5 personal stories of fentanyl addiction and redemption in Salt Lake City

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — Steven Glenn, 53, was celebrating his 107th day of being clean. He had spent 41-years of his life battling addiction to heroin and eventually fentanyl. He said he was first introduced to drugs at age 12.

“It was scary at the age of 12 on, having to go from a happy, carefree child to having to take care of my brothers and make sure they went to school, to steal from stores to make sure that they got fed,” said Glenn. He watched both of his parents struggle with addiction and then he started using drugs more and more.

He ended up on the streets without anyone in his life who could help him find a different way.

“I’ve been dealing with those demons for so long, it’s just become natural. It’s a way of life,” said Glenn. But it is a way of life he wants to change. That is why he is at Odyssey House and on the path to recovery.

Salt Lake City, like many other urban centers, is dealing with the pervasiveness of fentanyl and its tragic human cost.

“We see the effects of this evilness every day on our streets in Salt Lake City,” said Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown. “And yet we know this problem is not exclusive to the metro area. No community can isolate itself from the constant flood of increasing availability of illicit drugs.”

Calling fentanyl the most dangerous drug on the street, Brown said most of the fentanyl the department sees comes from Mexico and is cartel-made. The goal, he said, is to chase it from dealer to supplier to cartel. He referenced a recent arrest the department made of an individual in possession of more than 25,000 fentanyl pills.

“Anytime you take drugs and profit, and put it into a situation where there’s money involved, it creates violence,” said Brown. “It does. And that’s the sad part is the cartels, they don’t care how deadly these drugs are, how deadly fentanyl is.”

No community is immune to fentanyl and Brown said Salt Lake City cannot arrest its way out of fentanyl use. “I think the thing to remember is that addiction is an illness. It knows no socio-economic boundaries, nobody is immune to it,” he said.

Brown said having services available for those struggling with addiction is critical. Salt Lake City has numerous recovery options, including Odyssey House, a residential substance abuse program.

At its downtown Salt Lake City location, the Deseret News sat down with Steven Glenn and four other men: Leonel Padilla, 31, Gabriel Goldner, 44, Francisco Campos, 42 and Chase Markus, 35. All of them have a story to tell about how they became addicted to drugs, started using fentanyl and ended up at the Odyssey House on the path to recovery.

Steven Glenn: Life not defined by addiction

Glenn has lived on the streets. He described fentanyl as a shameful experience. “I’ve already had to live with the fact that I’m a junkie and to be associated with that crowd made it even more dirty for me, a lot of regret,” he said, adding the pills only made him well enough to take on the next morning.

As Glenn has reflected on the past four decades, he said he realized he has a need to belong to someone or something, and to know that he is worth it. It means a lot to him any time someone listens to him, to his story. He spent the past 41 years in addiction and 26 years in prison.

“I lost who I am,” said Glenn. “The morals and values that my grandfather taught me, I brushed them aside and became someone else.” He cannot count the number of family members and friends he has lost. His three daughters grew up without him. But Glenn has come to himself again.

“I’ve been able to find myself again and realize that I have worked and that I am somebody that has a life that isn’t defined by my addiction anymore.”

This is his fifth time in recovery and without a strong support system, he said it is difficult to keep going — to believe that he is worth it.

“You try to go to church and people look at your tattoos and they turn and walk away. Nobody caring enough for the next person,” said Glenn, adding not having family support can amplify the difficulties.

“People do not know how to offer that (love and attention) to an addict because they’re afraid of what they see on the news or what they hear, what they read in the newspapers or what they hear from other people,” said Glenn. “It makes it hard for us to be OK with ourselves because of what someone else thinks about us.”

Right now he does not feel worthy of forgiveness for the wrongs he has done in his life. He said he used to make meth and hurt many people. “The pain, the heartache and the grief that comes along with what I’ve done in my life, in the 41 years that I’ve been an addict, that’s why it’s so hard for me to forgive myself.”

“I want so much to be able to say I’m sorry to the individuals that I’ve hurt by the choices that I’ve made.”

Leonel Padilla: Self–forgiveness to move forward

When Padilla went to a park, he saw people going in and out of a public bathroom getting high. He noticed one man smoking something off of aluminum. That is when he found fentanyl.

“At first, it feels like you’re on top of the world, but then the downfall is ridiculous. In a matter of weeks, you can start being at the lowest of your low,” said Padilla. He said he has seen people die right in front of him after overdosing on fentanyl.

He said his addiction started after he was mistreated and molested at age 10. He did not know who to turn to and bottled his emotions inside. That same year was the first year he saw someone do drugs for the first time.

“I was 10 going to a baseball game, getting out of the bus to catch the train with my mom and I was seeing three guys shoot up heroin,” said Padilla. His mother whisked him away, but he still remembers the image. Growing up in an inner city, he said he felt like he had to join a gang to keep himself safe — even though he did not want that lifestyle since his uncle was killed when he was 13.

When Padilla was 16, he joined a gang. For nearly two decades, he has battled drug addiction. “I’ve had clean time. I used to run two construction companies in Maryland,” said Padilla. But the process of getting into recovery involved identifying emotional and mental barriers, and in his words, realizing “the drug was doing me.” He started dealing drugs to make ends meet.

“Addiction isn’t because you wanted to do it,” said Padilla. “It’s a choice over getting rid of the pain.” He said everyone he has met in addiction has wanted love and not had a place to go to find it and heal from trauma.

A year ago, Padilla tried to take his own life “because I thought I was so worthless, that (my two kids) were better off without me, for that simple fact that I lost so much time with them.”

“One day, it just finally clicked that because I survived suicide, I had a couple overdoses before I came to the (Odyssey) House, and I was just tired of being tired,” said Padilla. “I was tired of fighting the demon. I just wanted to let go of a lot of the pain.”

Padilla said he had to learn to forgive himself to move forward. “Because just like in the Bible, it says that Jesus died on the cross, so everybody’s sins could get forgiven. But at the end of the day, yes, everybody could get forgiven, but it all starts within yourself.”

In recovery, Padilla said he has learned to live in the moment and also about the power of love.

“If you actually love what you’re doing, time becomes irrelevant. It doesn’t exist, so that’s what makes life,” said Padilla. He feels like he now has a responsibility and an opportunity to show people they can change and to inspire hope.

“Now I can stand tall, proud and look in the mirror and be happy of what I see because at the end of it all, every trial and tribulation I’ve been through is what made me who I am and all I want to do — I want to raise awareness and help people.”

Gabriel Goldner: Live in the present moment

Goldner found fentanyl after he became addicted to prescription opioids following a surgery where he was prescribed methadone morphine for the pain. Though his doctor had told him they would come up with a long-term plan for getting off opioids after surgery, the plan did not materialize. The price of fentanyl was cheaper than opioids, so he switched over.

“I was just sick all the time and never really had the great euphoria. It was just like a battle of being one type of sick and another type of sick, sick from not doing it,” said Goldner.

In his addiction, Goldner said he lost what matters most to him. “I lost my purpose, my self-respect, my business, my child.”

For Goldner to get clean, he said he had to learn not to be codependent. He said he could not get clean while being in a romantic relationship with someone who was not clean. Five days before he came to the Odyssey House, he broke up with his partner of four years.

His child, who is just over a year old, inspires him to keep pressing on and working to get back his self-worth.

His son “doesn’t know what a drug is or a drug addiction, and that gives me so much value,” said Goldner, getting visibly emotional. “He just reaches for me and smiles, and just everything’s perfect in that moment.”

Goldner also finds hope through living in the present moment. He said he used to tell his former partner, “There is no past, there is no future. There is this eternal moment, there will only always be this moment.”

Francisco Campos: Rebuilding your life is possible

Campos started on prescription opioids, but then switched over to the fake ones that were actually fentanyl. He first got hooked after he injured himself at work. He said he sold them as well as taking them.

“It was shameful,” said Campos. “I took advantage of a lot of people selling it to them, using their weakness against them. And then mine, I started getting weak, too. It started eating me up, I lost a lot of stuff from it.”

He never wants to go back to that life.

“I had plenty of friends who had went down that same path and either overdosed or committed suicide doing it, too. It was just a rough time,” said Campos. “I knew what the possibilities were.” But he thought he was different. That was until he was arrested.

He said his biggest barrier to getting clean was himself. After he did some time in jail, he said he used again and then had a scary overdose. “It was a little eye-opener to let me know that I had a problem and I just didn’t want to admit it.”

During the period of time of his life when he was using, Campos said he was not his true self and felt like he lost the critical aspects of his life.

“I lost self-respect, respect of others, respect from others, time with my children, jobs, it financially destroyed me. I spent everything, all of my savings. I just ran through everything, I had no self-worth,” said Campos. “It’s just something I’m rebuilding now.”

Campos said he knows he can turn his life around and make something of it. He also said he wished people would not judge a book by its cover because you never know what a person has gone through or what they are currently going through.

Every day he finds hope by thinking about his kids. Whenever he sees them, they do not look at him as the person who had struggles, they see him as dad and are just happy to see them, he said. The people around him who help him also give him a spark of hope.

“The perfect strangers that are willing to help, these people that don’t know you at all, but they’re just willing to put themselves out there,” said Campos. “Even if you were to fail, they’re still going to be there to help bring you back.”

Campos said he wants to be like them — he plans to spend his time giving back.

Chase Markus: Starting the path of forgiveness

When Markus was 15 years old, he got hooked on heroin. Due to his drug use, he had open heart surgery at 26 and was put on opioids to deal with the pain. He went through his three month prescription in only a month and half.

He could not find heroin on the streets, so he switched to fentanyl.

Markus said he saw family members use drugs to form connections. When he and his then-girlfriend were 15, they started using together and it escalated. “It made me drift to the wrong crowds, but that was the crowd that made me feel like I was wanted and I felt like I was accepted by that crowd.”

Throughout his life, Markus has overdosed 11 times. “I just didn’t really care because it made me not have any feelings,” he said. “I knew the risk. I just didn’t care because I didn’t want to feel my emotions or deal with past traumas.”

During his addiction, Markus said he lost a lot of family members and he turned into an awful person. He said he used people and did what he had to get drugs. “I want them to understand that I understand that I probably won’t be able to get those relationships back and I’m OK with that. I want them to understand that I’m also working on myself and getting the help I need.”

Markus regrets not being able to spend time with his grandpa before he died.

“I feel like I lost that time with him, that I should have been there,” said Markus. “I beat myself up over it since. But since I’ve come to Lighthouse (recovery home), I feel like through my therapy sessions, I’ve learned that I am worth it, that I am lovable, that I can get my self-respect back.”

“I wish I could go back and say sorry to all the people’s relationships that I ruined by selling drugs to them,” said Markus, adding he ran away at 16 and joined a gang. “I ended up helping them do things that I have to live with, which caused me to get stabbed and shot at. Spent 13 out of the last 17 locked up due to the gangs.”

To get clean, Markus said he had to fight the narrative that he was not worth it. By gaining self-worth, he gained the will to get and stay sober.

Markus started to tear up when he talked about his father. “I didn’t have my dad in my life for the longest time due to my addiction and I just barely got him back in my life.” He says his phone calls from his father have lifted his spirits and gives him hope. His dad tells him he will never give up on him, he will always love him and he is proud of him everyday.

“I’m still trying to figure out how to forgive myself,” said Markus, adding that through the impact letters — letters program participants write about the impact of their addiction on others — he thinks he can start that process.