'I ain't found it yet.' No line this mother won't cross to save her addicted daughter
Renae moves hedge clippers, gloves and used coffee mugs off a table in her backyard and wipes it down. She scans the lawn behind her modest home in the rural South for folding chairs and pulls up three. There are paper plates for pizza. Renae is about to host a gathering with a singular goal: saving lives.
"Hey baby, you sit right here," Renae says to Christina, the first guest to arrive. "Just get your stuff ready."
Christina opens a Mountain Dew and arranges her supplies: a new syringe, a lighter, a tiny metal cup and a baggie with brownish powder clumped in one corner. A test strip will confirm it includes fentanyl, the opioid that's driving overdose deaths in the United States to record highs — an estimated 112,000 lives lost in the latest 12-month period.
Christina will use the powder anyway to appease her addiction and numb the pain of abuse, lost children and despair. On fentanyl, Christina gets temporary relief from three mental health diagnoses she struggles to manage: depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder.
Renae occasionally monitors illegal drug use at her home for Christina and a few dozen other people she's grown close to over the years. It's an informal, rarely discussed version of the controversial overdose prevention centers, also known as supervised consumption sites, where trained staff supervise people using drugs. Those clinics are endorsed by the American Medical Association and other leading medical groups but condemned by critics who say they sanction, even endorse, drug use.
Renae bustles around, looking for her glasses, pulling back her hair and chatting with a few other guests who have now arrived. But Christina's in a hurry. It's been nine hours since her last shot of an opioid. She's anxious and has that feeling she's going to be sick — the early signs of withdrawal.
Still, Christina has taken the time to come to Renae's backyard because she trusts Renae to keep her alive.
Much of what happens next may be illegal, so this story will not include full names, locations or detailed timelines.
Renae, who
