ANNOUNCER: State of Recovery was made possible by financial support from-- ANNOUNCER 2: We resolve to do more; to listen, understand, and act; and to see that you get the care you need.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, we resolve to make health care better.

JOSH STEIN: We are in the midst of a crisis.

CARRSON WILSON: I tried it and the best feeling I ever had in my life.

WILL GUEST: The drug culture has changed.

RHONDA SPENCE: It's not the plan you had for your child to become a drug addict.

LEAH WRIGHT: The opioid epidemic, you can't hide it.

It's everywhere.

No one chooses addiction.

ASHWIN PATKAR: Building a good recovery support system is essential.

LEAH WRIGHT: Wake Monarch Academy will be the triangle area's first recovery high school.

Please don't ever say, not my child.

[music playing] ♪ INTERVIEWER: How long have y'all been married?

LEAH WRIGHT: We've been together almost 20 years.

It's hard to believe.

Yeah.

No.

Y'all get that?

We were what you would think of a normal family.

And we went on vacations together.

We had dinner together, when we could.

Carson was a happy child, your normal kid.

CARRSON WILSON: Kind of had focusing problems at an early age.

I was on Adderall since first grade.

And that weirded me out once I got to high school.

I was the kid taking a pill every day to make me normal.

By the time I was a freshman, my friends began smoking weed.

And I wanted to try it because I wanted to fit in.

I had never done anything before in my life.

I tried it in my garage at my parents' house.

I don't think I got high for the first time.

I don't know.

By my sophomore year, I started going to parties.

I thought I was part of popular squad at this time.

I started skipping school a lot.

I started smoking weed every day.

My mom would drop me off at school.

Near the tennis courts, we had these woods.

And all the kids would smoke weed back there.

LEAH WRIGHT: We found out that he was smoking marijuana.

JIMMY WRIGHT: I think we were a little unaware or just kind of blinded by that somewhat.

LEAH WRIGHT: For that first time, we really didn't give consequences.

We thought it was over.

I mean, we thought-- "You tried it, you got it out of your system-- OK, we're done."

But we just noticed there was a difference in his behavior.

There seemed to be something else.

CARRSON WILSON: These kids we're talking about are these pills called hydros or whatever.

And I didn't really know.

I remember my dad-- I saw my dad on the couch one night.

And he had-- he had something wrong with this teeth.

LEAH WRIGHT: My husband had had dental surgery.

And we kept our medicine under the kitchen sink.

CARRSON WILSON: I find hydro 7.5's, oxy 5's, oxy 10's.

I'm finding all these pills.

I felt like I hit the jackpot.

I just wanted to have fun.

LEAH WRIGHT: I noticed there was quite a lot of pain medicine that was missing.

It was not even clicking in my brain.

But it did kind of make us question going, "Or could he?

Did he"?

CARRSON WILSON: So I'm on Snapchat.

And my childhood friend asked me, you want to go get heroin?

I was like, let's do this.

And he whips out some needles and some stamper bags, which is packaged in heroin.

And he was, you want to do this?

And I was like, yeah.

I was like, give me a line.

He was like, you're not snorting it.

I was like, what do you mean?

He was like, if you do it, you're gonna inject it.

So I gave him my arm, I looked away.

And that feeling hit me-- best feeling I've ever had in my life.

And that night was also the worst night of my life.

My addiction went from here to here.

LEAH WRIGHT: Please don't ever say, not my child.

Because it can very well be your child.

CARRSON WILSON: My senior year came.

I was really bad off drugs at this point.

Molly, acid-- any drug you can think of, I was doing.

My parents did not trust me at all because I thrown parties at their house and stuff.

I've had people over when I'm not supposed to-- blah, blah, blah.

I just wanted to have fun.

The heaver I got into it, the more of "F, you.

I don't care about you.

I don't care what you think about me."

I just-- I didn't care what anybody had to think about me.

LEAH WRIGHT: I was angry at the disease.

I was always, "I love you.

I love you.

You need help.

Let us help you."

But of course, the ones you love the most are the ones you hurt the most.

And so he was very hurtful to me.

CARRSON WILSON: My relationship with my parents got really bad.

I literally lived with them.

But I did not talk to them.

LEAH WRIGHT: [sobbing] The desperation that a parent feels to help their child-- and you can't.

And addiction is the only disease that I know of that people are showing up giving you casseroles.

People aren't showing up giving you support.

We felt alone.

No one wants to be dealing with this.

No one chooses addiction.

CARRSON WILSON: Progressively, as I got worse, my friends-- I got worse friends.

My friends who were there for me, weren't there for me, because they were tired of preaching to me; tired of telling me the same thing over and over again.

I wouldn't listen.

I couldn't stop.

I kept doing it every single day.

LEAH WRIGHT: His senior year, he was expelled from senior year in high school.

As we sat there and told the principal we understand protecting the kids here, but what do we do?

Now he's gonna be home alone.

And it was basically, "I'm sorry."

So with both of us working full-time, that's exactly what happened.

He was home alone.

And that was absolutely the worst place for him to be.

CARRSON WILSON: My daily routine is wake up in the morning, do a shot of heroin.

Lunch break, I'd be withdrawing, do another shot of heroin.

After work, I would be withdrawing, do another shot.

And then right for bad, do another shot-- so, every single day.

And it got to the point where I was going through $100, $150 a day habit.

It was awful.

I couldn't move.

My bones hurt.

Everything hurt.

I pissed myself.

It was awful.

So I told my mom, I was like, get me to a rehab right now.

LEAH WRIGHT: We didn't know of any adolescent services.

And we weren't told about any adolescent services here unless they were out of state or beyond what we could afford financially.

Affordable Care is needed.

Adolescent resources-- and when you look, there's tons of options for help 18 or above.

But in this area, it's very limited.

ASHWIN PATKAR: We have to refer them either to the mountains, as we call it, to the actual area where they are.

We sometimes have to refer them outside the state.

So there's a shortage of residential adolescent detoxification programs.

If somebody has an adolescent with addiction problems, the biggest thing I see is people calling all around.

"What should I do"?

WILL GUEST: It would be great.

If there was this handbook of when your daughter is 16 and the school calls that there's this concern that she's getting high, it'd be great to reference what page to go to and what to do.

And you just don't know.

Dealing with teenagers and young adults, I mean, they're not the easiest population to deal with.

You think about they're emotional.

They lie.

They, you know, disobedient.

There may be other issues, co-occurring conditions going on.

And especially if they're using drugs and alcohol, it's not like they're gonna come up front and be honest about it.

And I think one of the disadvantages is dealing with that age group of people.

CARRSON WILSON: Most addictions don't start at 25, 30, 35 years old.

They start when you're a teenager.

So why are we more accepted to 18-year-olds 19, 20, 21-year-olds and so on than when it first starts off?

LEAH WRIGHT: So through that experience, continuing to educate myself about the disease of addiction; continuing to hear other stories, be around other families that were going through similar things-- it was actually laid on my heart to start a recovery high school.

So recovery high school is where students who struggle with substance use, they're able to go to a high school together.

They're all in recovery together.

Had our son had that, then his addiction I feel would not have developed the way it did.

CARRSON WILSON: If me and my peers were all going through the same stuff, I would have listened to them.

I wouldn't have felt like an outcast, like I'm doing this by myself.

So I think it definitely would have been beneficial for me.

LEAH WRIGHT: Wake Monarch Academy will be the triangle area's first recovery high school, and second only in the state of North Carolina-- and South Carolina, as well.

There's approximately 43 recovery high schools nationwide.

And there's approximately 1.5 to 2.0 million adolescents who struggle with substance use disorder.

So when you think about 43 recovery high schools nationwide, that doesn't even touch the need that's out there.

This recovery high school needed to happen yesterday.

You know?

So it's just trying to make sure it has a strong foundation, work on sustainability, and reaching out to people that are the experts.

I'm not an expert non-profit leader.

It's a job.

It's a job.

But it's like my passion's my payment right now.

WILL GUEST: I met Leah Wright, with Wake Monarch Academy, a year-- year and a half ago.

The success rates of recovery high schools, they do really well.

I mean, it's mind blowing.

I think one of the things with, especially with Wake Monarch, that's different is there's really a focus on the educational component.

Once they get sober, they're in long-term recovery, the concept and idea is I want to go back to school.

They do need to graduate.

LEAH WRIGHT: Recovery high schools are not your typical hundreds and hundreds of kids at high school.

They're really small in number because your focus is on recovery.

It's not just education.

WILL GUEST: I don't know if I want to put someone back who's doing really well three, six, nine months later; have them return to the environment.

That's where a lot of their issues may have started.

LEAH WRIGHT: When students are coming back from treatment and they're going back to the same high school where they more than likely used, there's a 70% chance of return-to-use within six months.

However, students who go to treatment, coming back and go to recovery high school, there's about a 30% chance of return-to-use.

[music playing] So we're going to go see Maggie Cain, who's the executive director of A Place at the Table.

And she has been really a-- kind of like a mentor for me.

It was really interesting when we first started talking about this.

We thought we'd be centrally located somewhere-- Raleigh, Cary-- wherever.

I had reached out to her.

She had heard about what we were doing.

Being close to transportation, it just made sense.

It just made sense.

Because the recovery high school is not like a regular high school where there's a cafeteria where they come in.

It's not.

So we also needed to be close to multiple eateries within walking distance.

So it just made sense.

The people that she's connecting me to-- I have a very important meeting this week.

So without that connection with Maggie, I wouldn't have this important meeting coming up.

Tomorrow we have a very, very big meeting about our location.

So I'm very, very excited.

MAGGIE KANE: Yay!

LEAH WRIGHT: So I cannot wait and tell you recently, because we should know within the next week or two.

MAGGIE KANE: I support this project, I support this recovery high school, because I just believe in it.

We see a ton of people coming into A Place at the Table that are in recovery.

And it is crucial to support all of these folks who are part of our community.

LEAH WRIGHT: Finding the right location for these kids-- we want them to be in an area where it's downtown, where they have access to transportation.

And it's very important for not only these kids in recovery to learn how to stay and sustain recovery, but also developing to be good community-- good citizens.

So what does that look like?

So being able to be close to different community partners for them to give back to the community.

It's important to be close to an area where we can do that.

We're very hopeful.

Our first year we'll have 10 students.

We want to make sure that we do those students really, really well.

And then we will increase enrollment after that.

We are doing something so much bigger than I think we all can realize.

And we are very grateful because our journey has come out on the positive side.

Without our journey, without my personal journey, without my personal recovery-- there would be no Wake Monarch Academy.

Even if we just save one life-- just one life-- it'll make a difference.

WILL GUEST: The drug culture has changed from 10 years ago, 15 years ago.

First of all, drugs are way more prevalent.

Nowadays in society, and nowadays I think a teenager's perspective is that a lot of people do get high.

It's normal.

It's been normalized over the last couple of years.

So I think it is very hard for them to realize, "Oh, I'm the one with a problem or I'm the one that's gonna have to stop."

ASHWIN PATKAR: In the 1990s, we saw what's called the prescription opioid epidemic.

And this was related largely to prescription of opioids for pain.

That was the first wave we saw.

JOSH STEIN: A little more than 20 years ago, the drug companies aggressively started marketing to prescribers, to doctors that opioids were the most effective way to treat pain and they were not addictive.

And it turns out neither of those things are true.

The CDC took an important step in 2016 when they came up with new prescribing guidelines for opioids.

In America, we were prescribing 10 pills more per capita than in Japan, 4 to 5 times more pills prescribed here in the US than in Europe.

And we do not have 5 to 10 times more pain in the United States.

LARRY GREENBLATT: Prescription opioids can be really helpful medications.

Anybody who's had an acute injury or an operation where opioids was part of their pain management strategy, often they're very appreciative of the kind of relief you get.

So opioids can be used by many people without the development of addiction.

But they are very addictive drugs.

Clinicians who prescribe opioids need to be aware of the possibility that a patient could develop an opioid use disorder.

And it's thought that about 8% to 12% of individuals on chronic opioid therapy actually meet the criteria for opioid use disorder.

JOSH STEIN: We must treat pain.

If you undertreat pain, it leads to addiction just as you overtreat it.

By that, I mean, if somebody has real pain and the health care community doesn't treat them-- they will go on the street and treat themselves.

And that's a problem.

LARRY GREENBLATT: The opioid crisis has changed quite a bit since it really first got identified as a problem.

ASHWIN PATKAR: In 2010, we saw that real change into heroin.

People who are addicted to prescription opioids shifted to heroin.

And the most concerning wave was in 2013.

And it's still ongoing.

And that's called the synthetic opioids, or the fentanyl wave.

In North Carolina, 78% of opioid overdose deaths have fentanyl or synthetic analogs.

And that powers the increase in opioid overdose deaths which we see today.

WILL GUEST: The drugs that they're using are way more potent and way more readily available.

LARRY GREENBLATT: Fentanyl is a prescription drug typically used in patch form.

But there's other forms in which it's available.

And fentanyl is now being made internationally, smuggled into the United States.

And it's super-potent.

The amount of fentanyl that's mixed into heroin will vary a lot batch to batch, even from the same dealer.

And that's leading to a lot of the overdose deaths where people who are using don't know what they're getting or how strong it is.

ASHWIN PATKAR: So this adulteration of opioids, as well as other drugs with fentanyl, has changed the risk equation remarkably.

I've seen heroin epidemics and opioid epidemics for a long time.

And we have never seen something like this where you literally can overdose and die by experimenting with something on the street.

JOSH STEIN: We are turning the tide on this crisis.

And we must stay consistent, persistent, and committed to making sure that we put this thing back on the ground and not take any more lives than absolutely necessary.

RHONDA SPENCE: Welcome, everyone.

And this is the family support group of Healing Transitions.

Our purpose is to share our experience, strength, and hope with each other as we focus on our own recovery process on the long journey of healing our families and our relationships from the effects of the disease of addiction.

It's very much a family disease.

Everybody's affected.

If you just take one person and focus on it, the whole system's not fixed.

And if they don't get help, it's a less chance of the loved one getting help.

LEAH WRIGHT: I was able to find a family support group at Healing Transitions I like coming just because it's kind of good for your soul kind of deal.

You know?

It's also important to share stories.

WOMAN: In some ways, that had become so normal to me that I was, like, "No.

This is how he always looks.

He looks like this all the time.

And he did look like that all the time because he was high all the time.

RHONDA SPENCE: So when a person first comes to the support group, they're very traumatized.

They're in a lot of pain.

They're in a state of mind of "Well, I'm liable to get a phone call any minute that my loved one is gonna die."

And that's how they live their life every day, all day.

So it's a lot for them to unravel.

But it's a place they can go.

LEAH WRIGHT: And I remember the first couple of meetings, I could not talk.

I bawled.

RHONDA SPENCE: It's very isolating.

You tend to not want to tell anybody.

There's a lot of shame.

There's a lot of guilt.

Parents blame themselves.

And it's absolutely not their fault.

MAN: First of all, we didn't cause this problem.

You can't control it either.

And you for sure can't cure it.

I mean, that's ridiculous.

RHONDA SPENCE: We have to help a parent realize that they can't dictate the path for their child.

And they kind of can let go of that.

LEAH WRIGHT: I remember one time in particular, Carrson was an adult at this time.

And it had gotten to the point where we had to kick him out of the house.

The behavior went out of control, where we gave him an ultimatum that you're going back to treatment.

You can't continue this behavior.

And he refused to do it.

And says, well, if you refuse to go to treatment, you're not gonna stay here.

So we gave him the option.

So you can-- here's a bag.

You can go pack your clothes and go back, do what you got to do.

But you're not gonna live in this house.

And so that began the worst part of my life because I remember seeing my son walk down the road with nothing on his back but his clothes.

And that was the darkest time of my entire life.

CARRSON WILSON: And I'm like, bro, I just got kicked out of my crib.

I just got drunk the entire week, don't remember anything to this day.

I missed out on my whole exams, got kicked out of all of my classes.

I called my parents up and I told them that this is not the lifestyle I want to live.

I don't want to be homeless.

LEAH WRIGHT: I look back now and think, thank goodness I had that family support for them to give me the strength to keep going.

Because I'm not sure I would have been able to do it by myself.

RHONDA SPENCE: I just wish family people would get more help earlier and not feel like they did something wrong.

They didn't do anything wrong.

And it's not their fault.

And get some help for yourself.

Don't stay in hiding.

LEAH WRIGHT: It took me a while to realize that I can always love him.

I will always love him.

But right now, I have to love him as at a distance.

I have to love him at a distance so he can find that recovery.

[music playing] So Carrson was 19 at this time.

We really thought that he was doing great.

He was really following the rules of the house.

So this one particular weekend, he had said, "Hey, I would love to go over to a friend's house.

Can I spend the night"?

CARRSON WILSON: It was around Thanksgiving time.

I hadn't done heroin in like three months now, four months.

And I go straight to this girl.

I'm like, hey, I'll buy your heroin for you if you can get me some right now.

So we started doing it and it is the worst stuff.

So I load up mine, only two bags I did.

And mine was almost black.

It looked like tar.

It looked nasty.

And I just did and just went out.

LEAH WRIGHT: 2 o'clock in the afternoon, we got a call from the hospital.

And I never will forget that phone call.

CARRSON WILSON: I woke up on the side of I-95.

I had overdosed three times before this.

But this is by far the worst one.

I definitely got a hot bag.

And I had no tolerance, so I just went straight out.

I think they used like, four batches on me.

And they started hitting me with IV Narcan.

LARRY GREENBLATT: Naloxone is commonly known as Narcan.

It is a very safe antidote to opioid overdose.

The prescription version is given as a nasal spray, typically one spray will reverse most opioids.

It lasts about 90 minutes.

It would allow them to resume normal breathing.

It would help bring up their blood pressure.

GARY QUICK: If you've ever seen this firsthand, it's actually amazing to watch someone that's basically not alive-- you shoot this in their nose-- or the Narcan that the EMS use-- and they come right back in an instant.

LARRY GREENBLATT: And then emergency services could be called in.

And that person could be taken to the emergency department and given more definitive treatment.

[water dripping] CARRSON WILSON: The next morning I told my mom-- I was like, all right, send me to rehab again.

I'm ready for it.

Let's go.

Send me to a good one this time.

I wanna say, all right.

LEAH WRIGHT: He had actually had a drug poisoning or overdose before.

So what made this one different?

I think that he got to the point where he just was sick and tired of being sick and tired.

CARRSON WILSON: I don't want to do this anymore.

I'm tired.

I've been living this way for the past four years of my life-- honestly since I was 14, 13 years old.

LEAH WRIGHT: He's thriving in recovery and seems to be doing really well.

And as much I think as any parent would want their child close to them, we are proud of his recovery and want him to concentrate on him.

We're very hopeful, but understanding this is a disease.

And there's been many stories who have had years in recovery and they've had a return-to-use, which is why we are grateful for each day.

We take one day at a tie.

[acoustic music] The idea of a recovery high school, to many, is great.

But then when you get down to really what does that look like?

And it's again, fear.

Any time you're trying to start something grassroots totally in this area, there's a lot of questions that come up.

The concerns of how are these kids gonna be coming in off the street-- and so we had to explain that these kids are wanting recovery for themselves.

It's not mom and dad or aunt and uncle coming them in, that the student themselves wanted recovery.

So we had to give them assurance for that; that we would have random, frequent drug testing.

But again, you still have a fear there-- the stigma just with the population of students that were trying to serve.

You can talk all day long about "Recovery high school-- we're gonna bring it to this area.

And we're nonprofit."

Either they're like, great.

That's a great idea.

But they're like, OK, let me see-- wait till it happens.

So when you have a location, that's huge.

You could actually-- they-- "Wow.

This is really happening.

This is really going to be a thing."

WILL GUEST: It's difficult to grasp is I'm gonna put my son or daughter who has a drug and alcohol problem and I'm going to have them hangout with other people who have drug and alcohol problems.

On one hand that seems really crazy.

It's going to be like, well, I mean they could like riot at the school.

They could burn down the school.

CHRIS BUDNICK: The specific challenges with substance use is, again, why should I invest in this if I believe the person created the problem themselves or they're a bad kid or I hold the belief that this child's behavior or adolescent's behavior is a reflection on poor parenting?

Those are all reasons to say, don't need to support this.

You've gotta have folks who are gonna influence change.

JIMMY WRIGHT: Well, I think Leah's a new leader.

She's always been a leader in education.

And she's always had a talent for bringing people together.

She excites people.

Then people want to do things when you have someone that's leading by example, like she does.

And she lives it.

I think that makes her as outstanding as she is.

CARRSON WILSON: It's just my mom's doing big things.

There's other people just like my mom.

I'm thankful for them.

They're bringing awareness to the community, which is really good.

You catch it in time and we can end it in time.

LEAH WRIGHT: And if the next plan B doesn't work, then we're gonna go to plan C. And if plan C doesn't work, then we'll go to plan D. I mean, but the point is this school's going up somewhere.

So this school will come to fruition somewhere.

Where that is and wherever we end up, that's where we're supposed to be to begin with.

ANNOUNCER 1: State of Recovery was made possible by financial support from-- ANNOUNCER 2: We resolve to do more; to listen, understand, and act and to see that you get the care you need.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, we resolve to make health care better.

ANNOUNCER: Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you, who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.