“I turned 18 in here, I turned 19 in here, I turned 20 in here.”
Kyle has been in and out of the Sullivan County Jail so many times, he calls one of the officers “mom.” Behind bars is where he feels safest. It’s away from the environment fueling an addiction to bath salts.
Days away from completing a three-month sentence, he’s scared to death of freedom.
Family has told him to stay away. He’s afraid to visit his baby daughter, who he’s only seen through photos. The only place he can go after being released, he said, is his dealer’s house. And he knows the cycle will start again.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that I’ll be back ... if I can’t get away from this,” said Kyle, who declined to give his last name.
Kyle is a face behind the statistics of the ever-growing substance abuse problem in the Wabash Valley and statewide. Sullivan County is one of the Valley’s hardest hit areas, according to figures from Connect2Help211, a referral organization for substance abuse counseling, treatment and other social services.
From 2014 to 2015, there was a 200 percent or more surge in requests for substance abuse help in Sullivan County, the organization said in its latest community report.
Over that same period, overdose deaths increased by 15 to 29 percent, according to the report.
Jeff Griffith has seen the impact substance abuse has on the county, in his dual role as jail commander and county coroner. More than half of his death investigation cases, he said, are linked to overdoses.
The victims have no intention of harming themselves, he said.
“And before you know it, they’ve had one too many,” Griffith said.
Sullivan County Sheriff Clark Cottom said Connect2Help’s numbers are alarming. Over his years in law enforcement in Sullivan and Vigo counties, he said he’s noticed different trends in drug use.
In Vigo, he handled cases involving methamphetamine, cocaine and some heroin. While Sullivan County has avoided a significant heroin problem, for now, and there’s heavier marijuana use, Cottom said the biggest problem originates with the medicine cabinet.
“I think, predominantly, the most abused drug in Sullivan County is prescription drugs,” he said.
While the drugs are first obtained by patients with legitimate needs, people often become addicted and shop around for doctors and pharmacies to obtain multiple prescriptions, Cottom said.
The patients, he said, tend to buy, sell and trade part of their medicines.
Prescriptions can be stolen from family members or “so-called friends,” Cottom said, and even people recovering from surgery have been approached by prescription drug abusers.
Sullivan County has a prescription round-up program in which residents can take unused medicine to the sheriff’s department or local pharmacies.
Every six months, a department employee drives a full van-load of prescription medicines to Indianapolis, where state police handle disposal.
Cottom walked to a room where the medicines dropped at the sheriff’s department are stored. He emptied boxes full of painkillers, nasal spray and liquids onto a table, showing the wide variety of types received.
The next drug takeback day is April 30 in the city park community building. That collection will be taken to Indianapolis the following week.
Cottom said the department also accepts syringes and needles.
“It’s a very good way to keep drugs off the street,” he said.
Troubled youth, but hope for the future
For Kyle, who turns 21 in October, the problems started at age 8. He said he got into a fistfight with his mother, landing him in juvenile detention.
The Sullivan County native sat in Cottom’s office one afternoon last week, his jail garb speckled with paint. He’d spent the day with an outdoor inmate work crew helping the county highway department.
Kyle speaks candidly about his life, retracing the events that spiraled into his battle with addiction and a criminal record.
He’s served multiple sentences in jail since the fistfight. Nine months is the longest he’s been free at one time, he said. Cottom said Kyle’s crimes are mostly property- or drug-related.
Kyle said he’d just been released in December when he was rearrested in January.
“That whole time I was out, I wasn’t sober one bit,” he said.
When he was 14, Kyle said he began using meth, a year after his father died from a drug overdose. He said he dropped out of seventh grade to sell it, and he never returned to school.
After a couple years making and using meth, he moved on to the bath salts, he said.
That’s the common name for a synthetic drug that comes in a white or brown powdery form, although Kyle says it’s available in other colors.
Bath salts are often labeled plant food, jewelry cleaner or phone-screen cleaner and are available online and in drug paraphernalia stores, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Brand names include Flakka, Boom and Cloud Nine.
The drug is typically swallowed, snorted or injected. Track marks on Kyle’s arms demonstrate his preferred method of use, and he pulls up a sleeve to reveal an ugly spot from where he missed a vein.
Kyle said he’s lost count of the times he’s overdosed and woken up in the hospital or in jail.
Bath salts can result in paranoia, hallucinations and extreme agitation and violent behavior, according to the drug institute.
Cottom said he doesn’t think there’s a widespread local problem with the drug. But when an inmate arrives under the influence, they often have to be hospitalized. Once back in jail, the inmate is placed on an around-the-clock medical watch until they recover from withdrawals, which can take several days.
During one high, Kyle said he looked up at a ceiling fan and believed it was a helicopter in the Vietnam conflict.
His grandmother once took him to Walmart, unaware he’d just injected another fix. Kyle recalled hiding under a clothes rack for an hour because every time someone walked past, he thought they were terrorists with bombs strapped to their bodies.
Another time, his fiancé came home while he was getting another fix. Kyle said he thought she was the police barging into the house, so he grabbed a wrench and started beating her over the head.
A friend deescalated the situation by pulling him away, Kyle recalled.
Listening to Kyle’s exchange with the Tribune-Star, Cottom asked what might have happened if the police actually walked in during a high. What if the wrench happened to be a gun?
The reply stunned Cottom, a 30-year veteran of law enforcement. Despite not intending to harm anyone, Kyle indicated an officer could have been killed.
Later, as Kyle recalled suffering a stroke during a high that kept him awake for 39 straight days, Cottom spoke up again.
“I feel helpless because I don’t know how to fix this,” he said.
Kyle doesn’t want to be in rehab because he’s afraid of becoming addicted to more substances. His duties on the work crew have unwittingly exposed him to drug paraphernalia.
While picking up roadside trash that day, he said he came across syringes and other related items.
“[I] feel sick about it, just talking about it,” he said, his hands sweating.
Kyle said he fears he could die if he doesn’t get help outside jail. He said his criminal history precludes him from landing a job, and his limited education hampers his mathematics and writing abilities.
“When I write a letter to my grandma, I have to rewrite it three times so she can read it,” he said.
After the interview and further conversation with Kyle, Cottom tapped in to statewide resources.
He mass-emailed Indiana’s 91 other sheriffs, seeking a program where Kyle can find a job, housing and treatment. Kyle will be on probation for two months after his release from jail.
Ideally, Cottom wants him placed outside west central Indiana, isolated from the associates who perpetuate the cycle.
Cottom said the sheriff’s department would provide transportation, clothing and a bed roll.
“Every once in a while you come across someone who is really trying to help themselves,” Cottom wrote in the email. “This guy truly is. But our problem is our small county has limited resources, and he needs to be at a minimum an hour away from this community.”
Accessing treatment
Sullivan County inmates can join programs helping them overcome addictions. Faith-based groups also partner with jails, including Unchained Ministries. Local churches provide services for recovering addicts, too.
The jail also partners with Hamilton Center, which provides insurance and benefit navigators for inmates transitioning back into the community.
But for some addicts who are not incarcerated, barriers do exist to seeking treatment. Those include social stigma and funding.
Addiction is still seen as a social decay, with misconceptions that it is not a mental illness, said Deb Hodson, Hamilton Center’s director of addiction services.
“So we have a lot of family members still stuck in the mindset of, ‘Just quit,’” said Hodson, a licensed mental health and clinical addiction counselor.
The state has a program to help fund treatment for those who’ve been involved in the criminal justice system, said Emily Owens, Hamilton Center’s chief clinical officer, who’s a licensed clinical social worker.
Recovery Works is dedicated to increasing availability of specialized mental health treatment and recovery services for those who risk being jailed, according to the program’s website.
Hamilton Center is one of two Vigo County providers in the program. Choices Counseling Center also accepts participants. Clients must be 18 and meet certain income requirements.
People who entered the criminal justice system with a current felony or a prior felony conviction are not eligible.
211 busy in Vermillion
Sullivan is not the only area county where Connect2Help has noticed a dramatic increase in requests for help.
Vermillion County inquiries also surged 200 percent or more from 2014-2015, according to the community report. Unlike the Sullivan area, however, the number of overdose deaths decreased or did not change over the same period.
Meth, crystal meth and heroin are the three most serious drug problems the county is facing, Sheriff Mike Phelps told the Tribune-Star.
Of 32 items sent to the state lab for testing last year, 11 tested positive for meth, according to the sheriff’s department. Five were positive for heroin. Marijuana represented the highest number of positive cases.
So far this year, officers have handled one active meth lab, according to the department.
The Vermillion County Jail offers inmates a program similar to the very beginning of drug rehab, Phelps said, and is looking to bring in a more intensive program.
In 2015, the sheriff’s department received a $4,600 mini grant for an offenders education program about alcohol and drug dependency/abuse from the county’s Local Coordinating Council, which operates under the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute.
Each of Indiana’s counties has a council responsible for addressing alcohol and drug problems in their respective communities.
Separately, an ex-drug convict conducts a 16-week moral reconation therapy course that is popular with the inmates, Phelps said. The program focuses on treatment issues like confrontation of beliefs and higher stages of moral reasoning, with the goal of decreasing recidivism.
Participating inmates are grouped in the same cell blocks to encourage positive reinforcement.
Phelps said he and other area sheriffs are dedicated to assisting inmates with getting their lives back on track.
“I know we’re all trying to help inmates get the help they need,” he said, “especially the inmates who are truly showing an interest in making a difference in their lives.”