Couple lobbies for safe injection sites in Philadelphia

Newsrooms across the commonwealth have spent years documenting the opioid crisis in their own communities. But now, in the special project State of Emergency: Searching for Solutions to Pennsylvania’s Opioids Crisis, we are marshalling resources to spotlight what Pennsylvanians are doing to try to reverse the soaring number of overdose deaths.

WITF is releasing more than 60 stories, videos and photos throughout July. This week, you will find stories about initial response and how addition affects families.

 

(Glenside) — Trish Kinkle knows what it is to text her husband frantically to learn if he is still alive. How it feels to scour the bank account to see if has drained it to buy heroin. What it’s like to find him overdosed. How to tell three toddlers daddy has to go away to get help.

For all these reasons and more, Bill and Trish Kinkle left their suburban neighborhood one night earlier this year for a meeting at a community center in the epicenter of Philadelphia’s opioid epidemic. They wanted to tell their story, knowing their position might anger people they care about.

They wanted to speak in favor of a safe-injection site in Philadelphia: a place where people in addiction can use drugs safely, under the supervision of medics who can reverse an overdose.

In the community center, Trish listened as people spoke about their own family members in addiction. About walking their children to school past the heroin encampments that litter the neighborhood.

The Kinkles knew what that looked like, too — they lived in Kensington for more than a decade. Trish, originally from Roanoke, Va., had a job in a children’s ministry. Bill was originally from Kensington and recovering from heroin addiction at a recovery house affiliated with Trish’s church. She was drawn to his gregariousness, to the way he felt called to help people — he had been a paramedic and a nurse — just as she was.

They married, moved to a house in Kensington and then, three years ago, north to a duplex in Montgomery County. They were raising a son, with twins on the way.

And they were attending funerals. Friends from Bill’s recovery house who had danced at their wedding were dying of overdoses. Then Trish noticed cash was disappearing from their joint bank account.

It took months for her to face that Bill was using again. But she told him that as long as he kept fighting, she would stay.

Bill tried counseling. He tried quitting cold turkey. Finally, they told the kids that dad needed to go away for a longer time.

He has been sober for six months with the help of medically-assisted treatment. He believes he would have died without Trish.

“I don’t just see myself in recovery,” he said. “I see my family in recovery.”

At the community meeting, Trish listened to her old neighbors’ concerns.  She thought of all those long nights waiting for Bill to come home. About how they will always measure their lives by how long he stays sober.

She spoke to the mothers in the room: She knew a safe-injection site was a hard idea to wrap their heads around. But it could help ease the pain of the neighborhood — of having to see people injecting drugs on the street — and ease the pain of families like hers, she said.

“If it means that my children have a father that comes home to them, it’s worth it,” she said.