If Connecticut stays on its current track, the state will have more than 1,000 opioid-related overdoses this year. In an effort to push for more public awareness and conversation surrounding substance abuse, MADE in Madison and Madison Youth & Family Services is sponsoring a special program on Thursday Dec. 7 at the Madison Senior Center aimed at giving families to tools to discuss and combat the effects of opioid abuse.

The program start with a screening of Chasing the Dragon: The Life of an Opiate Addict, a documentary aimed at educating young people about addiction, followed by a discussion led by New Haven FBI agent Charlie Grady. There will also be a Hidden in Plain Sight display—a program developed the Connecticut Association of Prevention Professionals that provides a model of teen’s bedroom for adults to walk through to try and spot the signs of drug use.

Madison Youth & Family Services Director Scott Cochran said the main objective of the program is to inform residents about the opioid crisis on the shoreline and try to improve how communities discuss and view substance abuse.

Cochran said while the substance abuse rates and overdoses in Madison are lower than some other places on the shoreline, they do occur and opioid and similar (but more potent) drugs like Fentanyl and Carfentanil are in shoreline towns.

Across the state and even in Madison towns are experiencing an increase in opioid-based overdoses deaths year over year. According to the State Medical Examiner’s Office, there’s been an 85 percent increase in overdose deaths tied to opioids over the past three years and Fentanyl and Carfentanil are attributed to a rapidly increasing number of those deaths.

So what does the opioid crisis look like on the shoreline? It doesn’t look exactly like the crisis does in major cities or in some of the more rural parts of the crisis that have been completely consumed by opioid addiction, but Project Courage Executive Director Andy Buccaro said the crisis is presenting in maybe less visual but still destructive ways.

“I know for a fact that one school on the shoreline has already had two parents die this year from an overdose, so you have kids going to school and I mean, how do you even explain that to your peers? How do you explain that to the community?” he asked. “There is that very direct piece that happens and then you go out and see how it maybe gets more subtle after that.”

When people come to Project Courage, “alcohol and pot are typically those drugs that people are going to use, but now what we see is opioids—[particularly] heroin—are the third-most-cited substance used and that is a dramatic change,” Buccaro said.

The prevalence of opioids—anything from heroin to prescription painkillers—has completely changed the way addiction manifests in many cases as well, according to Buccaro, a licensed drug and alcohol counselor. Buccaro said about 10 years ago, how a kid progressed from one substance to another—alcohol to pot, pot to stronger drugs, etc.—stretched over a significant window of time. Now a multi-year progression has shrunk down to just a few months.

“Now we will see a kid go and get their wisdom teeth out and get a script [prescription] for 30 Percocet and literally with in a few months have progressed through that decade process, so it has sped up the addiction process dramatically and because of that it is affecting a much greater population,” he said.

How young people are getting involved with these drugs tends to differ from what the public might naturally assume. Buccaro said opioids are generally used in combination with other drugs and using an opioid based drug doesn’t necessarily mean kids are injecting heroin, which can be taken in pill form, something that’s easy enough for a teen to just quickly pop at a party.

“They think they are taking a pill and they are not realizing that they are starting a potential heroin addiction and that they just opened a huge door,” he said. “I think our culture is so comfortable with pills.”

So what is to be done? Both Buccaro and Cochran said a lot of it has to do with early intervention and providing resources to those in need. In Madison, Cochran said his department is concerned about youths getting involved with opioids, but also the effect living with someone or having a family member who is suffering from addiction can have on a student.

“It’s not necessarily that we are worried about the kids using them, but maybe they are exposed to a parent or a family member with a serious addiction issue and how that affects their schooling, their development, and their social and emotional health,” he said. “…What we wind up doing is we hear from kids who might approach counselors at a school or it might come up in a referral here that family member is struggling with an addiction of some form. Part of the struggle is for them to feel safe to talk about it and feel that it is OK for them to bring up.”

Cochran said the general stigma around addiction, particularly in a community like Madison that places a high premium on success and perfection, often leads people to not seek help for themselves or others because of how it might look. For that reason, Cochran said a big part of his department’s approach to this issue has been to offer students and parents multiple resources in conjunction with the school system and the police.

“Substance abuse often gets framed as a character weakness and it often becomes a source of embarrassment or something that you seek to hide rather than seek help with,” he said. “We would encourage kids to find an adult that they can trust and somebody that they know can hear them and support them and gradually work with them to get help. It is just any port in the storm.”

The screening of Chasing the Dragon is on Thursday, Dec. 7 at 6 p.m. at the Madison Senior Center. This film is not suitable for children. For more information on this program or other services and support provided by Madison Youth & Family Services, visit www.madisonyouthservices.org or call 203-245-5645.