Heroin overdoses on the rise in Tennessee

by cc-admin · September 16, 2015

WILSON COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) – A mourning mother in Wilson County is turning grief into action. Amy Collins said her 29-year-old son Anthony died from a heroin overdose.

“I just grieve so bad for him and the person he used to be,” Collins said of her son, who overdosed in July.

“That drug, it kills people and it killed my son, but he made that choice,” she continued.

Collins found out her son was addicted for 2 years and had 3 failed attempts at rehab.

She explained to News 2 it started with an addiction to prescription pain pills.

“He had a lot of shoulder problems and was prescribed prescription medication for pain,” said Collins. “He would take three or four or five or six at a time.”

She said she didn’t know he started using heroin.

“Heroin is cheap, so people can get it more than they can get the pills, and that’s what’s so scary about heroin,” the mother told News 2.

Anthony (Courtesy: Amy Collins)

She now wants to help others.

“I wasn’t able to help my son, and I want to help people now so that my son’s death is not in vain.”

She called Addiction Campuses and was told Tuesday she will start speaking at their events.

“I urge people to stop, to never touch that drug,” said Collins.

According to Lt. Mike Owen with the Wilson County Sheriff’s Office, heroin is on the rise in the county. He said there has been seven heroin overdoses so far this year in Wilson County; two were deaths. There weren’t any overdoses last year.

According to Addiction Campuses’ call center data:

5 or 6 years ago meth was a huge concern in Tennessee, and now it appears to almost have fallen off the map and been replaced with opiate addiction, according to the calls we receive.
80 percent of the calls we get in Tennessee are for people using opiates (prescription pain killers or heroin)
In Middle Tennessee, our rate of calls for opiates and heroin are 10-15 percent higher than the rest of the country.
Of our opiate calls, Davidson County yields a higher percentage of heroin callers, whereas Rutherford is higher with RX opiates. Wilson County is about 50/50.
In the past 2 weeks, Middle Tennessee has made up about 50 percent of the calls from the entire state. Prior to that, it was around 20 percent.
Where nationally, alcohol is more significant from callers, opiates and heroin are the main drugs of choice for our Tennessee callers.
Calls from Davidson, Rutherford and Wilson Counties are up 15 percent over the last 6 months and Smith County is also showing a lot of activity. Smith is adjacent to Wilson.

Source: news2
Heroin overdoses on the rise in Tennessee