Rachel Ravina / The Lansdale Reporter
As the opioid epidemic rages on across the nation, the crisis is a topic close to home for U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-4th Dist., and her son, Harry Cunnane.
Cunnane, 33, began his substance use at 14 years old, and was in “active use” for eight years. He went into treatment when he was 22 years old and has been on a journey of recovery and sobriety for the past decade.
Cunnane and Dean chronicled their time dealing with opioid abuse, sharing dueling perspectives in their 2021 book, “Under Our Roof: A Son’s Battle for Recovery, a Mother’s Battle for Her Son.”
As September marks National Recovery Month, Cunnane and the Pennsylvania congresswoman, representing Berks and Montgomery counties, sat down with Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs Secretary Dr. Latika Davis-Jones, engaging in a candid conversation.
“When Harry … was using, but we weren’t sure what was going on, he was also getting very sickly, thin, getting sick every day. He and I were battling. I’m trying to figure it out,” Dean recalled.
“I think one of the biggest struggles for me before finding recovery was stigma. Stigma held me back from seeking treatment, seeking help,” Cunnane added. “There’s an incredible feeling of shame that I experienced when I was in active use that really made me feel like there wasn’t a way out and made me feel like there’s shame in seeking help, and overcoming that was hard, but … I want people to know that it doesn’t have to be shameful.”
“At this point just last year, 12 months time, 110,000 people died of overdose, a high percentage of them fentanyl-based,” Dean said. “Three-hundred people a day are dying in this country from this very, very serious health epidemic.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated a possible 82,998 nationwide opioid-involved drug overdose deaths for a 12-month period ending in December 2022.
There were 106,699 drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2021, with opioid-related overdoses making up 75.4 percent of drug overdose deaths at 80,411, according to the CDC. Pennsylvania recorded 5,168 deaths that same year.
National Recovery Month sparks conversation
Around 80 people, including legislators and those impacted by substance abuse disorders were in attendance at the event in Harrisburg at which the two spoke.
“When I think about my journey, I think that one of the realities was my family was incredibly fortunate that we had access to really high quality care and long term care when I needed it, and it was accessible and available to us right away,” Cunnane said. “Not everybody has that same opportunity, specifically for long term care.”
“We knew at the time that, as fearful as I was for Harry losing his life to addiction, I also recognized the paradox of we were fortunate … he did not have a criminal record,” Dean said. “As he says, he was treated ‘unfairly fair’. We could afford to put him in excellent treatment and the ability to continue the long term treatment for him. Not everybody has that, that kind of privilege, whether it’s white privilege, or having enough resources privilege.
“We’ve got to do better.”
Drive to ‘do better’
For Dean, that drive to “do better” has morphed into advocacy.
“That’s one of the things that telling our story … whether in Harrisburg or in D.C. [is to] de-stigmatize, decriminalize, treat this as the health crisis that it is, save more lives until we can get to a better place. We’ve got to bend that curve,” Dean said.
“The drug supply has become much more dangerous for people who are using drugs,” Cunnane said, acknowledging the increase in contaminants entering the market, such as fentanyl and xylazine.
“We’ve heard too many cases of young people buying what they think is Percocet, or something else, and it has been laced with fentanyl and they don’t survive,” Dean said. “You don’t even have to be addicted — you could just have tried something.”
“We’ve learned there is enough fentanyl on the ground in the United States, and sadly more coming in each day to kill the population multiple times over. It is synthetic, it is cheap, the cartels are pumping it out and pressing it into pills that look like other things,” she continued. ?“It is a real health epidemic. We need to do more on prevention and education.”
“When we have a drug supply like we have right now that’s as lethal, and as fatal, and as dangerous as it is, we need to do everything that we possibly can to keep people alive,” Cunnane said.
Accessible recovery resources
One tool Cunnane and Dean underscored was the need for available Naloxone and Narcan, a drug that can reverse an opioid-related overdose. It’s recently become more available after receiving approval earlier this year from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for an over-the-counter nasal spray.
“We need to get that into the hands of every person across the commonwealth, and every person across the country in order to combat this,” Cunnane said. “There’s an analogy that I use often when thinking about Narcan or Naloxone and it’s really that of a fire extinguisher.
“Every home in the country, every business, everywhere has a fire extinguisher, and that doesn’t do anything to promote fires. What that does is serve as a safety net, and something that can be there in the event that something happens,” he continued. “Naloxone is the same way, and if people were equipped with it, knew how to use it and had really easy and affordable access to it, I think we could see those numbers continue to come down or start to come down, which is well overdue.”
Dean agreed. “I carry Naloxone in my backpack just in case. You never know who you might come up across who might be in some sort of trouble,” she said. “I carry it to normalize it and to say we have to combat this.”
Work at Caron
Cunnane has incorporated recovery into his professional life, working as vice president of business development at Caron Treatment Centers, based in Wernersville. He said he had often seen treatment offered in terms of “episodic care,” as compared to taking a holistic approach to attainable, longer term assistance.
“I think we need to continue to really push the medical field forward as it relates to addiction medicine … the data is already [there] to show this needs to be treated like other chronic, progressive illnesses — like it is — and it needs longer term treatment,” he said.
“It needs longer term care, and we need the resources to back that up, and that goes beyond just typical treatment,” Cunnane continued. “We need to look at housing, we need to look at life skills and support in order to get people back into the workforce, and we need to look at the criminal justice system.”
‘Our story is just one story’
Cunnane will reach an 11-year milestone of recovery on Oct. 30.
“I’m so proud of Harry,” Dean said of the now married, father-of-three living in Mount Laurel, New Jersey.
Dean and Cunnane each offered some words of wisdom taken from the biggest takeaways of their own personal experiences.
“For any parent who sees their child struggling, be honest and open,” Dean said. “Learn more, figure out ways for that child to feel free to say ‘I need help,’ to take away the stigma and the shame, and also we have to educate young people as to the absolute … illicit drugs that are on the market now.”
“If you feel safe to do so, I encourage as many people as possible to share their stories,” Cunnane said. “Our story is just one story. We know there’s more than 20 million people in this country that are in recovery, and I think if we can get these diverse stories out there, they can make a difference.
“People need to know about the different pathways,” he continued. “People need to find the relatability, and the commonality in a story, I think, to really see hope.”
Anyone affected by addiction and in need of assistance can contact the state’s Get Help Now Hotline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
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