Serena Gunn Stornello stood at the front of Methodist University’s Matthews Ministry Center, a microphone in one hand and her journal in the other, in observance of International Overdose Awareness Day.
“I’m standing up here today because I’ve lost some people,” Gunn Stornello, founder and owner of Health Holistic, a substance use disorder nonprofit, said to the 18 people who sat in the church pews before her on Thursday. “I stand here today honoring them.”
Her list was long. She lost two aunts within nine days of each other. In a single year, she lost her friends Justin, Pam and Liz. She also lost Paige, a peer she met through substance use disorder treatment. Each died of a drug overdose, Gunn Stornello said.
As Gunn Stornello passed the microphone, the names of others lost to overdose and the side effects of substance use disorders echoed throughout the chapel. Joshua, a former co-worker. Ryan, a step-brother. Angel, a sister-in-law. Hollis Crittendon, a recovery mentor and the founder of Choices for Recovery in Charlotte.
Last year, 141 people died of an overdose in Cumberland County, down from 190 in 2023, according to data from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. It was the largest one-year drop since 2011, when NCDHHS began publishing the information on its website.
While there were fewer overdose deaths, the number of people visiting the county’s emergency departments for overdoses more than doubled between April and June.
“It’s something we really need to monitor,” Louis Leake, Fayetteville Comprehensive Treatment Center’s clinic director, said at the Aug. 19 meeting of the Cumberland-Fayetteville Opioid Response Team (C-FORT). “I know that there’s been a lot of efforts going on in the last couple of weeks, getting Narcan out there and everything, so my hope is that it will start to make a difference and bring those numbers back down.”
Narcan, the brand name for the opioid overdose reversing drug naloxone, is one of the most-cited contributors to the drop in overdose death rates across the country.
C-FORT members and staff from the Cumberland County Department of Public Health spent three Mondays in August distributing naloxone to 274 businesses and residents along Bragg Boulevard, Cedar Creek Road and U.S. 301. The areas were selected for their high number of 911 calls made for overdoses.
In 2024, C-FORT members distributed close to 5,000 naloxone kits into the community, coordinator Greg Berry said at the Overdose Awareness Day event. He said one-fifth of those were successfully used to reverse overdoses, based on what was reported back to community outreach workers.
“That’s 1,000 times that a life was saved in our county because of the naloxone distribution that we’re doing,” Berry said.
At the awareness day event, attendees prepared close to 500 naloxone kits, each containing two vials of intravenous naloxone, two syringes and instructions on how to administer the drug. Berry said the supply should last the community outreach workers two to three months.
“We go out every day, and every day we see these people,” Deanna Braggs, rapid response leader for the City of Fayetteville’s Office of Community Safety, said at the event. “We love these people because it’s possibly the last time we’ll see these people.”
Berry worries about how impactful naloxone will be as the drug supply changes and new drugs are mixed with illicit opioids. The county has seen an increase in xylazine, a veterinary tranquilizer, with 70% of drug samples sent to the UNC Street Drug Analysis Lab through November 2023 testing positive for xylazine. The percentage is expected to increase as C-FORT sends more samples to the lab as it partners with Fayetteville State University to study the tranquilizer.
Of the 30 samples already collected and tested as part of the study, a new drug is increasingly being mixed into the county’s illicit opioid supply: medetomidine, another veterinary tranquilizer. The drug is 100 to 200 times more potent than xylazine, causing severe withdrawal symptoms that require treatment in a hospital’s intensive care unit, according to a report on the drug’s presence in Philadelphia from the city’s public health department.
“We’re headed in the right direction, but we need to keep our guard up,” Berry told the crowd at the overdose awareness event on Thursday. “Don’t let our guard down. Stay vigilant.”
International Opioid Awareness Day, officially observed on Aug. 31 annually, leads into National Recovery Month, celebrated every September. C-FORT and its members are hosting events throughout the month for residents with substance use disorders and their loved ones to celebrate their recovery journeys. A calendar of events is available on C-FORT’s website.
CityView Reporter Morgan Casey is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Morgan’s reporting focuses on health care issues in and around Cumberland County and can be supported through the News Foundation of Greater Fayetteville.
