Sitting at her kitchen table one recent morning, Fathom Whiteley wrapped her hands around a cup of coffee, stared into it and cried.<\/p>\n
She was overcome with remorse and guilt for cutting her younger brother out of her life months before he died of a heroin overdose.<\/p>\n
\u201cI gave up on him. I did,\u201d she said, in between sobs. \u201cAnd I wish I wouldn\u2019t have, but I didn\u2019t know what else to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few years ago, just before Christmas, Brenyer Haffner\u2019s girlfriend told Whiteley she found methadone in his bedroom. Haffner was crushing it up into powder and snorting it. There was also an empty RedBull can and tinfoil \u2014 he was smoking it, too.<\/p>\n
It was the first time the Haffner family realized he had a drug problem. Despite their efforts to get him into rehab, Haffner\u2019s addiction only escalated. Methadone, a painkiller that is used to treat heroin addiction but can also be used to get high for newcomers, turned into an OxyContin problem. OxyContin then led to heroin.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were times when (Brenyer) was doing good, and he was staying off it,\u201d Whiteley, 31, recalled. \u201cAnd then you could see him get more distant, not talking as much, not doing everything he used to do, like hanging out with the family. And then we knew he was back into it again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite its geographical isolation, Juneau is not immune to the heroin epidemic sweeping large swaths of the nation, wreaking havoc not just urban centers but small mid-western farming communities and quiet coastal towns on the East Coast. The rate of heroin related overdose deaths has nearly quadrupled in the U.S. between 2002 and 2013, according to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. More than 8,200 people died in 2013.<\/p>\n
Haffner, who grew up in Juneau the son of a retired AEL&P worker and a driver and the youngest of three children, stayed with his sister and her family at their home on a quiet cul-de-sac in the Mendenhall Valley for a time in 2012. He promised to get clean, but Whiteley still saw signs he was using. With a young son at home, she had no choice: She asked him to leave.<\/p>\n
He moved back to his parents\u2019 house, and they, too, struggled with what to do. They didn\u2019t want to enable him, so when they found heroin in the home they kicked him out. It only lasted for a week, though, Whiteley said, because they didn\u2019t want him sleeping in his car or on the streets. They suspected Haffner began keeping his stash in his car after that.<\/p>\n
In the past six months, things got worse. Haffner drifted further and further away.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was like a ghost,\u201d Whiteley said through tears. \u201cEverything was in the dark, very secretive. My parents knew the coming and goings, but I don\u2019t think they really knew the extreme of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
She saw him with heroin residue still in his nostrils about four months ago. That was her breaking point.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t stand to see him like that,\u201d she said. \u201cI had to cut him out of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
On a Friday morning early last month, a 47-year-old man was driving to Fred Meyer and noticed a car parked on the side of Glacier Highway. He pulled over to see if it was broken down, peered through the window and saw a young man lying on the seat. When he knocked on the car window, the man didn\u2019t respond. The passerby had his wife call 911.<\/p>\n
Haffner\u2019s sister knew he had been using heroin steadily for at least a year by smoking or snorting it. She and her family didn\u2019t know, however, that he had also been injecting it with a needle until one was found with his body inside the car on Sept. 4. He was 26.<\/p>\n
Police say there weren\u2019t any obvious signs of foul play, but the family can\u2019t help but wonder if something more nefarious happened. Did someone shoot him up with heroin and then leave him to die? Why was his body positioned the way it was when it was found? Who gave him the heroin?<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wasn\u2019t thinking he was going to die that night,\u201d Whiteley said. \u201cHe was thinking he was going to come home. He left his Facebook open, he left his iTouch at home. There was no note saying, \u2018I\u2019m leaving,\u2019 or anything like that. I think he was thinking he would get away with this one last time.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the family searches for answers and police continue to investigate, the Haffners are among a growing chorus of community members calling for action to address heroin addiction in the capital city. Six people, including Brenyer Haffner, have overdosed on heroin in Juneau since February.<\/p>\n
That number in such a small time frame is unheard of, Juneau Police Department Lt. Kris Sell said. Historically, drug overdoses were considered \u201cfairly rare,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve always felt there were plenty of drug cases for us to work, but we weren\u2019t seeing the overdoses,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Like hundreds of thousands of people across the country, Haffner used OxyContin, an opioid prescription pain killer that was being overprescribed, before he switched heroin. As prices for OxyContin soared and the pills reformulated by pharmaceutical companies in 2010 to make them harder to abuse, heroin emerged as a cheaper and easily available alternative.<\/p>\n
Heroin use around the country skyrocketed, even among demographics that had historically seen low use, such as women, the privately insured and those with higher incomes, the CDC says. The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration estimates the number of people in the U.S. who used heroin doubled from 373,000 users in 2007 to 681,000 in 2013.<\/p>\n
In Alaska, SAMHSA estimates less than 500 people on average used heroin within the past year between 2002 and 2005. That figure quadrupled to 2,000 for 2010-2013.<\/p>\n
The Haffners felt helpless as they watched their loved one sink deeper into addiction. They begged him to get help; he always refused.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was always, \u2018No, no, no, I\u2019m fine, I can get help,\u2019\u201d Whiteley said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t force somebody to (go to rehab), and unfortunately we don\u2019t have that good of a system here, and he definitely didn\u2019t want to leave town,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
The family grappled with what to do about Haffner’s addiction in private, or \u201cbehind the scenes,\u201d as Whiteley put it. Now that he\u2019s gone, they\u2019re taking a different approach. They\u2019re now a part of a newly formed group of Juneau residents concerned about heroin addiction. At a group meeting last week, the family stood up and introduced themselves as the family of \u201cVictim Number 4.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Brenyer Haffner\u2019s and Fathom Whiteley\u2019s parents declined to be interviewed for this article, they wanted their daughter to share their story with the public.<\/p>\n
Being open about what happened to her brother is only way to prevent another heroin overdose death, Whiteley said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just don\u2019t want this to happen to any other families,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u2022 This story is part of an ongoing series highlighting heroin addiction in Juneau. If you\u2019d like to be a part of the series, contact reporter Emily Russo Miller at 523-2263 or emily.miller@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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