Inside Colorado’s Devastating Fentanyl Crisis

5280 Magazine - Lindsey B. King 5280 November 2022

The first sign of fentanyl withdrawal is the nonstop yawning, says Laura Beth “LB” Burkhalter. Then come the watery eyes and the runny nose. Then sweating, body shakes, heart palpitations, muscle spasms, diarrhea, and vomiting. The symptoms can begin within hours of a person’s last fix. “It was my substance of very little choice for 10 years,” Burkhalter says.

Growing up in Mississippi, Burkhalter says she had mental health struggles and the signs of a predisposition to addiction as a teenager, but it wasn’t until she experienced bone fractures in her legs and feet from athletics that she found the relief of pain meds. “My injuries wouldn’t heal,” she says, “and doctors gave me massive amounts of medication. I was using OxyContin and Vicodin and then fentanyl patches on top of that.”

When her prescriptions ran out, Burkhalter began buying pharmaceutical-grade fentanyl patches from cancer patients she knew who needed money more than pain relief. “The drug stops doing what you need it to do,” she says. “You need more and more to turn your brain off. You need it just to not be sick. I wasn’t strong enough to die or strong enough to live.”

But, tired of being sick and tired, Burkhalter tried to self-detox. She went cold turkey and suffered alone in an apartment in Louisiana for 17 days. When the misery was too much, she got some heroin and did just enough to make the hurt go away. “I was trying to portion control heroin,” she says. “I realized you can’t use heroin like a lady and then went back to my old routine.”

After bearing a son who was addicted to opioids at birth and nearly dying of an overdose, Burkhalter surrendered. Her family found a treatment center for her in Colorado, far away from her life in the South. A year of therapy allowed her to leave the drugs behind, but she didn’t trust herself to leave the recovery community. So, she didn’t. Instead, she found a job working in a treatment center in Lakewood and now also runs a sober-living home for women in Loveland.

Through that work she has learned a lot about how people view addiction. “People are opposed to harm reduction because they see it as enabling,” she says. “My view is that we are enabling them to survive so that they can find recovery. It took me more than 10 years to choose to live, but now I have the gift of recovery and know that life can be beautiful.”