James A. Winnefeld Speaks Out on the Opioid Crisis - The Atlantic
▻https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/10/james-winnefeld-speaks-out-opioid-crisis/572128
When speaking to Andersen, Winnefeld described how Jonathan was a quiet, kind, and clever kid, who suffered from anxiety and depression. After a false diagnosis of attention deficit disorder, Jonathan began drinking to come down from the Adderall he had been prescribed, and later moved on to harder substances such as opioids. Winnefeld and his wife tried to get Jonathan into intensive outpatient treatment, but no centers had space. During his senior year of high school, Jonathan began to spiral downward. He tried, unsuccessfully, to take his own life.
“We realized, at that point, that we could not keep our son safe,” Winnefeld said.
After about five days of searching, Winnefeld found a treatment center to take Jonathan. And after 15 months of treatment, Jonathan began to return to whom he once was. “It takes that long for the brain to recover from the physiological, psychological changes that have taken place,” Winnefeld said. “We saw his ambition come back. We saw his zest for life.”
During his treatment, Jonathan received his emergency-medical-technician qualifications. In an admissions essay to the University of Denver, Jonathan wrote about a time when he had to administer CPR to someone undergoing a heroin overdose in a McDonald’s bathroom. Winnefeld shared how Jonathan wrote that “at that moment, he had decided he would dedicate his life to helping people who could not help themselves.”
Yet addiction is a powerful thing, Winnefeld explained. Three weeks later, Jonathan passed away, relapsing on heroin that had been laced with fentanyl.
So the Winnefelds started SAFE, which Andersen described as “amazingly comprehensive in its approach to the opioid epidemic.” SAFE combats the opioid crisis from six different angles. It works on public awareness and trying to lower the stigma of addiction. It also focuses on prevention in vulnerable populations such as high schools, and seeks to have doctors moderate their prescription of opioids.
The nonprofit also emphasizes law enforcement’s response to opioid addiction, trying to assure that addiction isn’t criminalized. SAFE considers medical response critical to fighting the crisis, and works to make sure every first responder is equipped with the lifesaving drug naloxone, which can reverse the symptoms of an overdose.
