A Pacoima man who believes he was born hooked on opioids. A rock music fanatic who sold his late grandma’s house for a fix. A Minnesota native who became homeless at 14.
They are among the many people bound by addiction to MacArthur Park, the sluggishly beating heart of Los Angeles’s fentanyl epidemic.
In any given week, hundreds of people come to the neighborhood to purchase and use fentanyl, a synthetic opioid responsible for 1,504 fatal overdoses in Los Angeles County in 2021, according to the most-recent available data from the county’s Department of Public Health.
For every person killed by fentanyl, many more are living with it. And those who are addicted often find their lives ruled by it.
Fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and its “high” only lasts about half as long.
The number of people who buy and sell fentanyl around MacArthur Park has “exploded” in recent years, said LAPD Detective Ben Yi. People often make money to purchase the substance by selling shoplifted goods to some street vendors near the park, said LAPD Detective Stephen Beerer. Vendors resell these stolen items alongside legally acquired goods and homemade food to try and make a living.
Many people who use fentanyl are former pain pill or heroin users, victims of the opioid epidemic that swept across America in the past two decades.
Many live without shelter or teeter on the edge of homelessness. Many have lost family, friends, custody of children, prized possessions, careers and years of their life to opioid addiction.
Here are the stories of three of those people — how they started using, where it has taken them and the barriers they face in breaking free from fentanyl.
Alejandro, 41, from Pacoima
Alejandro believes he was born addicted to opioids. He said his mother took pain pills while pregnant, so there’s a good chance he was.
Alejandro grew up in Pacoima surrounded by family…
Read the full article here
