Deadly Dose: Regional recovery center offers escape from fentanyl

ROAN MOUNTAIN, Tenn. (WJHL) – Daniel Sykes spends his days cooking meals in the Northeast Tennessee Regional Recovery Center. But two years ago, his life looked much different, as he was still using drugs.

“It’s terrible. It was horrible. It’s always fun at first, but then the fun goes away real quick and you have to do it, but you can’t do it all at the same time. It’s just a terrible drug,” Sykes said. “The withdrawal symptoms are 10 times worse, 10 times worse. I thought I was gonna die coming off that stuff.”

He used fentanyl for almost four years.

“It’s so dangerous. It’s a scary drug,” he said. “People who are used to doing it, [overdosing] is just a normal thing to them and it shouldn’t be. It should never be a normal thing to almost die.”

This isn’t his first go at recovery.

“I tried many times, but it’s so easy to say, ‘I’m not going to it,’ but it’s so hard to physically not do it,” he said. “I’ve said it and meant it with everything in me so many times, but it’s just so hard once your mind’s programmed that way. It’s so hard to unprogram it.”

So far, the center, which houses those in recovery who are convicted of drug crimes, is the only one that’s worked for him. Sykes said it’s mostly because of the staff.

“Seeing someone be successful and knowing they could do it all along, having that faith in them when they didn’t have it in themselves,” said Rachel Roden, who works at the center through Families Free. “It’s what makes the job rewarding.”

Roden said fentanyl has brought several people to the center.

“It’s playing a major role because it’s taking people’s lives,” said Roden. “It’s kind of in a flattening. There was a height of it in 2020. I lost my brother to an overdose, and that’s really when COVID started and it spiked up. There are still deaths daily. Our judges speak about it every week to our participants that the number they’re seeing going through the court system.”

The regional judges in on the program say recovery is what keeps the offenders from coming back to their courtrooms.

“The three things that I will say is treatment, treatment, treatment,” said Sullivan County Judge Jim Goodwin. “And facilities just like this where you can take them out of their playground and take them away from their playmates and you separate them from their life and you tell them, ‘You work on yourself, whatever caused you to start down the addiction road, and see if you can come out on the other side.'”

This is Sykes’ fifth or sixth recovery center, he told News Channel 11. But this time, he’s finally cooking up a good future.

“We’re here for a year, and I think that’s what makes a big difference. Because we’re on drugs so long for so many years, it takes a little while to get our brains back to normal,” he said. “I’ve tried quitting several times, but I’ve never left my people, places and things so it’s inevitably resulted in the same thing over and over and over. So I think I’m going to try something different and stay around here.”

On Thursday, News Channel 11 will air Deadly Dose, a special hour-long presentation at 7 p.m. to showcase the dangers of the fentanyl crisis in the Tri-Cities.

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