Age of Addiction

A visual look at how the opioid crisis has impacted young lives in Western North Carolina

Reporting by Alexandria Bordas and Angela Wilhelm, Asheville Citizen Times

Children testing positive for opioids

“You look at a baby who’s starving but so frantic they can’t coordinate their ability to feed...”

Jenny Grayer, a neonatal nurse practitioner, works with babies that are born dependent on opioids at Cone Health Women's Hospital in Greensboro.

“It took a lot of education on my part to understand how this problem evolved so that I could be able to treat this with more compassion.”

— Jennifer Grayer, neonatal nurse practitioner

Beth Browning, the director of Lily's Place, a child advocacy center in Marion, sees children who test positive for drugs.

Drug abuse causes surge in foster care

OpioidCrisisLeaders 01092017 0060 Font02.jpg

Shantel and Zak Wyatt have fostered more than 20 children in the past decade. They say they have noticed a disturbing patterns in the kids removed from houses where drugs were present. “They’ve been exposed to so much more,” explained Shantel, “They’re normal is terrifying.”

That normal, she says, involves screaming, fighting, punching, drugs and alcohol. “They think everybody gets high,” Zak added.

The two provided their version of normal to their foster children Emani, 8, and Mariah, 18, as they decorated the Wyatt family’s Christmas tree on a quiet night in November.

Since 2010, Western North Carolina has seen a 56% increase in foster care cases. Three in four of those cases are a result of opioid abuse.

Emani crawls underneath the Wyatt family Christmas tree as he adjusts a decoration November 30, 2017.

Megan Wyatt, 17, takes a break after decorating the family Christmas tree with her foster sister, Mariah, 18, and her father, Zack, November 30, 2017.

Mariah, a foster child under the care of the Wyatt family, helps decorate the Christmas tree November 30, 2019. She was placed into the foster care system when her parents were overcome with addiction.

Shantel Wyatt tries to convince Emani, a foster child in her care, to get ready for bed in Burke County, North Carolina, November 30, 2017.

Megan Wyatt, 17, laughs as she blocks Emanie, her foster brother, from taking a picture of her November 30, 2017.

Shantel Wyatt and Mariah talk with Wyatt's daughter, November 30, 2017. Mariah found a home with the Wyatt family after staying in multiple foster homes and going through a failed adoption. She now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and experiences flashbacks of when she was left alone by her parents who were overcome by drug addiction.

America's opioid epidemic takes root in the lives of WNC teens

Craig Loveland, a school resource officer at Asheville High School, discusses the use of drugs among teens.

Parents cope with the loss of their children

“My Michelle, without
the drugs, was someone you could just walk
up and talk to.”

“The Michelle with the drugs only cared about how she was feeling at that time. And that’s hard for me to say.”

— Anna Buckner

When Anna Buckner found her daughter’s journal, she discovered Michelle, 26, had been struggling with a heroin addiction.

Hear her story in the player below.

“The opioid epidemic is going to get worse before it gets better.”

— Dr. Blake Fagan

Debbie Hall wears a picture of her daughter, Jessica Renee Pless, around her neck Jan. 16. Pless was 25 when she died Sept. 16, after years of battling a heroin addiction. She was staying at a sober living home in Asheville when she relapsed and shot fentanyl into her arm, leaving behind two children.

Phyllis 10072017 0014.jpg — “We spent all our days trying to save him from something we were never going to save him from”

-Phyllis Crawford

Phyllis Crawford recounts when a uniformed officer arrived with the news of her son's passing.

Area professionals have hope,

caution worst is yet to come