‘I will never forget seeing the crisis in all its glory’: Australian man recalls Baltimore opioid relapse in fentanyl ground zero
An Australian man who in 2015 found himself addicted and alone in a US city ravaged by opioid abuse has issued a stark warning for Aussies.
An Australian man who only eight years ago found himself addicted and alone at ground zero of a United States opioid crisis has shared a powerful warning about a drug that is knocking on Australia’s door.
Life was good for Darren Keogh. He had moved from New Mexico to Ellicott City in 2013, a Maryland locality just outside Baltimore, with his wife, an ambitious scientist starting a new job in the area.
It had been 25 years since the Australian expat’s last heroin hit, but 2015 would see a devastating relapse.
After a marriage breakdown, Darren moved from Ellicott City to Baltimore, where his six-month spiral began.
At that time, the potent opioid fentanyl had taken hold on the city’s streets, and their paths soon crossed.
Today, speaking candidly from his home in Western Australia, the 62-year-old graphic designer turned support worker reflected on the destruction he experienced first-hand in the US city streets.
What Darren described was nothing short of a war zone, complete with crooked cops, daily shootings and constant death in the streets.
At the end of his six-month-long relapse, as many as 60 acquaintances were dead.
“I will never forget seeing the crisis in all its glory,” Darren told news.com.au.
“It was not unusual to see users collapse from an overdose, and the people around would rifle their pockets before anyone would call for help, that’s if they did call, at times they would just disappear.
“I knew that the users I did see would be dead at some stage. They would either overdose or be shot by a gang member for doing something like trying to scam them.
“I did know of one user who was originally a dealer, and his supply was coming from corrupt police. He was busted, and he ratted out many people to save his own skin and was put into witness protection (but) dope drew him back to Baltimore, and he was found overdosed in a car, having survived only a few months before they delivered a hot shot (an often fatal mixture of heroin and more powerful opioids, like fentanyl).”
How Baltimore brought back ‘the cold sweats’
Darren recalled driving through Baltimore with his wife to Ellicott City well before his relapse.
Before fentanyl, which spiralled out of control around 2013, Baltimore had been well known for its high rates of heroin use.
“We came through Baltimore, and I started going into cold sweats because it was almost like a dystopian trauma,” he recalled, saying it evoked memories of his heroin use decades prior, coupled with the PTSD he suffered from working in Nigeria a couple of years before.
Darren attributed much of his own dependency issues to opioids prescribed for pain relief dating back to when he was a teenager.
A catalyst, he suspected, was made worse by the ease of access to more potent therapeutic opioids after moving to the US in his 30s.
“Once you’ve had a good dose of opiates, it’s not something you can put down and forget about – it makes you feel good, it makes you feel warm and fuzzy, and like you’ve got it together,” he explained.
He detailed his relapse in 2015 and spoke of how quickly opioid addiction crept back into his life, made no better by the immense prevalence of fentanyl in his new city.
“I got to know a few of the neighbourhood kids, and things went from there,” Darren said, adding that hits were available around the clock.
“You could make a phone call, you could walk out on the street, you know, you could go into the gang areas because all the gangs on every second corner are selling it.”
Darren said that during this time, he and other users would take fentanyl and heroin interchangeably, depending on availability and price, though dealers would ‘boost’ poor quality heroin with fentanyl.
As for fentanyl’s effects, however, he explained: “You can certainly tell the difference.”
“The danger of fentanyl is you have no idea of its potency and it really doesn’t take much to kill you … the people making the batches also have no idea and only look at the dollars,” he said.
According to Darren, it wasn’t uncommon for competing dealers or gangs to offer users ‘testers’ – free samples to keep them hooked.
“They give you a tester and say, ‘Look, we’re going to be selling this stuff tomorrow at such and such time, on such and such corner,’” Darren explained.
‘We’re not ready for this’
Darren said what he saw in Baltimore was far worse than Victoria in the 1990s when heroin prices plummeted, and the state saw overdose rates reach 6.5 people per 100,000.
Now back in Australia himself, he fears an even worse repeat amid concerns that fentanyl is knocking on Australia’s door.
He worries as it did in Baltimore, that a large injection of fentanyl into the Australian illicit drug market will bring the price of heroin down substantially, if not totally replace it.
In fact, in 2015, it was widely reported that a bag of heroin on the streets of Baltimore reached AU$7.50.
The same 0.1 gram amount is estimated to be worth anywhere between $40-$100 in Australia today.
“I don’t think people understand how serious it can become because, you know, I’ve actually seen people overdose on the streets – just collapse and die,” he explained.
“You’d see that with heroin occasionally, but not at the level of fentanyl. It’s going to kill everything.
“We are not prepared for this, and if it does take off, we will not have the education and resources to be able to stop it.”
He warns, as is the case elsewhere, that illicit fentanyl will be cheaper and more potent than heroin but adds, “Once you start playing with that, you really are playing Russian roulette.”
Just last week, it was reported that Baltimore is topping the nation on a grim leaderboard with 174.1 opioid-related drug overdoses per 100,000 people.
Darren chose to speak about his experiences with fentanyl after a national police union last week revealed it fears that the drug could soon slip through Australia’s borders.
Police union boss’ fentanyl fear
Australian Federal Police member and head of the Australian Federal Police Association, Alex Caruana, last week told news.com.au the threat of large hauls entering the country was serious.
His sentiment echoed that of Darren’s.
“In places like Wagga and Dubbo where we can see what ice is doing to the organisation, we can see these pharmaceuticals are also a problem,” Mr Caruana said.
“If non-pharmaceutical fentanyl gets into those rural areas, it’s going to annihilate them. There’s already a scourge there with the ice, and it’s really going to make an impact.
“The cost to the Australian is going to be significant because we’re going to have to fork out money to prop up rural Australia.”
He feared bad actors, both domestically and abroad, are closely monitoring attrition rates and staff and resource shortages within the AFP.
“They know when there’s (industrial action), and when they know that we are stretched – of course they’re going to exploit it. That’s exactly what they do. They find weaknesses and exploit them,” Mr Caruana said.
“They are the scum of the earth, and they will exploit those weaknesses – that’s what these crooks do – of course, they’re paying attention to this.”
While there is already some evidence of fentanyl in Australia’s illicit drug market, the AFP, which since 2019 has been instrumental in stopping almost 30kg of illicit fentanyl from hitting the nation’s shores, last week said: “The AFP, together with our state, Commonwealth and international partners, is closely monitoring the threat of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids to Australian communities.”
“The AFP is aware of the risk that the deadly opioid fentanyl poses to communities. However in Australia, there have been only a small number of detections to date,” a spokesperson added.
“The AFP is aware of the serious risk fentanyl and other illicit drugs pose to our community, and we are keeping a careful watch on the situation both here and offshore.”
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