News

Heroin and New Canaan, Part 3 of 3: ‘Reach Out to a Person’

By |

Editor’s Note: This is the final installment of a three-part series. The first two parts can be found here:

Heroin and New Canaan, Part 1 of 3: Tracing and Defining a Problem
Heroin and New Canaan, Part 2 of 3: Parenting

 

On Friday at work, Ed Milton was visited by New Canaan High School students who talked to him about everything from an unfinished school project to bothersome friends and parents. Most of the teens who come to Milton—an outreach worker with Kids In Crisis who’s based in the high school itself—find him through their own friends, and family conflict is a frequent topic of conversation. “Developmentally, they should be looking for their independence, so that is and should be number one,” Milton said Friday afternoon in front of the New Canaan Playhouse, a pack of eighth-graders huddled nearby. Milton recalled how one New Canaan teen described his role: “This kid was so brilliant.

Around Town

Heroin and New Canaan, Part 2 of 3: Parenting

By |

 

Editor’s Note: This is the middle installment of a three-part series. The other two parts can be found here:

Heroin and New Canaan, Part 1 of 3: Tracing and Defining a Problem
Heroin and New Canaan, Part 3 of 3: ‘Reach Out to a Person’

 

Nancy Welch moved to New Canaan 10 years ago with her husband and three kids. With one child now at each level in New Canaan Public Schools, Welch said she has become increasingly concerned about what officials are calling a rise in recent years of heroin’s availability and use in New Canaan and the region. “My concern would be that one dose of it can kill you,” Welch told NewCanaanite.com when asked for her thoughts on the drug’s prevalence here. “I think a lot of parents don’t know about it,” she added.

News

Heroin and New Canaan, Part 1 of 3: Tracing and Defining a Problem

By |

Editor’s Note: This is the first installment of a three-part series. The final two parts can be found here:

Heroin and New Canaan, Part 2 of 3: Parenting
Heroin and New Canaan, Part 3 of 3: ‘Reach Out to a Person’

 

No one died from a heroin overdose in town in 2013, data from state officials tells us, yet the drug for many reasons has become increasingly prevalent in recent years—in New Canaan and most everywhere else around here, officials say. Rising with an epidemic in prescription drug abuse that’s largely rooted in a critical change in how the medical field started viewing and treating pain—in fact, heroin pharmacologically is identical to legal, prescribed opioids, physicians say—the drug’s availability and use has become one area of focus for professionals here who deal with all aspects of substance abuse. Though heroin overdoses in New Canaan thankfully haven’t been fatal in the past year, use and even overdoses are occurring, said Jacqueline D’Louhy, assistant director of youth services with the town’s Department of Human Services, an employee in the municipal agency for about nine years. Asked to characterize what she’s seen in local heroin use, D’Louhy said: “New Canaan does not have a death from heroin per se, but we have gotten close.