Amber started drinking and smoking weed at 13, in the small town in Minnesota where her dad worked in a factory. Her family was dysfunctional, with its own history of substance use, and she soon realized that she drank differently than her friends.
At 19, she broke up with the man she thought she'd marry; they'd even looked at rings together. She now sees it as a key shift in her life, where she moved from abusing alcohol to "full-blown alcoholism," her predisposition to substance use tipped over the edge. Her mental health spiraled, she isolated herself from friends, and her college studies ground to a halt. In the 19 years since, alcohol has been replaced by meth, then heroin and now fentanyl.
Amber is one of the many substance users who's navigated the arrival of fentanyl into Colorado, a shift in the drug supply that's altered her life, contributed to the deaths of hundreds of Coloradans in just two years, and brought intense public scrutiny upon the pills that she smokes every day. She followed the legislative debate that dominated the spring and culminated with tighter penalties for anyone caught with the number of pills she uses on a daily basis.
She shook her head thinking about it. She's lived in her car since she was evicted from her Aurora apartment last year, and she wore scrubs because she was going to clean someone's house and the scrubs looked more professional. Her dark red hair was pulled back, standing in stark contrast to her eyes. They're already blue, but with colored contacts atop them, they were the color of a robin's egg.
"I don't deserve to go to prison for many, many years, just for (possessing pills)," she said, in her rapid-fire cadence. "I'm not a bad person. That's why I think we're just taking a giant leap backward. ...This isn't going to fix it, you know? It's not going to bring use down any. It's not."
Advocates for harsher penalties for fentanyl possession and distribution have countered that the drug is so deadly that it requires a robust response. Fentanyl is more potent than heroin or morphine, and it's introduction into the drug supply has become ubiquitous: Meth, cocaine and apparently legitimate pills have all been contaminated with it, putting a large swath of naive users at risk of ingesting a potent, often deadly drug.
Amber referenced the five people who fatally overdosed in Commerce City, apparently after taking fentanyl they believed was cocaine. It was "ridiculous" that they were sold laced drugs, and she said there should be punishment for the seller and sellers like them.
But for users, she said, jail or prison isn't a deterrent. She's been arrested before - in Minnesota, she pleaded guilty to felony drug possession, plus misdemeanors for possession, driving under the influence and child neglect (her daughter's since been adopted by the woman who taught Amber's parenting skills class). Since she moved to the metro six years ago, she's had arrests here, too, for petty theft. None of those arrests spurred her to sustained, long-term recovery.
"Because addiction is a disease," Amber said. "I've got this disease, and it can kill me, it can - it has killed me, I've been Narcan'd before. But for whatever reason - " she paused for a moment, and her voice drops. "I don't stop. You know? I don't know."
She'd been using meth when she moved to Denver in 2016; she'd never liked the taste of alcohol, but she'd drank because "I have to do something. I don't know why I have to do something, but." Meth replaced it, and then she began using heroin when she moved here.
Black tar was and is the heroin available here, and she developed frequent abscesses - a swollen infection common at injection sites - because of its impurity. She'd needed to be revived by Narcan at least six times, and she found that doctors and nurses were kinder to a substance user in the emergency room if they thought they were helping one of their own. So she began to keep a pair of scrubs with her.
She switched to fentanyl in early summer 2020, when her boyfriend brought a couple of pills. She now smokes a quarter of a pill at time. At first the pills cost $13 to $15 apiece, and the price has come down since: She nows buy 100 pills at a time for $250, from a seller she knows and trusts. Lisa Raville, who runs the Harm Reduction Action Center, previously estimated that a gram of heroin - the weight equivalent of about 10 pills - is about $80 in Denver.
On any given day, Amber smokes the equivalent of about 15 pills. The pills hit faster and harder than heroin, and users get crankier and more irritable faster, she said. One Denver provider who works with substance users said fentanyl replacing heroin in the street supply, and its more fast-burning high, means people have to use more frequently.
Amber said she's never overdosed on fentanyl, nor have her friends who are users. She smokes the pills, which means she doesn't have to hunt for a cooperative vein or risk infections from black tar heroin. In its own way, fentanyl has been a harm-reduction tool for her, she said.
By her own tally, she went through treatment several times in Minnesota, where it was available quickly and at no cost to low-income people. She just "wasn't ready," she said. She feels like maybe she's moving toward that point here, though.
"And that's not to say it's for lack of trying because I really did you know?" she said. "I put a lot of effort into it. And I don't know - I don't want to say 'what's wrong with me,' but I don't know why I'm not ready. I'm 38. Like, I don't know why I'm not there yet."
She's previously been on methadone, a medication used to blunt withdrawals and cravings, but without treatment and support, it's gone nowhere. She has mental health issues that have ebbed and flowed throughout her adult life, at times worsening the guilt and shame of her substance use. She's trying to find a therapist in Denver, but she was deeply critical of treatment offerings here.
"There is no access to treatment here, that I'm aware of," she said, adding that she's never been offered treatment options by official or provider she's come into contact with. It's a pervasive belief among users that she knows, and the fear and agony of withdrawal - which she said was worse than childbirth - is extreme.
If she were made aware of a robust treatment offering in Denver, would Amber make use of it?
"I would seriously consider it," she said, adding she'd want to "read the reviews" first. There's still time to fix her life, she said, and change things.
"That's one of the hardest things about getting sober, you have to change everything. Everything," she said. "You can't just hold on to some of your best friends for years - you have to let them go. You have to change people, places, things because they'll trigger you. And that's not easy."
Amber spoke on condition that her last name not be published. The Gazette has independently verified her identity and various details about her life and experiences.
