This is the first in an ongoing New Bedford Light series examining the far-reaching impacts of addiction.
NEW BEDFORD — Sometimes, when New Bedford paramedics arrive at the scene of a drug overdose, they already know the patient by name.
“I would pull up to a house and say, ‘Oh, I was here six months ago,’ or, ‘So-and-so lives here,’” said David Zander, a deputy director at New Bedford EMS.
Two decades of reviving New Bedford’s overdose victims and hearing their stories have opened Zander’s eyes to their struggles. Often, his patients turned to drugs as a way of coping with trauma and other mental health issues.
The city’s first responders are sent out on overdose calls twice a day, on average — officials describe it as a constant flow. Sometimes the same people overdose again and again, even twice in the same day.
New Bedford’s drug crisis is getting worse. At least 92 people died of accidental drug overdoses in the city last year — the highest number since at least 2015, according to a New Bedford Light analysis of death certificates. (Numbers for the last two years are preliminary and subject to change.)
One in every 1,250 city residents died of an overdose last year, more than double the statewide rate.
Fentanyl, the powerful synthetic opioid, played a role in the vast majority of New Bedford’s overdose deaths. In 2022, the drug was a factor in 86% of overdoses among people who died in New Bedford.
“The drugs are getting stronger,” said Albie Cullen, the adult services director for Positive Action Against Chemical Addiction, a New Bedford-based anti-addiction nonprofit. “There’s no more heroin.”
Fentanyl’s increasing presence in the illicit drug supply is the main reason for a record-breaking statewide spike in opioid deaths, experts have said. More than 2,300 people died of opioid overdoses in Massachusetts last year, according to the Department of Public Health.
The local numbers reflect a national trend. Annual overdose deaths in this country have doubled since 2015. More than 100,000 people in the U.S. died of drug overdoses in 2022.
“These are preventable deaths,” said Cheryl Bartlett, CEO of New Bedford Community Health. “The numbers are worse than ever.”
Fentanyl played a role in most accidental drug overdoses in New Bedford.
Victims of the epidemic
At least 541 people have died of an accidental drug overdose in New Bedford since 2015.
One victim, a 48-year-old fisherman, overdosed on fentanyl and heroin in someone else’s apartment in February 2016. He died in the emergency room of St. Luke’s Hospital. His wife filled out the paperwork for his death certificate.
A 51-year-old electrician was already dead from a fentanyl overdose when he was brought to St. Luke’s in July 2021. He had never married and died with no surviving children.
In September 2021, a 17-year-old high school student died after taking fentanyl. He was pronounced dead in the St. Luke’s emergency room shortly before 2 a.m. on a Friday.
A 32-year-old homemaker died in her North End home after taking cocaine and fentanyl in February 2022 — it’s not clear if she knew what she was taking, or if the cocaine had been laced. Her family buried her in Yarmouth.
Many overdose victims who died in the city worked blue-collar jobs — dozens were identified as fishermen, construction workers, landscapers, and truck drivers. Dozens of others didn’t work. A quarter of the victims dropped out of high school, and half had a high school diploma but never went to college.
The vast majority of victims weren’t married when they died. In about half of the cases, the victim’s death certificate was filled out by their mother or father.
Most victims ranged in age from their late 20s to early 50s. The average age was 42.
The people they left behind: Family members who filled out the death certificates of New Bedford overdose victims
An evolving crisis
Today’s opioid crisis is decades in the making. Some addiction treatment providers in New Bedford have been doing their work long enough to remember the rise of prescription painkillers in the 1990s. They watched the opioid epidemic spread into virtually every community.
When High Point Treatment Center opened its nonprofit treatment facility in Plymouth in 1998, it filled up immediately. There was an “overwhelming” need for addiction treatment in southeastern Massachusetts, said High Point CEO Daniel Mumbauer. Many of the patients were coming from New Bedford, where there were few treatment options.
“There was no marketing staff, none of that stuff,” he said. “We still don’t spend a lot of time marketing because we never have enough beds — never have in our history.”
Since 2012, a total of 12,161 New Bedford residents have enrolled in Massachusetts-licensed drug and alcohol addiction treatment programs, according to data from the Massachusetts Bureau of Substance Addiction Services. That’s about one in every eight city residents.
On average, each of those people enrolled in treatment 3.6 times, for a total of 44,189 enrollments.
People with an addiction often go through three or four treatment programs before they reach long-term recovery, said Bartlett, the community health CEO. She compares it to someone with diabetes who might occasionally need medical attention because they’ve eaten foods they shouldn’t have. Like diabetes, she said, substance use disorder is a disease of relapse and recovery. “Withdrawal for opioids is extraordinarily painful,” Bartlett said.
Today, New Bedford has more treatment programs, providers say. Doctors prescribe fewer opioids. Medications that can help wean people off opioids are more widely available. The city is even on track to receive millions of dollars over the next 15 years from legal settlements with drugmakers.
But none of that progress could stop the deadly spread of fentanyl. Law enforcement nationwide seized nearly 10 million pills containing fentanyl in 2021, double the number seized in the previous year, one study found. The drug is 50 times more powerful than heroin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On the horizon: xylazine, an animal tranquilizer being added to street drugs. It can make an overdose worse, and it doesn’t respond to naloxone, the overdose-reversing nasal spray.
New Bedford’s first responders haven’t noticed an increase in naloxone-resistant overdoses. Early data shows the city has only had one death linked to xylazine so far — a 41-year-old man who died of a fentanyl overdose in July 2022 with “possible xylazine” intoxication listed as a contributing cause of death. Still, treatment providers are on edge as they hear reports that xylazine’s presence in the drug supply is growing.
Most of New Bedford's overdose victims died in their 30s and 40s.
Most overdose victims in New Bedford weren't married when they died.
82% of drug overdose victims in New Bedford had only a high school education or less.
Barriers to recovery
The cycle of drug use is often intertwined with housing instability, poverty, and mental illness, treatment providers say.
Connie Rocha-Mimoso said she sees people struggling to meet their basic needs every single day. She’s a program director for Seven Hills Behavioral Health in New Bedford and does outreach with overdose survivors.
The biggest issue Rocha-Mimoso’s clients face is a lack of stable housing, she said. One client she sees weekly has been homeless for years.
“You don’t have running water, you don’t have a bathroom, you don’t have a place that you’re gonna sleep — you’re not going to focus on staying clean,” she said.
How The Light analyzed overdose deaths
The Light requested death certificate data from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health — the data includes a wealth of information about how a person lived and died. Then, The Light filtered for deaths that took place in New Bedford, contained keywords associated with drug overdoses, and were ruled as accidental.
These numbers don’t include people who lived in New Bedford but died outside of the city. And while most of the overdose victims who died in New Bedford were from the city, some of them lived elsewhere.
The Light’s numbers may differ slightly from numbers released by the state because of differences in analysis techniques.
When The Light compared deaths of New Bedford residents to the statewide overdose death rate, we used the number of residents instead of those who died in New Bedford.
New Bedford’s housing shortage hasn’t helped. Even when Seven Hills clients are ready to work and move into an apartment, they struggle to find jobs that will pay enough to afford rent. Seeing clients who do their best to manage their addiction but struggle to make ends meet is one of the most frustrating parts of Rocha-Mimoso’s job, she said.
Danielle Brown, a program director for the homelessness and addiction services provider Steppingstone Inc., has seen a cycle develop with her clients. They go to a detox, get clean, then get discharged and find themselves back on the street again.
“Everything is so quick,” she said, snapping her fingers four times. “Once a person’s just starting, they’re pushed out a door.”
That’s when many clients turn to drugs to cope, and the cycle starts over. Only 37% of Steppingstone’s clients who are homeless or at risk of homelessness are able to find stable housing after six months of working with the nonprofit.
“If you’re living outside, what are you gonna do? You’re gonna numb yourself; you’re gonna use substances,” Brown said.
Mental health issues and trauma are also major barriers to recovery. Brown estimated that nine of every 10 people with an addiction are also struggling with their mental health. Other treatment providers agreed that trauma is a pervasive issue for people with substance use disorder. The isolation of the pandemic only exacerbated the problem.
But there’s a shortage of mental health clinicians and psychiatrists, so people often have to wait for months to get an appointment.
Treatment providers named many other economic factors that keep people from reaching recovery. Insurance might not cover the treatment they need. They might not have the financial means to take time off from work, or to find child care while they get treatment. If they have no cell phone or no car, just getting to and from treatment centers or other service providers is a challenge.
New ways to help
Solving the addiction crisis starts with housing, treatment providers say.
“We’ve got to create more spaces for people to live,” said Carl Alves, CEO of Positive Action Against Chemical Addiction, the local nonprofit. “People don't recover if they’re living on the street.”
New Bedford’s housing crisis poses its own complex challenge. Rents increased rapidly in Bristol County during the pandemic, far outpacing average incomes. Nearly half of the city’s renters were considered cost-burdened in 2021, meaning they spent more than 30% of their income on housing.
Experts say that the rise of remote work and the impending arrival of commuter rail service have made New Bedford a more attractive place to live. But the city has not added enough housing units to keep up with the increased demand.
A housing plan the city released in March aims to increase the city’s housing supply by encouraging developers to build here. Alves spoke in favor of the housing plan at the city’s announcement. But he has also called for more transitional and supportive housing — apartments with support services for people struggling with substance use or mental illness who aren’t ready to live independently. The city’s plan did not include any programs targeted at that type of housing.
Several local treatment providers support a model known as “housing first.” Instead of requiring homeless people to address their substance use and mental illness to become eligible for housing programs, this model places them in permanent housing before working with them to address their other challenges.
The model works because it’s easier for people to access treatment and stay sober when they have a roof over their head, advocates say. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development backs the approach.
High Point Treatment Center has had success with housing first, said Mumbauer, the organization’s CEO. For the last decade, it has run a 16-unit project in New Bedford following this model. This year, the project was converted into permanent supportive housing for non-homeless people as well as formerly homeless people.
“I know some people [who say], ‘Oh, you’re just enabling them,’” he said. “But the fact of the matter is, if you provide someone support, a safe place to live — even if they’re actively using — you are still setting them up for success.”
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Rocha-Mimoso of Seven Hills also supports the housing-first approach. But she added that more funding to help local treatment programs increase their capacity would also make an impact on the addiction crisis. Mental health care providers in particular are having trouble meeting the community’s demand, she said.
Gov. Maura Healey’s fiscal year 2024 budget includes $600 million for addiction prevention and treatment programs. That’s a modest increase from former Gov. Charlie Baker’s last budget proposal, which included about $544 million for addiction services — $590 million in today’s dollars.
Healey’s proposal includes a plan to set up a statewide overdose prevention hotline. It also includes funding to study the feasibility of overdose prevention sites, also known as supervised consumption sites or safe injection sites, where people could safely consume illicit drugs under medical supervision.
An overdose prevention site in New Bedford could be a good way to build relationships with people and get them into treatment, Rocha-Mimoso said. Meanwhile, Alves said he’s open to considering it.
“The challenge is that there are consumption sites that are unsupervised throughout our community,” he said. “We’re seeing overdoses in public bathrooms.”
But Alves stopped short of fully endorsing the idea. The New Bedford City Council unanimously voted to oppose overdose prevention sites in 2019. Many people in the community still oppose these sites, Alves said. New Bedford should look at all of its options and experiment with different approaches, he added.
“We’ve got to explore new ways to help people, because it’s our future,” he said. “There’s a lot at stake here.”
Bartlett, the community health CEO, wants to see more resources put toward prevention, so people don’t become addicted in the first place. That means using evidence-based curriculums in schools to steer children away from drug use, which reduces their chances of becoming addicted as adults. “The longer you can get kids to not experiment with drugs and alcohol, the better the long-term outcome is,” she said.
Compassion
Zander, the EMS deputy director, said that he came to understand some of the mental struggles that led his patients to turn to drugs. One patient was an Afghanistan war veteran.
“I’ll remember that guy’s face. I’ll remember the color of his hair. I’ll remember what he told me about his children,” he said. “I don’t know where that young man is today, how he made out, but he’s still in my mind.”
Experiences like that changed his thinking around drug addiction, he said.
So did his most personal loss: his brother died of a heroin overdose a few years ago. He said it reinforced his belief that his overdose patients deserve compassion.
“That was something he battled, and no matter what we could do to help him, it was still a struggle for him,” he said. “One day, he lost that struggle. But my brother was no different than anybody else I took in the ambulance.”
Email reporter Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org.
Six people I know have died from an overdose. One of them was my niece who left behind a one month old son and five year old daughter. The crisis has gotten worse.
As someone who is in recovery for alcoholism, it upsets me to know that some want to give addicts a safe place to use. Giving someone a safe space enables the addiction. Instead, help them get help.
I agree. Addicts need help not enabling.
One wonders how much crime in the City is tied in to drug distribution and gang activity. Or committed by addicts needing money for their next hit. The stuff is flowing into New Bedford like a sewer: doesn’t anyone know the sources and have the means to put a stop to it? And who is going to pay for the free or nearly free housing to put addicts in? And how can so-called “safe” injection sites be safe if folks are bringing laced drugs to inject? Is the City supposed to also supply safe drugs along with housing, meals, counseling, and transportation? One guy, it was reported, overdosed twice in one day…is it the New Bedford citizen’s responsibility to keep opening our wallets to support this guy, or, at some point, he takes responsibility for his own life and the decisions to put a needle in his vein?
Addicts don’t want to take responsibility because they know someone will figure things out for them & if they continue to keep getting things handed to them (like suggested) then they’ll never take responsibility. You can help them to a point but they need to figure things out for themselves.
That’s not always true i was clean 12 years and relapsed and regretted in everyday i cry every nite I don’t want to be like this anymore i have mental health issues ADHD manic depression anxiety PTSD and I work every day i have my own apartment i have a car this is the most i have done for myself is forever I always take care of everyone i use everyday i eat everyday my bills are paid but i love Jesus and need him but I really need help but don’t know where to begin I want the rest of my life to be remembered and not by using i want family friends church i kick many drugs but i having a hard time this time i am scared i been an addict a lot of my life I don’t want to die i’m 61 years old please help me
If you get evicted, the states puts your name in a searchable database and when you go to apply for a new apartment, if you are applying to a decent landlord that is, they look you up and then say “NO!” You’ve been evicted and unless you have a great story and evidence to back it up, you are too risky to rent to.
IF there was a similar mechanism with drugs for landlords to see, “Wow, you are a mess: overdoses, arrests for possession and distribution and a general history of using hard drugs, landlords could be the first line of defense from letting these people continue to occupy our community in such disproportionate numbers. If you want the statistics to change, you need to find a path to allow the landlords who let these people live here, not rent to them and then they will live somewhere else and NB’d non-junkie residents will be closer to having a normal city to live in.
Push them out and the stats will change. Simple math.
Do not, under any circumstances, keep opening “treatment programs” that simply allow people to keep using. It’s repeating the same process over and over, and expecting different results: Insanity.
Totally agree
The goal of the local politicians is the green agenda of offshore wind, not drug rehabilitation.
Almost 300 million in investments from state agencies helped New Bedford become ‘ground zero’ of offshore wind development with promises of unfulfilled jobs since the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal announcement ten years ago.
All the members of the Rhode Island Fisherman’s Advisory Board quit over wind development. The fishing industry will more than likely look to the drug trade for additional income.
New Bedford is a harbinger of fentanyl deaths, and politicians continue to stop Mexican cartels that smuggle the drug while putting a trillion dollars into green energy bills and nothing into drug rehabilitation and education.
Thank you for this insightful and thought provoking article. I’d love to see a similar story on nursing homes and elder care facilities, and how they prescribe narcotics to anyone and everyone who walks through the door. Doctors are prescribing narcotics to nursing home patients over the phone, without visually or audibly assessing a patient’s condition. In some cases, these patients are dying. Ask me how I know.
Follow the money, hold accountability for abuse, penalize for restitution and finally, collect all the chronic abusers and put them all in a place so they can learn how to get their life back, not releasing them into society till they make a positive impact, supporting their families along the path if needed.
Why is Massachusettes and cities receiving money from the Opioid medication settlement? Opioids are a very effective medication that is absolutely necessary to treat Pain Management patients, people who suffer from chronic pain, and one the only effective medication in treating chronic pain and living a normal life.
I have been a pain management patient for almost 20 years. I’ve had two spinal fusion surgeries to alleviate the intolerable, and chronic pain initially caused by compressed and ruptured discs in my lower back, specifically L4-L5, L5-S1, and during the first fusion, the orthopedic surgeon discovered that I’m one of the 12% of people who has an additional vertebrae, S2.
The first surgery was performed using kadaver bone and were held in place with screws & rods while the kadaver bone fused with my vertebrae, creating additional spacing for the discs so the nerves wouldn’t be pinched, and the pain would be alleviated. After 24 months, additional testing proved that increased space was created, but the kadaver bone didn’t fuse with my spine, and there was still enough movement causing and the severe pain continued. After another year of becoming more tolerant to pain medication, and needing higher dosages to make life tolerable, I decided on a second surgery that would take 9 hours as the team had to create incisions in the front and back to remove the hardware and kadavar bone, and replace it with synthetic material that was highly successful in fusing with spinal vertebrae, and additional rods & screws (larger diameter) were used to hold the synthetic material in place while the fusion process took place over the next 12-18 months.
After 12 months, the fusion of synthetic material to my spine was successful, but between the instruments, rods, screws, and other hardware, there was was nerve damage that now causes chronic pain in my lower left, hip, and periodically in my lower back. I’m still a pain management patient, and have to see the doctor, or nurse practitioner monthly, I’m currently taking prescribed medication, (Oxycontin ER 40mg tablets, one tablet 3 times per day). My pain is tolerable, but it’s still uncomfortable, sometimes daily. Fortunately, I work for a great company, and have a great career that’s not physically demanding, if it was, I wouldn’t be able to work, and I would more than likely be disabled, at least as far as being employed full time. Due to liability, most companies aren’t going to hire, or continually employ a person who takes opioid medications despite the fact that after taking these medications at high dosages, your body builds up a tolerance, and the ill effects that recreational drug users, or people who abuse their prescribed medications experience, like euphoria, drowsiness, inability to work, drive, and perform other routine daily activities safely, and act in a way that clearly shows.
There’s nothing wrong with opioid medications, the problems are the people who misuse and/or abuse opioid medications that cause the overdose deaths, the people driving impaired by misusing opioids, and the danger to other innocent people due to the actions of people who misuse and abuse opioid medications.
I’d like to know why the states & cities receive the cash settlements Why aren’t they being paid to the real victims, people who were prescribed opioids for years while the manufacturers knowingly withheld research data & clinical trial results from doctors who prescribed opioids for years to people who became addicted to opioids (Oxycontin ER 40mg 1 tablet 3X per day) when taken as prescribed, because the fact is, anyone who took prescribed opioid medication for years becomes physically, and mentally tolerant.
I’m also a pain management patient. I have been for about 15 years. I have to completely agree with you.
Excellent article. Wonderful job Grace!
This isn’t solely an addiction issue – recreational drug users, first timers, are dying because what they are snorting/smoking/ingesting isn’t what they think! Marijuana, Cocaine etc. are laced with poisons that can and will kill. This is not a city problem – it is everyone’s problem.
I’m an addict in recovery and I now work as a licensed Substance Abuse Disorder counselor. Very good reporting here. Housing insecurity, financial insecurity, lack of family or peer support, combined with untreated mental health issues, are all at the core of this epidemic. Of course, it’s also a bit paradoxical to say “mental health issues”, because addiction in and of itself is a mental health issue. I have so much to add and say but I don’t even know where to start. I’m 36, graduated from NBHS in ‘05, and can list off about 15-20 friends I grew up with in the area who are now dead from fatal OD’s. Please don’t stop reporting on this. I don’t care how many ppl get fatigued with hearing about it. The problem doesn’t appear to be letting up any time soon. I hope the city is consulting with the proper individuals to assure that the funds granted from the POS Sackler family are being put to very good use.