Matthew Baker holds a photograph Thursday of his daughter Ronni and her daughter Claire at his home in Stow. Ronni died of an overdose nine years ago. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

There were four overdoses during the week of Feb. 22, 2015, between Fryeburg and North Conway, New Hampshire, Oxford County Sheriff’s Sgt. Matthew Baker remembers — his daughter Ronni’s being the fatal one that week.

He came home that Thursday to find the 23-year-old unconscious. After calling an ambulance and attempting CPR, she could not be revived, he said. She left behind a baby daughter.

She was a typical Maine kid growing up, enjoying hunting and fishing, he said. She worked as a certified nursing assistant after high school, enjoying working with elderly people.

She started using illegal substances in high school, at first trading her prescription for Vyvanse, used to treat Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, for drugs like marijuana, he said. That introduced her to a different group of people and she developed a pill addiction, using substances such as OxyContin.

He was aware that something was going on with her, but he did not realize that she had started using heroin until he found her the day she died. It was the first overdose he ever witnessed, he said. There was little he could do to save her. She died of an overdose of heroin laced with fentanyl.

As a law enforcement officer he would frequently encounter people struggling with a heroin addiction but at the time he was unaware that his daughter was also struggling with the substance, he said. The incident opened his eyes to a problem that has ballooned in Maine since then.

“That’s what really woke me up to the problem,” he said. “… And then it just kind of turned into a (expletive) after that because we had all the fatal overdoses the last what, nine years.”

Oxford County Sheriff’s Sgt. Matt Baker sits Thursday at his home in Stow. Baker’s daughter, Ronni Baker, died of an overdose nine years ago. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

Birthdays, holidays and family events are forever changed, her death leaving a hole in those celebrations, he said.

Baker is one of thousands of people who have lost loved ones in Maine to a drug overdose — specifically opioids. Since the opioid epidemic started gripping communities all over the United States in 1999, overdose deaths have only skyrocketed in Maine — from 34 in 1997 to 66 in 1999, according to information on the Maine Drug Data Hub website.

Each wave is marked by an increase in sustained yearly opioid deaths. The first wave from 1999-2010 saw in increase in Maine — from 66 in 1999 to 179 in 2009, according to Drug Data Hub data.

Deaths rose even more during the second wave of the epidemic, from 167 in 2010 to 176 in 2013.

But the third wave has proven to be the deadliest so far, from 208 in 2014 to 722 in 2022.

WHEN OPIOIDS HIT THE STREETS

Recovering addict Randy Beard, who was formerly homeless, said he remembers when prescription opioids hit the streets during the 1990s and early 2000s when he was living in Massachusetts. After returning to Portland, where he grew up, opioids completely engulfed him and he started doing anything he could to pay for his OxyContin addiction. He was consuming 1,000 milligrams daily, he said. There was an impression among people who used illicit substances then that prescription opioids, such as OxyContin, were safer to use because doctors could prescribe them.

“It was the biggest carrot ever dangled in front of my face,” he said. “… And it sent me over.”

It melted his emotions away and any sense of shame he might have felt while he was stealing, dealing drugs, panhandling and other methods to get the money for the substance, he said.

Randy Beard, right, catches up Thursday with his friend Andre Walter on Park Street in Lewiston. Beard and Walter used opiates together when they both lived in Portland. Now in recovery, Beard often shares a cup of coffee or a cigarette with Walter when they run into each other. Walter said Beard has changed a lot since they first met, “For the better,” Walter adds. Beard recalls weighing around a hundred pounds at the worst of his addiction. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

OxyContin allowed him to escape from the anger and trauma he had associated with years of childhood physical and sexual abuse before he was 10 years old, he said.

Before he started using OxyContin, he would use cocaine, the substance he preferred most, and heroin while remaining homeless for years. But his addiction changed when he started using OxyContin and he found himself feigning over it daily, which eventually led him into a heroin addiction, he said.

When doctors started prescribing opioids less after 2015, it was more difficult to find illegally, he said. The statewide quantity of opioid doses dispensed from 2015 through 2023 decreased by 55.5%, according to data in the 2023 Prescription Monitoring Program Report.

Opioid deaths from nonpharmaceutical opioid, such as fentanyl and heroin, are more common than pharmaceutical opioid, such as methadone and OxyContin, according to Maine Data Hub data. Before 2014, the majority of overdose deaths were due to pharmaceutical opioids but by 2015 nonpharmaceutical opioid overdose deaths became more common.

In 2013 there were 40 overdose deaths from nonpharmaceutical opioids, but in 2015 there were 157, according to Maine Data Hub data. In 2013, there were 107 deaths due to pharmaceutical opioids and in 2015 there were 112.

People started using heroin because it was a similar high and easier to find, Beard said. But eventually dealers realized that they could add other cheaper illegal substances to heroin, such as fentanyl, giving them more product to sell for the same price and increasing profits.

TAKING NOTICE, ACTION

Catherine Ryder, former CEO of Tri-County Mental Health Services and current vice president of special projects at Spurwink, first took notice of the rising overdose deaths in Maine around 2016 or 2017, she said. Tri-County, which is now owned by Spurwink, felt it needed to act as it became more apparent that overdose deaths were not going to go down without intervention.

Tri-County was among some of the first organizations to start working to address the substance abuse and overdose issue, she said. It received a three-year state grant in 2018 to help support initiatives aimed at getting people help.

In the earlier days of the opioid epidemic, Narcan and training in its use were scarcely available to treat overdose patients.. The first steps was to ensure that first responders and law enforcement officers had access to it and training. Now the drug is widely available to civilians and first responders.

Police officers were witnessing people dying while overdosing and there was nothing they could do about, she said. Those agencies welcomed help from organizations such as Tri-County to help better address calls involving illicit drug use.

Tri-County worked with local law enforcement agencies to provide training, and police officers started seeing a better response to calls involving substance use and overdoses, she said. Now they have care providers who ride along with police officers.

Some of the interventions that have cropped up across the state have attracted public controversy. Some of those include the clean needle program and placing needle takeback boxes in public spaces, but they are important in keeping people healthy and preventing bloodborne diseases such as hepatitis and AIDS, Ryder said.

Spruwink operates multiple programs to train people how to help those with substance use disorder, whether at their home or on the streets, she said. This helps providers build trust with people through word-of-mouth.

“For every exchange that happens there’s a seed that gets planted that starts the discussion” with questions such as: “How’s your life going? Is this what you hoped it would be? What might it be like if it was what you hoped it would be?” she said. “… And so those conversations happen fairly routinely, and we have had months and months and months go by and out of nowhere someone will call and say, ‘I’m ready – I’m ready today.'”

RESULTS OF ACTION TAKEN

Oxford County Sheriff’s deputies started carrying Narcan in their cruisers not long after Baker’s daughter died, he said. He has revived multiple people since using the drug.

Because of the accessibility of Narcan, Baker said he has noticed a decrease in the number of overdose calls. He thinks it’s mostly due to civilians administering it more often, which helps reduce the number of deaths.

He said the stigma of addiction was a factor in why his daughter denied having one when he would ask her about it. The stigma around addiction has decreased in recent years but he said it needs to be eliminated.

“Who wants to be called a junkie?” he asked. “… If you don’t bring it out into the open people are going to treat it like it’s a secret, like there’s something wrong with it, and there is nothing wrong with it. It’s just a disease like everything else and it has to be confronted, and it has to be worked on.”

He said he feels as though a whole generation has been lost to addiction. There are ripple effects caused by addiction that impact families, he said.

Ryder said she lost her son to a fentanyl overdose in 2021. He was a passionate advocate who wanted to stem the tide of addiction. Now she champions his cause and works to raise awareness about the issue.

Matthew Baker with his daughter Ronni Baker. Ronni died of an overdose nine years ago. Submitted photo

When overdose deaths were increasing year after year she said she felt helpless, but now that they have decreased the last couple of years she’s hopeful.

“I would say there is hope,” she said. “And if we do prevention and then intervention and continue to support people while they’re in their recovery, I think anything is possible.”

Beard tried to kill himself by overdosing on his daughter’s 22nd birthday, he said. Someone found him, gave him CPR and then an EMT gave him several doses of Narcan and through what he believes to be a higher power he survived.

He was taken to jail for several months where he sobered up and decided this was his last chance to do so — at the beginning of the pandemic no less, he said. Roughly 36 years of active drug use came to an end as he detoxed alone in his jail cell.

When he was released from jail he dove into recovery, starting a Facebook group for recovering addicts, he said.

Now he is a peer recovery coach and holds several other positions related to supporting people in active use and in recovery.

He has lost two significant people in recent years who were also active in the recovery community. His friend Jesse Harvey died of an overdose in 2020 after he relapsed before Beard stopped using illicit drugs. He remembers Harvey always seeking him out while he was homeless to check on him and give him support.

Kari Morissette died by overdose in 2022 after Beard got sober, he said. He credits her with being a mentor to him in many ways. Sometimes people are so busy taking care of others they do not take care of themselves and sometimes he wonders if that was the case for her. He thinks the families need to continue to honor their lost loved ones.

“They might be buried but they were seeds of hope for the next people,” he said. “And as long as we remember their names, keep saying their names and keep fighting in their honor then we’re doing what we should be doing to hopefully help the next person. I do that in their names.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with alcohol or drug use call 211 to be connected to resources.