HILLSBORO, Ore. — Crystal Long does not look back on her mid-20s with great fondness. She says those years were filled with lots of drugs. Perhaps nothing was more potent than fentanyl. The drug is similar to morphine but significantly stronger, according to law enforcement.
"All of your problems go away," Long said. "It's like a tingling feeling from head to toe. You're calm. Nothing else matters. There's nothing else around you."
Long said she depended on fentanyl. She used so often, she overdosed more than a half dozen times. Long said she should have died.
"Now looking back I was fortunate to be around people who had narcan or gave me CPR or something else," she said.
Long ended up in the Washington County Drug Court program. She is confident it saved her life.
"I started to be able to look at myself in the mirror," she said. "I started to wake up and have a purpose."
"Her story is amazing," added Sgt. Danny DiPietro of the Washington County Sheriff's Office.
DiPietro said Long is one of the lucky ones. He said so far this year, there have been 17 overdose deaths in Washington County. The final number may very well exceed the 20 overdose deaths counted in 2020.
"The vast majority are suspected to be fraudulent pills containing fentanyl," DiPietro said.
According to DiPietro, in 2019 approximately 500 fraudulent pills were taken off the streets of Washington County. That jumped to 14,000 in 2020. More than 30,000 fake pills have been seized so far this year.
Why the spike?
Authorities believe the ingredients to make the fraudulent pills are becoming more readily available.
"Fentanyl has, I won't say overnight, popped up but it's come into our community very quick," DiPietro said.
Long knows this all too well. Fortunately for her, she is recovering from her addiction to fentanyl. She is even engaged and holding onto a good job for the first time in a long time.
"The main thing I would tell not only my former self but anybody, parents of an addict, friends of an addict, is to not lose hope in that person," Long said.
Fentanyl is so dangerous and problematic the Washington County Sheriff's Office is in the middle of a weeks-long campaign called, 'One Pill Can Kill.' You can find more information here.