanting to air that dirty laundry, right?

So if I'm having the issue with people within my tribe or within my cultural circle that, you know, are not treating me well, if I'm dealing with interpersonal violence or sexual assault, I might not feel empowered to then share that with someone that is from outside of my culture because of that mistrust tied to the history of this country.

So it gets really complicated.

Carol: My first introduction to opioids was strictly my disease of addiction progressing.

First and foremost, I was an alcoholic.

And when I was drinking, drinking gave me permission to experiment.

And I used speed, marijuana, and when I was approximately 24 I started experimenting with cocaine.

And that was my first I.V.

drug use.

And cocaine led me into heroin.

And then I became a heroin addict at age...30.

I was a heroin addict for 25 years.

I was arrested multiple times.

My first arrest was in 1990.

Was a possession charge.

And my second was '95, was another possession.

'97 was conspiracy to deliver.

2000, possession of heroin.

And 2002, I sold to an informant.

So, it was like when I surrendered to the police department, I was surrendering my life also, 'cause my thought was, I'm gonna be imprisoned for 64 months.

Maybe when I come out, I can be sober.

Narrator: Women are prescribed opioids at a much higher rate than men, and even more so for women 65 and older, often leading to physical dependence and a diminished way of life.

Susie: We live out here in a cornfield.

And I retired five years ago because I was on so much fentanyl and stuff that that's why I had to go ahead and retire early from my job I'd been at for 22 years, 'cause it was 30 miles away and I got to where I couldn't stay awake driving.

And I put myself, and more so even than that, other people's lives in jeopardy.

It's debilitating to the fact that you just hurt all over and you just feel like you can't do as much as what you used to, you know?

So you just have to fight through it.

And I fought many years with it.

And finally, it just, you know, with the opioid and stuff, it just took me.

You know, I couldn't do it anymore.

There's plenty of people that don't become addicted in the way that we think of addiction.

They don't increase their dose on their own.

They just take what they're prescribed.

But here in the United States, we kind of developed a lot of people with physiologic dependence, is how we call it, that they aren't addicted in the full sort of, "I'm gonna go get high every single day," and they lose their jobs, they lose their families, everything starts falling apart.

They're physically dependent.

They can't stop it.

Susie: I never really thought about being addicted to anything.

Because when I took Darvocet many, many years ago, if I didn't have pain, I didn't have to take it, and it's fine.

So I tried to stop taking the Norco pills, and, uh... ...that didn't do too good.

Next day I thought, "Something ain't right," 'cause I started having all these weird feelings.

And I didn't know then, but it was withdrawals.

One thing I think is so important is that many times there are these individuals out there struggling with addictions like this, and nobody sees them.

They don't notice them.

If we can't take the time and space in our life to even see them, we'll never step out of our world toward them and extend the hand to help them, to understand and want to walk with them to greater levels of healing.

Then we decided that we didn't want to get up, we didn't want to move around, we didn't want to clean the house.

We were tired, we were crabby, we were cranky.

Very forgetful.

I seriously thought that she had dementia.

I argued with my dad.

I argued with her doctor.

And they said, no, she doesn't have dementia.

Mark: Yeah, she'd be driving, she'd just black out and go to sleep and wake up in another lane.

Or sitting at her desk, she'd fall asleep.

So she decided it was time to retire then.

Yeah, sometimes you wondered if she was gonna burn the house down.

It gets to the point where it really is creating problems, social problems with the family.

It becomes information that's noticeable by friends, family, maybe even individuals that share in their faith communities or their churches.

And then all of a sudden, they feel like they might be being treated differently because of that knowledge and information.

Then all that does is enhance the sense of isolation and even, like, hopelessness -- "Can I ever climb out?"

Stephanie: We had talked for a long time about her going to a pain clinic to get some help.

And she was terrified that if she went, they would take her off all of her meds and that she didn't know how she would react.

You know, panic sets in.

"I'm gonna hurt.

I'm gonna be sick.

I'm gonna be worse."

So she just kept taking them.

Susie: The patches were prescribed to change every three days, 72 hours is what a patch was worth.

I might get 36 hours good out of it.

It didn't cause tension, but I wasn't a real pleasant person.

When those 36 hours was it and then I was on dry land till I got my new patch, no, I wasn't real nice.

Narrator: For pregnant women suffering from OUD, the highest overdose rate is in the year after delivery.

My worst fear became a reality the night of September 17th.

Never in a million years did I think God would call you home so soon.

"Go on, my girl.

Hold your head high.

Know you are loved.

Be strong and proud of the indescribable compassion, the laughter you brought to me and all who were blessed by your presence.

We send you with love and pride, knowing that you will be embraced and appreciated on the other side.

Be brave, my sister, and stay close till we will see you again."

[ Baby fusses ] Juanita: Adrienne was very athletic.

She could play any sport.

Soccer was her favorite.

And when she was 18 she had a knee injury, and she had surgery.

And during this time, they would give pain medicine -- well, she just kept using Norcos and Norcos and Norcos till she was using about 10 to 15 Norcos at a time, three times a day.

Aaron: I knew she had a pill problem I was really upset and pissed.

I didn't know how to handle the situation.

But I love her, you know?

It's someone that you really want to -- you'd do anything to fix it.

I don't want to throw in the towel, you know?

Let's build this and fix it, you know?

Juanita: The government, in their wisdom, just decided to cut the pills.

And so then everyone transfers to heroin, and that's what happened with her.

Heroin's the new monster.

It's way worse than any oral opioid could be.

She smoked it for a while, and then she started shooting up.

She'd shoot up in her neck.

Yeah, crazy.

One Christmas she was here sitting on our couch, and she's half asleep, you know.

I go, "Adrienne, what did you use?"

I'm always asking her, "What did you use?"

"Oh, Mom, you always think the worst about me!"

You know, and I would take her aside and I would say, "Nothing you can do will stop me from loving you, and I will get you the best of care.

I will help you.

I will do anything in my power to help you.

But I can't help you if you don't tell me what's going on."

So then, you know, I'm laying in bed one night.

She's getting worse.

I could tell she's getting worse.

And I go, "You know, God, I don't know how I'm gonna catch her," because I need proof.

We have a bathroom back by the room that she stayed at.

It's kind of like a mother-in-law's quarters back there.

I turned off the water to her bathroom and I plunged the toilet and I sopped it up with towels so that there's no water or anything in there.

And so she had worked the night before, she got up, she peed, and she was on heroin.

So, we hired this guy, his name was Scott, to do one of those big-time interventions.

And we met the day before and we wrote these letters to her.

My sisters, my brother, my parents, and her boyfriend, we all wrote these beautiful letters to Adrienne.

She got angry, and Scott goes, "Hey, Adrienne, you remember when the toilet wouldn't flush?"

And so she knew she was busted.

And he took her straight to the airport, and he took her all the way to the inpatient facility.

She was there two months, and she got kicked out for leaving the premises and wasn't back by curfew.

Aaron and her had been a couple for five years, and she ends up being pregnant.

Aaron: We were both ecstatic.

Nervous but ecstatic, you know?

And she told me herself, she goes, "I need to go into in-treatment."

Because she was scared to death of becoming weak and relapsing.

Jordan: So when we're thinking about pregnant women with opioid use disorder, like, who cares about them?

Like, you're the bottom of the barrel.

So I say that jokingly, but not really, because the resources really do reflect that.

There are not enough addiction specialists that have the training to actually take care of pregnant women with opioid use disorder.

And there is not even enough attention paid to those special considerations.

Juanita: Adrienne was eight months pregnant when she finally agreed to go into rehab.

And I drove her there.

[ Voice breaking ] And it was probably the best drive we ever had, you know?

On the way there we talked, and she told me... "I wish I never would have started, and I can't stop."

It's even more stigmatized among women.

And there's actually more difficulties for women to enter treatment settings because of that.

That stigma makes the decision-making even tougher to go seek help.

They can't admit it.

Juanita: You know, she wanted to be a nurse and she had so many goals.

She said, "Mom, it's horrible."

And I said, "Well, honey, you know, you need rehab and you need to stay here as long as you can stay because it's a disease.

You've got to look at it like a disease and you've got to stop."

She goes, "I'm so ashamed of myself."

"Mom, I love my baby."

"I know you love your baby."

She goes, "I want to save my baby."

And I go, "Well, you know what?

There's two babies here to save.

I want to save your baby and my baby."

I go, "You're my baby, Adrienne.

I will do anything to get you well."

Narrator: Since 1999, almost three-quarters of a million people have died of opioid overdoses.

And no doubt during the pandemic, people's isolation contributed to the record-high number of 81,000 opioid-related deaths in 2021.

One way to limit these deaths is through harm reduction, a set of practical strategies and ideas aimed at lessening the negative consequences of drug use.

These include making naloxone, commonly known by the brand name Narcan, readily available.

Naloxone can reverse an opioid overdose, literally bringing people back to life.

And recently naloxone became available over the counter, without need for prescription.

Fingerhood: Harm reduction means that we give out naloxone.

Naloxone should be everywhere.

Naloxone should be in the fast-food restaurant bathrooms.

It should be in libraries, where people come in to use drugs.

There should be syringe-exchange programs as an entry point to get people help.

I'm a believer in touchpoints, meaning that any point in which they touch someone who potentially could be someone that's helpful, that's a useful point -- not just to be able to make sure that someone doesn't inject fentanyl and then die, but also, "Do you want an HIV test, a hepatitis C test?

Do you want to be linked to treatment for HIV or hepatitis C?

Do you need help with housing?

Where are you gonna sleep tonight?"

It's really meeting individuals where they are.

If someone says, "I just want to use now.

I'm not ready to get on medication," "Okay, but here we are, and you can come back."

Narrator: Recovery is possible if a combination of approaches is available for women, including medication, counseling and behavioral therapy, and a community of peers.

We know unequivocally that medications for opioid use disorder significantly improve the outcomes, and they improve the outcomes as it relates to retention in treatment, ability to refrain from taking drugs, or decreasing taking drugs, and, very importantly, protecting you from overdosing and protecting you from dying.

[ Railroad crossing bell clanging ] Before I got to my first pain clinic appointment, I was already in withdrawal from fentanyl.

So I was shaking and having all kinds of symptoms anyway, you know, so that made me even more terrified of what they were gonna do to me, you know?

But soon as I went to methadone, it was gone.

So you have to convince people who have been on opioids for a long time -- and this is someone that is not escalating the dose.

They don't have evidence of addiction.

They've got physiologic dependence, though.

They can't get off without significant withdrawal symptoms, and they're convinced they absolutely need it because every time they start to try to get off or miss a few doses, they get pain again.

My whole world is different.

I feel like I can do things that I could do maybe 15 years ago.

In my flower garden, this is the first time probably in seven years I've got out there on my hands and knees and dug.

And I really was excited about watching to see what the outcome would be after I planted all this stuff, you know?

But I could never have done that a year ago.

Just never even dreamt that I could do something like that.

So it's fun to be able to feel an old self again and know that I'm coming out of the tunnel and there's light.

I always reiterate that a component on recovery is the buildup of, uh, meaningful social networks, because without them it's very unlikely that you will achieve recovery.

Carol: My detox was completed in jail, behind bars.

So when I got out and I relapsed after 10 days, they told me I had to do inpatient treatment.

And they reviewed me every 28 days to see how I was doing, and I ended up staying 88 days in inpatient treatment.

My Native American culture has helped me find out who I am.

Before I got into recovery, I had no idea who I was.

When I connected with a Native American group, I seen that there were sober Indians.

[ Laughs ] And I started opening myself up to those people, and they started introducing me to a different way of life.

And that's what my culture has brought.

Walking the red road is just living in a good way.

I think about that today, and I think, "Why didn't I know this before?"

There was a river I used to go to.

The Cedar River.

And I'd walk along that Cedar River and I'd pray.

Pray to stay sober that day.

One day I knelt by the water and I put my finger in it, and I looked upstream, and everything, everything faded away.

And it was like I was just a native woman back in the day, and everything came back.

And today when I reflect on that, it was the beginning of my life.

That was Creator telling me, "This is who you are.

This is who you are."

Standing in radical amazement Trying to figure out straight where my days went One year sober, and not a day spent Without my knees thanking God for this pavement Discover my purpose and finding my passion I'm loving this life and it feels everlasting Barbara: I really didn't have a spiritual or religious thing going on.

Ya'aseh shalom And when I got here, I started to feel a shift going on.

Ya'aseh shalom Ya'aseh shalom Shalom Something felt okay.

Aleinu V'al kol... I turned 50 in treatment.

It's not the most fun thing in the world.

And I got a bit of wisdom from Harriet that day, 'cause I went in her office and I was so devastated.

"I'm 50 years old and I'm in rehab.

Like, what is that?"

She just looked at me and she said, "Well, now you have the second half of your life to live."

Oh.

Okay.

[ Woman shouting indistinctly ] It's a different person when I think back to those things I did and that pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.

It's like a different person.

And I'm so, so grateful I have my family back.

I can be a daughter and a sister and an aunt and a friend again.

And that's my story.

Jordan: Actually, treatment works.

We are at a place where we have comprehensive care, truly.

We have trauma-informed care.

We have medication for opiate use disorder.

We have programs where you can get psychosocial support.

There's actually programs that will help get support for your unborn child or your child that may be affected because of your opioid use.

So those things actually exist, but it's like, how do you get plugged in?

And you can't get plugged in if you do it alone.

Narrator: And it's even more difficult if the resources needed are almost nonexistent.

In the United States, every 24 minutes a baby is diagnosed with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome -- NAS -- but currently there are less than a handful of transitional programs supporting these babies and their mothers.

Maddie's Place in Spokane, Washington, is one of them.

Stephanie: I started out as an alcoholic.

My younger brother had passed away my senior year of high school, and my whole world fell apart, so I was an alcoholic for the first year and a half, and that's when I found meth.

And then about six months later, I started using heroin and meth together, and that was that high that I was searching for.

It filled that void in my heart, and I was able to not feel but feel and function as a human being.

I did not find out, however, until I was four months into my pregnancy that I was pregnant.

I was full-blown addicted to fentanyl at this point, using every couple of hours a day and didn't really know what to do.

I felt kind of trapped.

I tried to get help from my O.B.

care, and unfortunately they kind of pushed me to the wayside and treated me like I was just, you know, the world's worst mom and I couldn't get clean and I wouldn't accept their help.

And every time I tried to get help, they wouldn't help me.

We were in the NICU for a week and a half.

And one of the NICU nurses knew Tricia, the founder of Maddie's Place, and said, "I've got this really great place.

I think you'd do wonderfully there."

And so I went ahead and called and they came out and saw me at the hospital and said that Izzy would be a perfect fit.

Hughes: We attended her family-planning meeting with the Department of Child Welfare here in Washington and met mom over a virtual meeting and said, "We'd love to have you.

As soon as the hospital is ready to let her go, let your baby be discharged, we'll come get you."

So we did.

We picked her up a few days later, and Stephanie was one of those moms who still slept with one eye open when she got here, and she really didn't trust us.

Stephanie: I didn't understand exactly what the program was.

And I still had this really big fear in the back of my head because I had heard horror stories about DCYF.

And so for me, at first I was like, "Oh, my gosh, they're gonna take my baby," and, like, it was just terrifying.

But the more I stayed here and the more relaxed I got and I got to know the nurses and they were all just amazing.

We have had moms worry that we are going to take their baby, and really it's an opportunity for our relationship to grow, because they get confrontational, and we're able to say, "We promise.

That's not how it works.

That's not what we're here to do."

It is criminalized in some states to use substances while you're pregnant.

Unfortunately, that just leads to trauma right at birth.

Separating a baby from its mama is a trauma, and you've traumatized both the baby and the mom when you do that immediately after birth.

The needs of each mom that come through our doors are different.

We don't want to have a standard package of what we offer.

We want to be able to individualize it and truly care for each mom in the way that they need it.

And that really can range from needing to find substance-use treatment, needing to find a therapist, needing good medical care, good dental care, housing.

All the supports that our mom needs to be able to be successful when she takes the baby home, we immediately start to work towards that when they come to Maddie's Place.

And they just closed her case, her CPS case, the other day.

And it was beautiful because they said in court, "We do not see this very often."

But she's done it.

She's gotten clean, she's in housing, and what she's doing differently this time is being open about it.

She's letting people know what her struggles are and that she is in a better place than she's even been.

Narrator: Women's needs have been invisible for too long.

We just cannot lose one more daughter, sister, mother.

Attention must be paid and then action taken.

The programs should have a plan of addressing addiction as a chronic disease.

So a program that tells you you can go in there, one month, and you will be cured, is incorrect.

And the result would be, while you are there, you will not be taking drugs.

But the moment you leave, you will relapse.

So that means that the program has to have a means to provide continuity of care.

Yeah.

There you go.

Juanita: And then she had little Axel.

He got transferred to NICU, where they take took him, and he's this little addict baby and they gave him morphine and clonidine and some other medications to control his withdrawals.

And at this time, Adrienne would be there from like 8:00 in the morning to midnight with Axel.

Aaron: On the day that Axel got released from the hospital, he was supposed to go back with Adrienne to the rehab facility, and they were supposed to stay there while she completed her rehab.

And then about a week went by, and the people that were running that facility at the time felt that Adrienne had completed her program and that she would be better off going home than staying.

Juanita: All of a sudden she calls me, and she told me she's coming home.

I go, "You're coming home?

No, no, no, no, no.

You need to stay there."

I go, "You're too sick.

We need to stick to our plan.

You don't rush this.

You need to stay in the rehab."

"Mom, they told me it would do more harm than good if I stayed."

She missed Aaron.

Aaron missed her.

She's crying.

She's lonely.

Those few months right after delivery are really vulnerable for women, even if they had done reasonably well during pregnancy.

And there should be a large focus on that transition because often there's so much attention paid to them while they're pregnant, and then there's incidents of postpartum depression anyway.

And it's a really vulnerable time for women to, unfortunately, overdose.

Juanita: They sent her home not on any medically assisted treatment.

The rehab didn't do a plan of care.

They basically sent her home with Aaron.

And Aaron told them he's going to go to work the next day.

Aaron: I was so happy.

I was like, I think I have my Adrienne back, you know, the person I fell in love with.

Seeing her with Axel and just, you know, just the glow in her face.

And we actually took Rocky, her German shepherd, we took him and got him an ice cream.

And it was like a whole little mini vacation wrapped up into one day, all these little things we did and I can cherish.

You're so cute.

Daddy.

Aaron: Hey, buddy.

And then we went home, we made dinner that night.

She never told me she was having a hard time.

And then I woke up and she had coffee ready, she had breakfast ready.

And I took a picture, before I walked out the door, of her rocking Axel in the rocking chair with the dog by her side And there just was a glow to her and she was happy, and I thought everything was together, everything fell in place.

I couldn't be happier.

The place made him think that she was doing great.

You know, he had people watching the house.

She didn't have any money.

She didn't have keys.

The neighbors -- his eye was glued on the house so that no one came or went.

We're all watching her.

And so I get home, and as I pull in the driveway, shut the truck off, I hear crying.

And I thought he was just being fussy.

Went through the door.

He was in the crib crying, and I heard water running.

I thought maybe she was in the shower.

I went to the bathroom door.

I pushed on the door.

It was locked.

I didn't even think drugs.

I thought, she just had a baby, maybe something medically wrong.

Maybe she slipped, she fell.

And so I called 911.

I beat down the door.

I can't get out of my head the image of the door busting open and seeing the needle floating in the sink.

I just sank.

But I didn't have time to sit and... My immediate thing was, "Babe, babe!"

and so I performed CPR till the EMTs arrived.

And I Narcaned her.

But she -- she was blue to the face, but I couldn't -- I couldn't just -- I just had to put all my energy into trying to, you know, bring her back.

And that's -- that's the day everything ended.

I got the worst phone call of my life that night, you know, and I said, when I heard the news, I said, "I knew it."

I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.

It's like your worst fear come true, you know?

And then you think, "Oh, what could have done more?"

you know?

And then there's this little baby.

Aaron: I was just lost.

It took a long time for me to even get back to work, to do anything.

There is no words to even describe what I was feeling.

It was just you're dealt a weird hand, and you just -- nothing you can do.

And you're pissed off one day, sad the next day, all kinds of things.

Grief is a [bleep] And there's no time limit.

That's the thing.

You think, "Oh, it's almost done."

No.

Nice boy.

I could've went a month just fine.

I hear a song on the radio or I hear something that -- and it just -- you fall apart.

And getting yourself back up is the -- is the hardest.

Juanita: You know, she finally had it all.

I'm really sad that I never got to see her with Axel.

You know, I miss her terribly.

How many more have to be lost?

How many more years of life swept away?

How many more have to be lost Before we learn We simply need to do more?

How do I move on after so long?

How do I learn to stand from a crawl?

I need to find the strength Inside myself And make it one more day I'm asking you How many more have to be lost?

How many more?

How many more years of life swept away?

How many more have to be lost We simply need to do more?

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