It didn’t take long for her to become addicted. Kremer has been recovering for the past eight months, but she said heroin took over her life.
Police and drug experts said heroin, a drug widely abused in the 1960s, has now surpassed cocaine in the number of arrests made by law enforcement. In Middletown, the number of heroin-related arrests increased 272 percent in the past three years.
Last year, the Butler Undercover Regional Narcotics Task Force made 107 heroin arrests and 53 cocaine arrests, up from 89 and 56, respectively, in 2010.
Addiction to powerful painkillers has spawned the resurgence in heroin, according to police.
Butler County sheriff’s Lt. Todd Langmeyer said the drug has never actually disappeared, but heroin has become more popular in the past four or five years as a substitute for OxyContin.
“Heroin has picked up because its cheap and it gives a similar high to OxyContin,” said Langermeyer, adding a single pill of OxyContin is selling on Butler County streets for $80 while a capsule of heroin goes for $20 to $30, depending on the amount and quality.
Heroin arrests in Middletown jumped from 11 in 2009 to 39 in 2010 and 41 in 2011, according to Sgt. David Birk. He said there have been six arrests already this year. Drug-related crimes also increased in Franklin from 160 in 2010 to 189 last year.
Hamilton Sgt. Wade McQueen said the department’s vice and narcotics busted a Dayton man in 2008 selling a large amount of heroin in the city. That was just the beginning.
The surge goes hand in hand with the prescription medication abuse, which McQueen said is by far the most prevalent problem.
People get hurt, get a prescription for pain medication, then get addicted to the pills, he said.
“When the doctor cuts them off, they turn to heroin. It has about the same effect or better,” McQueen said.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, the heroin coming into the country had been mixed with other substances that it was much less potent than today’s heroin coming from Mexico and Afghanistan, meaning it doesn’t have to be injected to achieve a high, McQueen said.
“A lot more people are willing to use it because they don’t have to shoot,” McQueen said. He added people can also function on heroin.
“We have people who take a hit before work, another at lunch and maybe one after work,” he said. Unlike other drugs, heroin does not make the user jittery, it gives them a dulling euphoria.
“Sixteen years ago when I started here, you had to go to Dayton to get heroin,” Birk said. “Now it’s here because there is a demand here.”
Butler County Common Pleas Judge Patricia Oney began her legal career in the 1970s as a public defender in Dayton. She saw the drug’s effect on her clients first hand.
The abuse of the drug waned, then came the surge of cocaine and crack in the 1990s. But now, Oney said there is no doubt heroin is back with a vengeance.
“Butler County is awash with heroin,” Oney said. She said defendants in her courtroom, treatment specialists, probation officer and drug agents told her that the drug is “almost impossible to kick.”
Sentencing abusers to treatment facilities in Dayton and Cincinnati is a must, Oney said.
“It can work, but a lot of times it is just for a couple years then something bad happens and they go back to their old friend for comfort,” Oney said.
Heroin is an opiate drug that is synthesized from morphine, a naturally occurring substance extracted from the seed pod of the Asian opium poppy plant, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
It can be injected, snorted or smoked and looks similar to powder cocaine, although darker. Langmeyer said it also comes in a black sticky substance, known as “black tar heroin.”
Nobody immune
Kremer thought she would be immune to the addictiveness of heroin.
But the former Franklin High School athlete quickly found out differently.
“It was amazing,” Kremer said. “I liked the way it made me feel. I felt so numb. It goes all the way down your body.”
Within a month, however, Kremer found out she was pregnant and “quit everything.”
But six months after her daughter was born, Kremer began using heroin again. This time, the addiction took control of her life.
“I knew it was an addictive drug, but I didn’t think I would get addicted,” said Kremer, now 23, who has been clean for eight months.
“I thought I was stronger because I was an athlete, but I found out quickly that I wasn’t,” she continued. “I started selling everything I had to get money so I could buy more.”
That strong need also turned Kremer toward crime.
Kremer said she began stealing from family and local businesses to supply her habit. And eventually she was caught and spent time in jail.
The first time she got out, she relapsed on the second day, she said. About a month later, she failed a drug test and went back to jail for six more months.
Amberli Denney, 25 of Clarksville, had a different experience.
In eight years of using heroin, she never got in trouble and never spent any time in jail until March 2011 when she was arrested on a permitting drug abuse charge because someone overdosed and died at her house.
She was placed on probation, but then failed a drug test and spent 30 days in jail. After being released, she relapsed and did 30 more days in jail.
“My life existed around getting high and figuring out how to get more so I could keep getting high,” Denney said in describing what a typical day was like for her when she was using. “The high is so good. It’s better than anything I ever felt, but it ruins your life in a split second. It takes everything from you and gives you nothing.”
Physical addiction
Local law enforcement officers confirm that heroin is a physical addiction.
“The addiction is so strong with heroin,” Birk said. “It just takes over. They have to have it. They get physically sick without it.”
Franklin Police Chief Russ Whitman agreed.
“If you listen to the addicts, they tell you they don’t want to be (addicted), but they can’t get away from it,” Whitman said. “It’s a disease. They get violently sick if they don’t have it and they’ll go to any means to get it.”
Langmeyer said he has had more the one jail inmate tell him, “it is the drug the wish they had never tried.”
Kremer said it isn’t just the heroin that is addictive. It is the lifestyle.
“It’s a hectic lifestyle,” Kremer said. “You are always on the go and constantly worrying where your next high is going to come from.”
She described the addictive lifestyle through the act of doing a “rinse” by adding water to a cotton ball that had been used to cut the dope and then injecting it.
“I didn’t care anymore,” Kremer said. “I never worried about what might happen. And when you heard about someone dying from it, you wanted to know where they got it because it must be some good (expletive) if someone died from it.”
Hamilton Municipal Court Judge Dan Gattermeyer, a former defense attorney and prosecutor, said the drug is the worst he has ever seen as far as addiction and tearing families apart.
“Every mother who comes in here begging for their child to be locked up because they are addicted — it’s heroin. I don’t think people know how really bad it is,” Gattermeyer said. “I thought crack cocaine was the worst. I was wrong.’
Recovery process
Both Kremer and Denney are on the road to recovery, but they know it isn’t going to be easy.
“People need to realize it can happen to anyone,” said Denney, who has been clean for five months. “I saw someone die at my house and I went out and used that day. That’s how strong the drug is. Everything that was important before wasn’t anymore. The drug was the only thing that mattered.
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