美国国家公共电台 NPR Battling Heroin With A Hearse And A Prayer

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KORVA COLEMAN, HOST:

Here's a number that shows just how bad the opioid crisis is in Huntington, W. Va. The rate of babies born there with a drug dependency is 10 times higher than the national average. We're going to meet two people in that community who have said, enough. Their methods of getting heroin¹ addicts³ into recovery are unorthodox. One uses brown bag lunches and the Bible, the other an old black hearse and a casket. For our Take A Number Series, NPR's Elizabeth Blair reports.

ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE⁴: It's an ominous⁵ sight parked in a rundown neighborhood where there have been a number of drug busts⁶. A black Buick hearse with the words inject heroin, reject life stenciled⁷ on the side. On the back, it says heroin kills. Is this your last ride?

DWAYNE WOOD: There's nothing around quite like this that I'm aware of. I wish they were on every corner.

BLAIR: I meet Dwayne Wood (ph) from outside a building he's trying to turn into a community center for recovering addicts. It's about three miles from downtown Huntington. Wood drives the hearse thousands of miles through nearby Ohio and Kentucky to raise awareness⁸ about heroin addiction⁹.

What year is this?

WOOD: 1988.

BLAIR: Dwayne Wood grew up in Huntington. He originally bought the hearse to carry his motorcycle.

WOOD: I love my Harley. How cool would that be to see those ape hangers¹⁰ sticking out the roof of a hearse going down the road? You know, cut the roof out.

BLAIR: Ape hangers. I had to look that up. They're handlebars. But Dwayne Wood scrapped¹¹ those plans when he turned on the radio on the drive home.

WOOD: Radio airways¹² once again filled with overdose and death. And that's when I knew the true calling of the car.

BLAIR: The true calling of the car.

WOOD: The true calling of the car. The car that was designed to haul death was revamped to give life.

BLAIR: Huntington is a mid-sized, blue-collar town on the Ohio River where West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky meet. It's home to Marshall University. A number of factors have contributed to the city's opioid crisis, including the loss of factory jobs, a depressed¹³ economy, a high addiction rate. There's a lot of work to be done. In about a year's time, he's gone from driving the heroin hearse to raise awareness to organizing fundraisers for treatment centers and talking to addicts directly, like Sarah (ph) and Thomas (ph). For privacy reasons, we're only using their first names.

THOMAS: Dwayne's actually the one that got us into rehab, and here we are today.

SARAH: Six months clean.

BLAIR: In 2016, police raided Sarah and Thomas's home. Child protective services took their two children. After serving jail time, they started using again. A neighbor suggested they talk to Dwayne Wood.

SARAH: When I walked in here, he already had my Facebook page pulled up and pictures of my daughters. The first thing I seen facing me was my daughters.

BLAIR: Dwayne Wood uses a combination of compassion¹⁴ and fear to get through to addicts. The room where Brooke (ph) saw her daughters' faces looks like it belongs in a haunted house. Black walls, a mock jail cell with iron bars and a black casket donated by a local funeral home.

WOOD: This is where you'll make your choice of life or death.

BLAIR: Do you remember what you thought when you saw heroin hearse?

SARAH: I was scared. My first thought was, is he going to put me in this casket? Because I don't think I could do it. Thankfully, he didn't. And all it took was for me to see it.

BLAIR: Now, there isn't a lot of research on the best way to get an addict² into treatment. It's not clear if using fear works. And with his garish¹⁵, black hearse, Dwayne Wood has his critics. But in a town like Huntington, W. Va., where resources to fight the opioid crisis are scarce, everyone needs to take ownership, says Huntington Mayor Steve Williams.

STEVE WILLIAMS: When I hear individuals, they'll come and say two - one of two things to me. Somebody needs to do something. And I say, well, look in the mirror. But most people come and say, what can I do? That's heartwarming.

BLAIR: Dwayne Wood figures in the last year, he's helped get 43 addicts into treatment. Some went to programs that included medication to beat cravings, others went to abstinence programs. Medication assistant treatment has a higher rate of success, but Wood says any treatment is hard to find. He doesn't know if the people he's helped are still in recovery. He says as a recovering alcoholic¹⁶ himself he's compelled to help addicts because he relates to them.

WOOD: They had dope sickness. I had alcohol sickness. Same symptoms they've had when their legs were shaking and their stomachs was tied in knots and everything else that goes along with it. I've been there. I've been beside them.

SARAH: We are all one bad choice away from being who we're helping¹⁷. You know, one bad choice.

BLAIR: Necia Freeman also lives in Huntington, W. Va. She and Dwayne Wood don't know each other, but she, too, spends a lot of time trying to help heroin addicts, specifically prostitutes working to feed their addiction. Freeman is a realtor. As we drive around, Freeman points out evidence of Huntington's opioid crisis. We pass a small building with the sign Lily's (ph) Place on the front.

NECIA FREEMAN: Our neonatal unit is so full that we've had to open up a whole new facility called Lily's Place to take care of drug-addicted babies born here.

BLAIR: Freeman is a devout¹⁸ Christian¹⁹. About eight years ago, she started Backpacks & Brown Bag ministries²⁰. With help from her church, she delivers brown bag lunches and backpacks to poor children in local schools. And this is partly what led her to work with heroin addicts. One day she came across a small news item in the local paper that really bothered her. Just a couple of lines. The body of a known prostitute had been discovered in a cornfield near Huntington. She'd been shot.

FREEMAN: It bothered me that that was the end of the story. So I was burdened for this woman that I didn't even know. And then come to find out a couple days later, she was actually one of the mothers of one of my backpack kids.

BLAIR: Freeman realized the moms of some of her backpack kids also needed help. So now she gives brown bag meals and scripture²¹ to prostitutes. I meet Heather and her new baby at Freeman's church.

HEATHER: And I'm forgetful. I cried yesterday because I felt like a bad person because I forgot his bottle.

BLAIR: This is Heather's fourth pregnancy²² but only the first child she's been able to keep since coming out of rehab. Others in her family are also addicts. She says the first person to put a needle in her arm was her father. Heather has been in and out of jail and relapsed after more than one treatment program. She says she couldn't believe Necia Freeman kept trying to help her even while she was in jail.

HEATHER: She was helping - trying help me get into rehab while I was incarcerated²³. And they thought she was trying to help me escape or something.

FREEMAN: (Laughter) They did.

BLAIR: Heather believes Necia Freeman is the reason she's alive. Freeman jokes that when she first started doing this eight years ago, she thought getting women into treatment would be easy.

FREEMAN: I'm just going to give them a brown bag lunch with a gospel track, and they're going to get saved. When I get to heaven, they're going to tap me on the shoulder and say, oh, my gosh, you don't know me, but - and it hasn't happened that way (laughter). Not even close.

BLAIR: But you get the sense that in a town where so many people need help, doing nothing is not an option. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News, Huntington, W. Va.