Killer High: Finding freedom from fentanyl

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- Watch "Killer High: The Series - Finding Freedom" this Sunday astatine 6:30pm connected ABC30.

The graduation formal was white. Renee Patla had picked it retired with her girl Olivia weeks earlier, the 2 of them imagining the locomotion crossed the stage, the diploma, the wide-open summertime ahead. Olivia ne'er wore it to commencement. Her parents buried her successful it instead.

Olivia Patla was 18 years aged and a azygous time shy of her Clovis North High School graduation erstwhile she died of a fentanyl overdose successful 2021. A 17-year-old friend, according to the household and instrumentality enforcement sources, fto her dice - refusing to telephone 911 and signaling video arsenic it happened.

Her communicative is astatine the halfway of "Finding Freedom," the latest occurrence of "Killer High: The Series," a docuseries that tracks the fentanyl epidemic done the lives it shatters and the communities trying to rebuild. The occurrence braids 3 communicative threads: a household learning to respire astir an bare seat astatine the meal table, researchers racing to rewire the addicted brain, and 2 men successful betterment who built a caller benignant of gathering country due to the fact that the aged ones wouldn't fto them speak.

The nighttime she left

The past speech Renee Patla had with her girl was astir drugs. They stood successful their location and talked plainly, parent to child, astir the risks of drinking, of pills, of the choices that await each teen walking retired the doorway connected a Friday night.

"For the remainder of my life, I tin spot her looking maine successful the eyes, saying, 'Mom, I'm not stupid. I would ne'er bash that to you oregon Dad, oregon to my brothers and my sisters,'" Renee recalls successful the episode. "Her nonstop words were, 'I don't privation to die.'"

Hours later, Olivia was gone. Renee describes the representation she cannot escape: her girl connected a stretcher, hairsbreadth fallen crossed her face, eyes hardly open. "We died with her that aforesaid day," she says. "To spot your girl connected a stretcher - it's an representation you tin ne'er get retired of your head."

The Patla household - parents Renee and Paul and siblings Jacob, Abigail and Luke - appears unneurotic connected camera, seated close, finishing 1 another's sentences the mode families bash erstwhile grief has made them fluent successful a shared language. Jacob, Olivia's brother, puts it simply: "We were beardown arsenic six and we're adjacent stronger arsenic 5 due to the fact that of that loss."

Abigail offers a quieter devastation. "As I get older, I commencement to hide her voice," she says. "And it's scary."

The household has channeled its grief into advocacy, participating successful schoolhouse presentations that task Olivia's photograph connected auditorium screens crossed the state - an irony not mislaid connected her siblings, who enactment she hated having her representation taken. "Even if these kids don't listen," Luke says, "it makes maine consciousness bully knowing that these radical and my sister aren't conscionable being forgotten."

For Renee, the ngo is idiosyncratic and perpetual. "Makes maine consciousness similar Olivia is inactive helping people," she says. "If redeeming a beingness is what my girl gave her beingness for - I honestly deliberation she would person been good with that, due to the fact that that's conscionable the benignant of idiosyncratic she was."

Rewiring the brain

The occurrence pivots from the Patla surviving country to the laboratory, wherever 2 researchers are pursuing radically antithetic strategies to interruption addiction's grip connected the brain.

Dr. Eric Garland, whose enactment connected mindfulness-oriented betterment enhancement, oregon MORE, has produced striking objective results, describes addiction arsenic a occupation that demands much than willpower. "Addiction is truly a hard-to-treat problem," helium says. "We request innovative solutions that tin not lone code the addictive behaviour itself, but besides the carnal and affectional symptom that drives addiction."

MORE is simply a intelligence grooming programme rooted successful neuroscience. In objective trials, Garland says, it has reduced opioid craving by 50 percent, cause relapse by 42 percent and dropout from attraction programs by 59 percent. The occurrence shows researchers fitting participants with EEG caps to measurement encephalon enactment arsenic images of opioids flash crossed a screen, tracking the neural signatures of craving successful existent time.

Dan Kruger, a nonrecreational motorcycle racer whose vocation near him with breached wrists, ankles, ribs, a fractured backmost and 5 concussions, became 1 of MORE's astir compelling lawsuit studies. He spent much than 2 decades connected regular opioids, stockpiling hundreds of pills successful a location safe. After discovering Garland's enactment done a podcast, Kruger committed to a slow, deliberate tapering process built astir guided meditation. Nine months later, helium was wholly opioid-free.

"My chronic symptom is astir apt down 20 percent, which whitethorn not dependable similar a lot," Kruger says. "But you person to support successful mind, I was connected brainsick amounts of opioids and present I'm connected zero."

At UC San Diego, neuroscientist Dr. Scott Sternson is pursuing a longer-range solution: artificial receptors engineered to hindrance specifically to addictive drugs and reverse their effects connected the encephalon without dulling the earthy reward system. In carnal models, rats with the receptors installed successful targeted encephalon regions drastically reduced their cocaine self-administration. The therapy, designed arsenic a past edifice for patients with agelong relapse histories, is apt a decennary from quality trials.

A country wherever you tin speak

The last enactment of "Finding Freedom" belongs to Danny and Howie, 2 men successful betterment who met astatine a sober surviving location successful Fresno and forged a enslaved that outlasted the program. The occurrence captures their easy, overlapping rapport - brothers not by humor but by survival.

Danny's communicative is simply a acquainted arc made vivid by its specificity. Raised successful a unchangeable Fresno location by loving parents, helium drifted from play drinking successful precocious schoolhouse to OxyContin, past heroin, past fentanyl - each measurement a logical escalation successful a marketplace that kept shifting beneath him. "I tried OxyContin and it was like, 'Oh, this is 1 of the champion feelings I've ever felt successful my life,'" helium says. When his begetter died unexpectedly successful 2022, Danny's past anchor gave way. "I conscionable didn't attraction anymore. I didn't privation to die, but I didn't attraction if I was live either."

Howie, who had been managing the sober surviving installation erstwhile Danny arrived, recalls their aboriginal dynamic with diagnostic understatement. "He was conscionable different dude coming from treatment." But the transportation deepened. After Howie moved out, the 2 men would speech by telephone precocious into the night, Danny sometimes falling dormant connected the line, maintaining the thread that kept some of them tethered.

Together, they identified a spread successful the betterment landscape. Traditional 12-step meetings, they found, often resisted frank treatment of fentanyl. "I would privation to stock what's inside," Howie says, "but there's been galore times wherever they'd halt you from sharing and they say, 'Well, you can't talk astir that here.'"

Their reply was Fentanyl Anonymous, a judgment-free fellowship unfastened to anyone struggling with immoderate substance. "All we bash is beforehand betterment successful these rooms," Danny says. The occurrence films a Monday nighttime gathering successful Fresno, wherever members present themselves, stock their stories without interruption, and observe milestones with cardinal tags marking their sobriety. One member, James, tells the country the fellowship saved his life. "There was a clip successful my beingness wherever I didn't adjacent deliberation that I could get 30 days," helium says, accepting a spot for 9 months clean.

Howie and Danny picture Fresno's betterment assemblage arsenic 1 of the strongest and astir divers successful the country, a favoritism they property to thing ineffable astir the Central Valley. "We don't cognize what it is," Danny says, "but there's thing successful Fresno that is antithetic than anyplace else."

"Finding Freedom" does not connection casual resolution. The Patlas inactive acceptable 5 places alternatively of six. Dan Kruger inactive manages chronic pain. Danny and Howie inactive reply the telephone erstwhile it rings precocious astatine night. But the occurrence makes a quiescent statement that state from fentanyl's grip is not a azygous infinitesimal of deliverance. It is simply a regular signifier - of grief, of science, of showing up to a country afloat of strangers and saying your sanction retired loud.

As Renee Patla says, looking into the camera with the dependable regard of a parent who has already survived the worst: "We're conscionable stronger. We're stronger due to the fact that we person Olivia watching implicit us."