Rehabilitation specialists, some battling addiction and some who are sober curious, gather to discuss the fentanyl crisis
By Barbara Burke
Special to The Malibu Times
The statistics are absolutely astounding. Malibu and our country are facing what some experts characterize as the “fourth wave” of the opioid epidemic, according to a report last week from Millennium Health, a laboratory that monitors the use of illicit drugs and prescription medication. The study reveals that an overwhelming number of fentanyl-positive urine samples taken from addicted persons — almost 93 percent — contained additional substances.
According to Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute of Health’s National Institute of Drug Abuse, the combination of methamphetamine and fentanyl use has risen meteorically since 2015 — by 875 percent.
They gathered at Malibu’s newest rehabilitation center, Carrara Luxury Rehab Center, to discuss the insidious effect of fentanyl.
“We are out of time!” said Richard Taite, director of Carrara, founder of Cliffside Malibu, and one of those who journeyed from addiction, to a somber audience of attendees, some of whom provided testimonials about their addiction battles, some of whom explained the horrifically agonizing effect of losing a loved one or friend to addiction and some of whom were sober curious.
“When I was a kid, you could experiment with drugs and alcohol,” Taite said. “Kids today don’t have that rite of passage. We need to remember that kids who are under 25 years old feel indestructive — their frontal cortex is not fully developed. When I sold Cliffside a little more than five years ago, fentanyl was not a thing.”
Taite returned to the world of treatment centers in response to the crisis, he added.
Voices of Recovery
Taite hosted a Voices of Recovery discussion panel on Feb. 25, where fentanyl awareness advocate Parker Noriega shared her heart-wrenching story about losing her brother, Cooper, to fentanyl in 2022, and other panel members recounted their struggles with the treacherous substance.
“The epidemic of fentanyl that is gripping our nation changed my family’s life forever when we lost Cooper,” Noriega said. “ Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, is a silent killer you cannot see, smell, or taste. Although it’s hard to imagine, fentanyl is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine — it lurks in the shadows, disguised in counterfeit pills or mixed with other drugs, waiting to unleash its deadly grip on unsuspecting victims.”
Illicit fentanyl is flooding our streets through illegal drug markets and has become a weapon in the hands of traffickers, Noriega added
“It’s added to substances to make them cheaper, more potent, and tragically, more addictive, causing a surge in deaths, with statistics climbing daily,” she said. “It’s a grim reality that 2 milligrams, equivalent to just five grains of salt, can kill a person instantly.”
Taite noted that fentanyl is responsible for 200 deaths a day.
“Two hundred families’ lives are ruined every 24 hours,” he said, noting that country musician Jason DeFord, more popularly known as Jelly Roll, recently spoke on Capitol Hill and compared those statistics to a commercial airplane crashing every single day in America.
Entertainment personality Renee Graziano (“Mob Wives,” “Celebrity Big Brother”) characterized herself as “a grateful recovering addict,” and shared, “My message is as real as this disease which is plaguing this country. If the disease of addiction would have told me that I was going to rob my son of 13 years of his life, would be self-medicating the day I buried my father, my sister who I love dearly would stop speaking with me for a year and a half, would overdose four times, causing my son to have to come to the hospital thinking it was the last time he would see me, and about the heartache and pain I caused my parents and family, I would have fought harder. Matter of fact, the disease of addiction did tell me that, but I was too high to hear it.”
Taite further addressed the overwhelming tragedies caused by insidious, diabolical fentanyl.
“We lost more than 100,000 people to fentanyl last year and it is projected we will lose 150,000 this year,” he said, characterizing the crisis, as “a love call that means that we need to love on those who are sick with this disease — they come to us broken and we need to love them as they go through the process of fighting this challenge.”