Community News

Fighting the heroin battle

Community tackles the epidemic

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Irene Sabatasso, EMT and vice president of the Wantagh-Levittown Volunteer Ambulance Corps., shares statistics on heroin overdoses and how to treat the problem with Narcan.
Rebecca Anderson/ Herald

“Let’s relax and mellow out,” the Rev. Ralph Sommer, pastor of Saint Bernard’s Church in Levittown said at a recent forum addressing heroin concerns in the area. “Start with your head and feel your neck muscles relax. I want you to feel it down in your arms and try not to be tense. Take a deep breath now and slowly let it out. Just feel that relaxation go all the way down your body to your feet and let the calmness consume you. Let your concerns melt away. The bills will get paid and whatever your concerns are, just let it go. Do you have any pains in your knees and joints? 

“Let them melt away. Just let your brain shut it all down. Feel the calm. Feel the peace. You are so peaceful that now your brain is telling your body not to function. Don’t even bother breathing. Your heart, don’t let it even bother beating. Just slip away into nothingness.”

This is what happens when you overdose on heroin.

“Imagine I could give you a pill, powder or injection that could make all of that relaxation happen all the time, where you didn’t have a care in the world,” Sommer said. “Where any insurmountable problem isn’t a problem anymore and you could live in this very happy, happy place. If you don’t take enough, you won’t get that feeling. But if you take too much, you die.”

Treating the problem

Long Island, and Nassau County specifically, has been facing a drug crisis for the last decade. With narcotics pervasive in the streets in large quantities and at cheap prices, people of all ages are taking to drugs. 

“Being high on heroin is like being cradled to sleep by God,” Sommer read from an addict’s personal account. “There is a sleepy feeling, and things that would otherwise be a concern can be waved away by a heroin nod. Of course, this feeling is only when the drug is at its best. Heroin makes you feel like your problems have gone away, but when you come down, they are still waiting for you.”

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