The opioid crisis is reaching epic proportions across the nation, and Iowa is no exception.

Data from the Iowa Department of Human Services shows opioid related-deaths doubled between 2005 and 2016, and the problem isn’t going to fix itself.

More than 75 Ames residents, university students and other concerned citizens gathered in the Bessie Myers Auditorium at the Mary Greeley Medical Center Thursday night to hear from activists and medical professionals, as well as the parents of opioid overdose victims. The event was part of Story County Community Conversations, which seek to bring attention to pivotal issues.

“As a mother, I’m normally able to come up with a solution to fix things,” said Natasha Terrones, who lost her 25-year-old daughter to synthetic opioids in 2016. “But there was nothing I could do to fix this.”

Terrones’ daughter, Tashara Burnside, overdosed on U-47700, a synthetic opioid known as “U4” or “pink.” She was found unresponsive in her Ames apartment on Dec. 10, 2016 after ingesting the substance, and was rushed to the Mary Greeley Medical Center.

“The next six days were the longest days of my life,” Terrones said. “I remember thinking, ‘How did we get here? How did this happen?’”

That’s when neurologists delivered Terrones some world-shattering news: Both sides of her daughter’s brain were completely inactive. Knowing her first born child would never recover from the brain damage, Terrones let doctors take her daughter off life support.

“At 10:01 p.m. I made the most difficult decision of my life,” Terrones remembered. “The last two years have been a wave of emotion for me. I’m still angry, but I’m learning how to use that anger in a positive way.”

Soon after losing her daughter, Terrones joined the Story County Opioid Task Force. She has worked to raise awareness of the rising threat of opioids ever since.

Diane Proffitt lost one of her children to opioids, as well. Her son, Jordan Charles, passed away after unknowingly injecting himself with a dose of heroin laced with an extremely deadly opiate.

“When we got his autopsy back we found his heroine was laced with carfentanil,” Proffitt said as the room fell gravely silent. “My son was killed by an elephant tranquilizer. Two months later, another one of his friends died from it. They had no clue.”

Charles was preceded in death by his lifelong friend, whom Proffitt only referred to as Frankie. Proffitt said she was worried a whole generation of young adults were going to see dramatic consequences from the opioid crisis.

The speakers also spoke of a new medicine called Naloxone, also known as Narcan, which can immediately reverse the effects of a narcotics overdose.

“You may see reports that deaths are going down, but overdoses are still on the rise,” said Ames Police Commander Geoff Huff.

Community Conversations workers handed out free doses of Narcan to the audience as they left the event. The medicine can be used for any type of narcotics overdose.

“We started carrying Narcan in February 2017 and we’ve saved six people’s lives since then,” Huff said.

Anybody can purchase Narcan from a pharmacy. It is administered through the nose, like a nasal spray, and it’s impossible to overdose on it.

“You don’t have to be a nurse or a doctor to do it,” said Jade Sporrer, an advocate with Youth and Shelter Services. “You just have to administer it into somebody’s nasal cavity. It’s highly recommended you go to the hospital after someone wakes up from an overdose.”

Sporrer also said that CPR should be administered before Narcan if someone doesn’t have a heartbeat.

The proximity of Proffitt’s and Terrones’ stories really hit home to Brea Baumhover and Emily Carr, both juniors in family consumer science (FCS) at Iowa State.

“The fact that it’s so close to home really freaked me out,” Carr said. “You think this wouldn’t be in Ames, but it is.”

As a soon to be educator, Baumhover worries that elementary school children won’t be properly informed about just how dangerous these drugs are.

“A lot of schools are getting rid of their health teachers already,” she said. “So FCS has to take this over along with eight other categories in our curriculum, but that doesn’t leave enough time for drug education. This needs special attention.”