Tears welled in Rich Scheib’s eyes as he thought of his son, Wade, who died of a drug overdose on Dec. 7.
Scheib said the first time he realized his son was using drugs was when he suffered an overdose four years earlier.
“I just didn’t think he was that type of person. I just never thought that he would go down that road,” Scheib said. “The first time was in my mom’s living room. And my mom called me frantic, saying he wouldn’t wake up. I rushed over there and I instantly knew he was OD’ing.”
Paramedics were able to revive him that time.
Scheib said because his 30-year-old son was shy and didn’t have many friends, he didn’t think he was as vulnerable to peer pressure to experiment with narcotics. And after the first overdose, the family thought that Wade had stopped using narcotics.
“We didn’t think he was still actively doing it. We thought he’d come around,” Scheib said.
Wade’s mother found him dead on Dec. 7. Scheib said he got a call from his ex-wife that afternoon.
“And he (had been) gone for quite a while. I guess he died closer to the early morning hours,” Scheib said. “He didn’t come down for breakfast, so his mother called him and he never came down. That’s when she went up there and found him. He was just lying in his bed, dressed, his legs were crossed. And he was just lying there like he was taking a nap.”
A coroner’s autopsy found that he died of an overdose of heroin and fentanyl. A straw used for snorting opioids was found nearby.
In 2024, 90 people in Sangamon County died of accidental drug overdoses, according to Sangamon County Coroner Jim Allmon. He said that is the most drug-related deaths the county has experienced in one year.
Since 2019, the number of annual overdoses in Sangamon County has more than doubled, rising from 38 to 90.
Allmon said the reason for the the increase is due to fentanyl, noting that 62% of all drug overdoses in the community are fentanyl-related. Although fentanyl has been prescribed by physicians to treat pain for decades, it became a common street drug in Springfield less than five years ago, he said.
Nationally, overdose deaths in the U.S. decreased in 2023 for the first time since 2018, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, although there were wide variations among states. Washington, Oregon and Alaska had notable increases of at least 27%, compared to the same period in 2022, while other Midwestern states such as Indiana, Nebraska and Kansas all experienced declines of 15% or more. Overall, there was approximately a 3% decline nationwide in both overall overdose deaths (from 111,029 in 2022 to 107,543 in 2023) and overdose deaths involving opioids (from 84,181 in 2022 to 81,083 in 2023).
In Illinois, 83% of drug overdose deaths in 2022 involved opioids, and the 3,261 people who died from opioid overdoses represented an 8.2% increase from the previous year, according to Illinois Department of Public Health statistics. Since 2013, heroin overdose deaths in the state have decreased by nearly 10% but synthetic opioid overdose deaths have increased by 3,341%.
Fentanyl leads to more deaths
It takes far less fentanyl to cause a person to overdose than a similar amount of any other street drug, said Joan Stevens Thome, director of health education at Sangamon County Health Department. Fentanyl is at least 100 times more potent than morphine and about 50 times stronger than heroin.
Those using street drugs are often unaware that their drug of choice may be laced with fentanyl.
“When people get a batch of something, they often take out a portion for themselves,” Thome said. “That’s their cut. So, then they’re left with a smaller amount, which means they have to bulk it back up again. And they can do that with baby powder, talcum powder, corn starch, whatever. But then it loses its potency, and they have to add something else. Fentanyl is cheap, easy to get, and it doesn’t take very much. So, they can bulk it up with other things and then also add fentanyl to it.”
Allmon agreed with this assessment.
“A lot of times this stuff is mixed with cocaine, Xanax, methamphetamine, heroin,” he said. “What that means is even with a small amount, you could still have an overdose, because it is of a much higher potency.”
And because the user is unaware their dose contains fentanyl, they consume more than their body can tolerate, Allmon said.
This was the case for Courtney Estes, who has been in recovery for four months after accidently overdosing.
The 29-year-old Springfield woman said, “I took an ecstasy pill, and it had fentanyl in it. I got scared because my drug of choice was crack (cocaine), and I’ve never really been on fentanyl.”
She ended up in an area hospital emergency room where she was administered Narcan.
“I was awake but unresponsive. I’ve never been through that before,” Estes said. “And I woke up in the hospital thinking, ‘What the hell?’ The last thing I remember was leaving the liquor store and then waking up in the hospital.”
Jack McKinney, 40, has been in recovery for one year. The former Springfield resident who now lives in a Jacksonville recovery house said he regularly used cocaine, methamphetamine and opioids. He recalled being terrified of inadvertently consuming fentanyl during the time he was using.
“It seems to be in everything. … I’ve been at parties where all of a sudden people’s lips are blue and they’re turning gray because they’re overdosing,” McKinney said. “I’ve literally been at a party where I’ve tried to do everything I could to save the guy. I had the Narcan in the nose and I’m beating and beating on his chest until the ambulance got there.”
Although fentanyl is a prescription drug, almost all that is found on the streets comes from illegal laboratories.
“The constituents that are required to make fentanyl are primarily coming from China and primarily going to Mexico,” Dr. David Fiellin, director of addiction medicine at Yale School of Medicine. said. “In Mexico, they’re combined to create fentanyl. Because it’s less expensive – so potent and concentrated – it has essentially replaced both the heroin and the prescription opioid supply.”
Coroner Allmon said the impure nature of this street drug makes it particularly dangerous.
“When you look at those amounts (of fentanyl ingested), they are astronomically high. And I tell people all the time, the individuals mixing these things are not pharmacists or toxicologists. They have no idea what they’re doing.”
Narcan has become a key tool in mitigating fatalities in Sangamon County, Allmon said.
“If Narcan wasn’t out there being utilized multiple times a day, everywhere, I don’t know where we would be with our (fatal overdose) stats,” he said. “It saves lives. But a lot of people don’t realize you’ve got to keep giving it.”
Allmon said giving someone Narcan doesn’t eliminate the need for medical care.
“You’ve got to get them to a hospital. They need to get an IV started with a Narcan drip. This is especially true because you don’t know – particularly with fentanyl – how much they’ve consumed or ingested.”
Allmen noted the toxicology reports he receives in overdose deaths often shows Narcan in the deceased’s blood from previous overdoses in which they were revived.
Narcan prevents more deaths
The number of overdose deaths in Sangamon County would be far greater if Narcan weren’t readily available, Allmon said.
Dr. Camile Dunkley, director of the division of addiction medicine at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, said Narcan is the trade name for naloxone. Naloxone can be given as a nasal spray or it can be injected into the muscle, under the skin or into the veins. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a prepackaged nasal spray that requires no assembly and is sprayed into one nostril while the affected person lies on their back. The National Institute on Drug Abuse notes this device is easy for loved ones and bystanders without formal training to use and recommends that families with loved ones who struggle with opioid addiction keep Narcan nearby.
The nasal spray is available free to the public at the Sangamon County Health Department and a variety of other locations.
“When we first started handing out Narcan to the community, there was a lot of hesitation about it. People couldn’t wrap their heads around it,” Thome said. She said some people believed distributing Narcan encouraged the use of narcotics.
“It was kind of like how they thought about birth control pills back in the day – that it was just going to make people more promiscuous,” Thome said. “I try to humanize the issue. I want people to understand there are many pathways that people are on in terms of how they begin using substances. Most people have either suffered some kind of trauma and they use drugs to cope with it, or they have a mental health issue and they’re using substances to cope with that, or it’s a combination of both.”
Thome said that almost every time she gives a presentation in the community, people come up to her afterwards and thank her for humanizing the issue.
“They have a son, a daughter, a spouse, who’s in recovery because they have a substance-use issue… There’s such a stigma. People don’t want to tell people that they have a substance-use issue or that a family member does,” she said.
Allmon said the people in Sangamon County who have died from overdoses have come from all socio-economic, racial groups and neighborhoods.
Nationally, fentanyl users are disproportionately white, said Fiellin of Yale School of Medicine. But those dying of overdoses are disproportionately Black and Hispanic.
It is unclear as to why this is the case, but part of it may be that white people have better access to medical care, he said.
“I’m fond of saying it could be your kid’s soccer coach, or it could be the person in the grocery store. You may have no (clue about) somebody who’s impacted by fentanyl.”
Julie Benson, a Springfield advocate for the homeless, said often users pair up and take turns consuming opioids. If one person overdoses, the other can revive them using Narcan.
“I know of a couple that happened to. He fell asleep after she shot up, and she died,” Benson said.
“I think most of them know how strong it is. Fentanyl is easier to get than anything else is right now,” she said.
Types of treatment
Treatment options for opioid-use disorder are varied.
“Fentanyl addiction, heroin addiction, addiction to prescription opioids such as morphine, we kind of treat those all the same,” Dunkley, of SIU, said.
She said there are three FDA-approved medications that can be used for treatment – methadone, buprenorphine and naloxone – but over the last few years there have been new ways to administer them.
“When I first came here, buprenorphine was primarily taken as a sublingual film or as a tablet that you could place under your tongue. They’ve definitely been developing other ways such as subcutaneous injections that you can use once a month,” Dunkley said. “So, even though the main medications have stayed the same, the way that you can take it is varied.”
Related
Methadone remains one of the most powerful weapons in the war against opioids. Springfield has two clinics that dispense the medication, Dunkley said. Historically, patients have been required to consume methadone in front of a health care provider so that it is not diverted and sold on the street.
“Most of the time, they’re operating with it being dispensed in person, so the person is going to that set clinic site. However, during COVID, they changed quite a lot of the regulations, so people are now able to get to take home doses,” she said.
Dunkley said since she started working for SIU in 2019, she has seen more patients who are getting to take home doses of methadone, although it is still traditionally consumed on site, especially for newer patients.
However, for every person who seeks treatment for substance-use disorder, it is estimated that another nine people do not, according to data collected by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services (SAMHSA) Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. A strategy known as harm reduction “offers an opportunity to reach people who aren’t otherwise accessing health care services … treatment services (such as medications for opioid-use disorder) can be co-located with harm reduction services and offered as an option … harm reduction organizations can fill that gap by providing services that people do feel they need, in order to make positive change,” according to the SAMHSA website.
Harm reduction is a key pillar in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ overdose prevention strategy, and it is the approach employed by Intricate Minds, a Springfield nonprofit that works to reduce stigma related to drug use and mental health.
Tiara Standage, who lost her mother to a fentanyl overdose, founded the nonprofit in March 2023. In an interview last year with Springfield Business Journal, she said, “It wasn’t surprising. She was an active user almost all of my life. It’s hard to talk about sometimes, but when you have a family member that’s an active user, you’re always trying to get them to rehab and get them the help they need. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
“I wish I would have known the principles of harm reduction that I know now. When my mother was still alive, I was just always taught if she’s not clean to stay away. And that’s exactly the opposite of what harm reduction is. Harm reduction is meeting people wherever they’re at in their addiction. Some people aren’t ready to stop using drugs. With harm reduction, abstinence from drugs is not a requirement for help,” Standage said.
Intricate Minds operates a community center at 619 North Grand Ave. in Springfield that provides a variety of services to at-risk populations. Free haircuts are offered every Monday and warm meals on Wednesday. Hygiene products, menstrual pads and tampons, clothes, pregnancy tests, condoms and Plan B pills are always available, along with COVID tests and HIV testing. The organization also offers supplies to help improve outcomes for those who are using narcotics.
“We provide clean syringes and pipes. We have Narcan and fentanyl test strips. I want to keep people who are in active use safe,” Standage told SBJ. She declined to be interviewed for this article.
In January, Springfield Memorial Hospital announced it was awarding $60,000 in funding to Intricate Minds as part of its 2025-2027 Community Health Implementation Plan, which focuses on addressing substance abuse, mental health, chronic diseases and homelessness. Standage told the State Journal-Register she plans to install a drive-through window for distributing harm reduction supplies and hopes to be able to hire staff.
A 2023 study commissioned by the Food and Drug Administration found that 2.7 million Americans suffered from opioid-use disorder. Those who received treatment had a relapse rate between 65% and 70%.
Fiellin, of Yal School of Medicine, said the medical community is approaching opioid addiction as a chronic disease that has to be treated over the course of a lifetime with medication, rather than one that can be cured.
“My goal is to control their disease, not necessarily to get them off their medication. But that’s also true for patients that I treat for depression and hypertension and other chronic medical conditions such as diabetes,” he said.
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This article appears in Opioid overdoses increase.
“Harm reduction” has never helped anyone who is struggling with addiction.
Imagine if “harm reduction” strategies were used to “help” someone with alcoholism who was chronically drunk driving. In this context, “harm reduction” would mean condoning their drunk driving, making it easier for them to drive drunk, and providing solutions for a third party to swoop in at the last moment to save the person’s life after they wreck their car and are bleeding out on the pavement.
When applied to alcohol addiction, it’s easy to see how “harm reduction” can only make the problem worse. Yet for some reason people pretend it’s somehow helping when applied to other dangerous drugs.
In order to actually help people who are so far gone that their lives are in danger, the addicted person needs to be forced into treatment and given serious guardrails which prevent them from using the drug that is going to kill them.
“My goal is to control their disease”…..3 things i know for a FACT. If you’re not the addict, you didn’t Cause it, you can’t Cure it & you can’t Control it. Those who don’t want help can not be helped.