Heroin And Darien

Overcoming Opioids: Big Increase in Prescription Drugs Collected at Drop Boxes in CT

Al Jazeera Report on Heroin in the ‘Burbs Features Darien, Rowayton

Darien Man, 22, Overdoses on Heroin, Gets Naloxone

Heroin in Darien 4: Heroin’s Powerful Addictiveness & How To Break Loose

Police Now Will Administer Life-Saving Naloxone for Heroin Overdoses

Heroin in Darien 3: ‘I’m a Darien Resident in Recovery’

Heroin in Darien 2: Signs of Addiction in Your Kid & How to Reduce the Risk

Police: Darien Driver Found with Heroin, Guns Confiscated (for Now)

Heroin in Darien 1: How Bad is Heroin Use in Our Town? This Bad

Heroin in Darien: Part 2 with Panel of Recovery Experts, Cops, Doctors

Police Chief: Heroin Use is Up in Darien, What Parents Can Do

Police: Two Men Charged with Selling Heroin in Darien

Government & Politics

By David Gurliacci | February 18, 2017

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | December 27, 2015

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | December 5, 2015

Parents & Kids

By David Gurliacci | November 15, 2015

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | November 15, 2015

Parents & Kids

By David Gurliacci | November 13, 2015

Parents & Kids

By David Gurliacci | November 11, 2015

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | November 9, 2015

Community Organizations

By David Gurliacci | November 9, 2015

Community Organizations

By David Gurliacci | November 3, 2015

Parents & Kids

By David Gurliacci | October 22, 2015

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | August 21, 2015

More and more, Connecticut residents are taking smart precautions to keep opioid prescriptions out of the wrong hands as they use drop-off prescription collection boxes around the state, Gov. Dannel Malloy said in a statement released Wednesday. Darien has one of the boxes in the lobby of Police Headquarters at 25 Hecker Ave. Here’s the announcement (boldface added):

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy today announced that the State of Connecticut saw a dramatic increase in the amount of unused prescription medications that residents dropped off at collection boxes during 2016, with the state collecting a total of 33,803 pounds worth of various medications throughout the year. That amounts to a 43 percent increase compared to the amount that residents dropped off in 2015, when 23,651 pounds of unused drugs were collected by the state. “The increasing amount of unwanted medication that’s being collected at our drop-off boxes is a good sign that people in our state are taking the epidemic of prescription drug abuse seriously,” said Governor Malloy, who this year has introduced a legislative package of initiatives to further the state’s efforts with combating opioid addiction and overdoses.

Eighty percent of crime in and around Darien is related to drug abuse (including crimes committed to get money for drugs), Darien Police Sgt. Jeremiah Marron told an Al Jazeera America cable news reporter on a segment about heroin in the suburbs. Al Jazeera America broadcast the 3-minute-15-second segment on Dec. 21 and posted it to its Facebook account on Dec. 23.

A 22-year-old Darien man overdosed on heroin and received an injection of Narcan, a brand of Naloxone, from first responders after a family member found him, according to Darien police. A Darien EMS-Post 53 ambulance which responded to the Nov. 23 call took the man to Stamford Hospital for treatment. He survived the incident, police said. Darien EMS-Post 53 crews are trained in the use of Naloxone, which can quickly counteract the dangers of a heroin overdose, although the effect is temporary and further treatment at a hospital is soon needed.

Heroin and opioid painkillers are so powerfully addictive that no method of ending the addiction is 100 percent effective, although treatment specialists have ways of increasing the odds of success. According to Dr. John Douglas, clinical director of the Outpatient Addiction Program at Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, drug therapy doesn’t always work, and counseling by itself doesn’t always work — but taken together, the success rate is pretty high. Highly addictive

Heroin and other opioids “are some of the most addictive drugs in the world,” Douglas said at the Nov. 5 panel discussion“Straight Talk-Lifting the Veil: Facing the Hidden Drug Epidemic in Darien” held at Town Hall. “That term, ‘addiction’ is, I think slippery for people.

Darien police have announced that police officers have been trained in using naloxone, a medicine that can dramatically turn around some heroin overdoses for temporary periods (although the patient will need to get to a hospital for further treatment). A Darien EMS volunteer recently described how Darien EMS-Post 53 used naloxone (specifically the “Narcan” brand of naloxone) on a patient twice within a few days. What follows is the police announcement and an excerpt from a recent Darien.com article about the use of the drug, which was described at the Nov. 5 “StraightTalk” panel discussion. Here’s the Darien Police Department announcement:

Over the past week, officers from the Darien Police Department were trained in the use of naloxone (“Narcan”).

Nick deSpoelberch had it all — fine job as dean of students at a prestigious New York City private school, wife, kids and nice house back in Darien — until he didn’t, undone by heroin. Then he recovered. Now the Darien resident is an addiction and mental health counselor in Bridgeport making a third of what he used to make. But he’s free of heroin and happy. deSpoelberch related his story Nov.

With cheap heroin becoming easily available in and near Darien, you can do a number of things to make it less likely that your child will become addicted to it or prescription opioid drugs similar to it, according to experts at a recent panel discussion in Darien. Advice from members of the panel discussion, “Straight Talk-Lifting the Veil: Facing the Hidden Drug Epidemic in Darien” (which Darienite.com is combining with previously reported advice from Police Chief Duane Lovello) at seemed to fall into three categories:

Preventing opioid prescription medications from getting into the child’s hands at home (after a doctor prescribed them either for the child or for a family member);
Countering the influence of your child’s friends who could lead him or her into drug use;
Taking more active steps when your suspicions are aroused. Parents should also recognize that athletes at school also have an incentive to abuse pain medications to keep playing a sport after an injury. __________

This article, the second in a series “Heroin in Darien” based on the “Straight Talk-Lifting the Veil: Facing the Hidden Drug Epidemic in Darien” panel discussion on Nov. 5, looks at what parents, potential addicts and others can do to prevent addiction or begin to deal with it.

After heroin was found in a pickup truck driven by a 25-year-old Darien man, cops confiscated the rifle that was in his car and then 66 other guns in his home, police said. A police sergeant had described the incident as one involving a man going to his heroin dealer to trade his gun for more of the drug, but the sergeant, Jeremiah Marron, said police were no longer asserting that. Police gave this account (involving accusations not proven in court) of the incident:

Police had been suspected Joezef Tarnowsky, 25, of 9 Richmond Dr. was violating drug law. At 11:20 a.m., when a police officer was parked on Old Kings Highway North, he saw Tarnowsky’s gray GMC pickup truck drive by with dark tinted windows and no visible sticker on the window indicating that the tint met state regulations. The officer stopped the truck near the intersection of Old Kings Highway North and Park Lane.

A 21-year-old without a pulse. A 19-year-old, eyes rolled back, lying on the side of a road. The same young man had been revived from an overdose two days before. These incidents happened in the past two weeks, police say. In Darien, according to police, heroin and related painkillers are wrecking lives of addicts and traumatizing their families at a faster pace in the past year, shocking veteran detectives, putting Post 53 teenagers into disturbing scenes and contributing to crimes in town.

The second of two presentations on heroin use in Darien continues on Thursday night, Nov. 5, at Darien Town Hall Auditorium. The two-part series, sponsored by Darien Depot and Darien Police Department, is scheduled to last an hour, from 7 to 8 p.m. at Town Hall, 2 Renshaw Road. The panel discussion, geared especially for parents, is titled “Straight Talk-Lifting the Veil: Facing the Hidden Drug Epidemic in Darien – Part 2.” The presentation panel includes:

Ingrid Gillespie – Communities4Action
Roody Joseph, M.Ed., LPC – Center for Discovery and Change
John Douglas, M.D. – Silver Hill Hospital
Officer Michael Cummings – Darien Police Department
Sargent TJ White – Darien Police Department
Nick deSpoelberch, Recovery Speaker

Space is limited, please register for the program at dariendepot.eventbrite.com.

Heroin is cheap in Darien and the region, is available to youth, and in fighting it the “best tool we can possibly have in this battle is an engaged and active parent who knows what’s going on in their kids’ lives,” Police Chief Duane Lovello says. “We do have investigations going on right now, as we speak, into heroin ‘trafficking,’ so to speak and use here in Darien,” he told the Police Commission on Wednesday. “We are seeing a significant uptick in heroin usage,” he continued. “We are seeing more of it being marketed in Darien, we are seeing more of it being used in Darien. […] That’s not just affecting Darien, but it’s affecting […] the entire Northeast.”

« August 2022 »

Darien Police released this statement on the arrests of two men, Joshua Sanchez of Ansonia and Roberto Cales of Seymour, both 24, on an accusation they were selling heroin in Darien. Here’s the news release:

Over the past several weeks, the Darien Police Department Selective Enforcement Unit (S.E.U.) developed information involving the delivery and sale of heroin in the northwest section of town. From Jan. 1 to July 31, 2015 there have been twenty-eight (28) confirmed heroin related overdose fatalities in Fairfield County. That number does not include the dozens of non-fatal heroin related overdoses that have occurred in our area as well. Investigators determined that during the evening hours of Aug.