Opioid epidemic: ‘She gave me something to live for’
Originally published in the Douglas County News-Press.
Rebekah Barstnar, 23, a heroin addict, lay on a cot in a Douglas County jail cell, vomiting repeatedly, too weak to walk to the nearby bathroom. Pain in her back deepened, her bones ached, her skin felt as if it were crawling. She felt cold, then hot, then cold.
She hadn’t had a fix for several hours and withdrawal was setting in. After a night’s stay, she was released to her mother, Kathie Barstnar, who took her back to their Lone Tree home.
As the pain in her back worsened, the two women realized Rebekah might be pregnant. They rushed to Sky Ridge Medical Center, where doctors confirmed she was not only pregnant, but also in the late stages of labor.
Thirty minutes later, at 3:12 p.m. on Aug. 30, Rebekah’s daughter, Penelope, was born. About a month premature, she weighed almost 5 pounds and was addicted to heroin.
Rebekah never knew she was pregnant, confusing those signs with symptoms of heroin addiction. But the miracle of Penelope — now healthy — saved her life, she and her family say.
“She gave me something to fight for, she gave me something to live for,” Rebekah said. “Because before that I was on a path to death, and there’s no simpler way to put that.”
Rebekah’s journey — from her upbringing in a loving home, in a safe and affluent community, to living in her car, using heroin and giving birth to a baby addicted to the same drug — reflects the increasingly tragic effect on the child welfare system by the burgeoning opioid crisis.
Medical staff at Sky Ridge immediately called Douglas County Department of Human Services when Penelope was born.
Despite not knowing she was pregnant, Rebekah’s heroin use during pregnancy — and any use after her child’s birth — is considered neglect, a form of child abuse.
Melissa Dudley, who was assigned to Rebekah’s case, said courts often become involved in such situations because parents are unwilling or unable to overcome their addiction. In those cases, consequences can range from fines, removal of the children from their parents’ home, being charged with child abuse and jail time.
That’s why Rebekah’s actions in the days following Penelope’s birth mattered so much. It’s also why the Douglas County Department of Human Services considers Rebekah a success story when it comes to preventing child abuse.
This is her story.
‘Just young curiosity’
Rebekah, her parents and older brother moved to Lone Tree from Aurora in 1998. The family needed more space, Kathie said, and they were excited to find a home still under construction, which they could partially customize.
The house, on a street lined with white-fenced yards, is similar to the neighboring residences, many with tall entrances, big backyards and flowers in front. The neighborhood is and always has been quiet, safe and friendly, Rebekah said.
She grew up loving music. She spent much of her time in choir or as a house manager for school plays. She wrote songs, taught herself to play piano and guitar and recorded cover videos for fun.
“Anytime she and her grandmother could find tickets, they were off to a musical together,” Kathie said.
At about 13 years old, Rebekah and her friends began experimenting with alcohol and marijuana.
“Just young curiosity,” she said. “You hear about it and then you want to try it, and your friends are doing it, so it doesn’t seem all that harmful.”
Her marijuana and alcohol use started light and in social setttings at friends’ homesaround Lone Tree, she said. She never drank alone, always with friends.In 2012, Rebekah graduated from Regis Jesuit High School, a private, college preparatory high school in Aurora. During this time, she still didn’t drink much, maybe going to one party a month.
Rather than heading straight to college Rebekah opted for a gap year and planned to travel. When an opportunity to live with a cousin in New York City arose in 2014, she spent about a year in the lower east side. Her drinking increased some, she said, and she’d attend parties on the weekend.
Rebekah spent New Year’s Eve in Times Square and saw the Thanksgiving Day Parade — all the activities young people are supposed to do, Kathie said. She and her husband didn’t like how far away New York City was, but they felt comforted knowing their daughter lived with family and had an aunt and uncle close by in Washington, D.C. They trusted she’d be cared for, which she was, Kathie said.
At 20, Rebekah moved back to Colorado and into a Denver townhome with a friend and two cousins. Soon, Rebekah said, she met a man — Penelope’s father — online, who lived with his family a few blocks from her townhome. They started dating. He was close with his siblings, also loved music and enjoyed philanthropic work, all traits Rebekah admired.
Over the first two months of dating, they built a relationship of trust and gradually fell in love. He was new to Colorado and didn’t immediately find work. Rebekah nannied for two families.
Substance abuse escalates
By the time she moved back to Colorado, Rebekah had tried more drugs, including cocaine and mushrooms, she said. In her room at her townhome, Rebekah and her boyfriend decided to try smoking heroin. They used for several days, initially out of curiosity, Rebekah said, although she didn’t expect addiction to set in so quickly.
“That’s the one that really grabbed hold,” she said. “From then on, I used daily for almost three years. It was every day, almost every hour.”
The high is physically and emotionally numbing, Rebekah said. A heavy weight comes over the body that can be relaxing, she said, but overall, heroin makes its users “a shell.”
Kathie remembers the early signs. Rebekah’s complexion changed. She once had clear skin and white teeth. Then Rebekah started getting blemishes and her smile grew “dingy.” Rebekah also started smoking cigarettes, a surprising move for the daughter who loved to sing. Then she quit her job.
“I saw her no longer playing her guitar — she used to sit around the house playing,” Kathie said.
Still, Kathie said she remained in denial that the problem might be drugs. Rebekah speculated her mother also didn’t know how best to approach the situation.
For the first couple of months into addiction, the couple stayed at Rebekah’s townhome, until her cousins and friend found foil in her trash can.
Realizing the foil was heroin paraphernalia, used to store the drug, her roommates and one of their fathers told Kathie and they all confronted Rebekah through an intervention.
The meeting rattled Rebekah and she packed a bag and left.
She first went home, but her parents turned off her phone and their internet in an attempt to distance Rebekah from her boyfriend. They saw that as protecting her, Kathie said. Rebekah felt imprisoned. And together with the failed intervention, she felt as if her parents had betrayed her.
So, in the middle of the night, Rebekah tied together bed sheets, lowered her belongings out a window and slipped through a dog door to avoid tripping the house’s security.
“I hadn’t gone to sleep that night,” Kathie said. “I had gone up, just to check on her, and that’s when I discovered she wasn’t there. It was one of the most heart-wrenching, frightening moments of my life to think, ‘Oh my god, she’s run away. I have no idea where she is. I have no idea how to find her.’ “
That night, Rebekah reunited with her boyfriend at his family’s home. Her parents turned her phone back on so they could reach her if needed.
‘I didn’t like the person I saw’
Rebekah and her boyfriend lived with his parents for a time during 2017, then began couch-hopping at friends’ homes. They stayed at a Motel 6 in Denverwhen they could afford it and eventuallylived in Rebekah’s 2007 Honda Accord.They parked in hotel lots or sometimes at a Walmart, from Denver to Lone Tree to Englewood, and moved when they saw police drive by.
In the thick of her addiction, Rebekah saw no one but her boyfriend and their drug dealer in Denver.
Slowly, pieces of Rebekah’s identity slipped away.
She hawked her treasured guitars and ukulele for drug money. She stopped singing. She stole from her parents and lied without hesitation.
When last winter grew too cold to live in her car, Rebekah moved home. Rebekah’s mother, father and 25-year-old brother debated whether letting her back in was the right decision. She would have easier access to items to steal, but Kathie said they wanted to know where she was, that she was safe. They wanted the opportunity to talk her into seeking treatment.
They knew through speaking with local rehab centers they had no legal right to force her into care because she was older than 18. Kathie and her husband also sought counseling for themselves as they struggled with how to help Rebekah.
All the while, Rebekah stayed connected to her boyfriend, who continued living on the streets and sleeping outside, but occasionally under her bed or in her car in the family garage when she was able to sneak him in.
Her parents weren’t comfortable allowing him into their home and by this time his family had moved out of state. He chose to stay in Colorado, and Rebekah walked the line between helping him maneuver the homeless life during cold, winter nights and respecting her parents.
“I would bring him blankets,” she said.
Her boyfriend stayed wherever he could find a quiet, secluded place, often behind nearby stores in Lone Tree.
“Every day it was how could we get the money to get the drugs to not go through withdrawal,” she said.
For most of 2017, Rebekah wanted to quit, she said. She had tried to do so more than once. The longest she can recall going without using heroin was two days, before the withdrawal symptoms became unbearable.
“After several months of using, I was like, ‘Well why are we using so much?’ So I would try and just stop,” she said. “And it was miserable . . . Your skin is crawling, and you want to rip it off. You can’t sit still. You feel your body in pain. You want to die . . . And you know the quickest way to stop withdrawing is to go out and use.”
Finally, she injected heroin.
“By the time I tried that I was so tired and done and I didn’t like the person I saw in the mirror anymore,” she said.
She no longer craved the drug, she said, but the fear of withdrawal kept her using.
Said Kathie: “She said that she had begun to realize that she was in this cycle but didn’t know how to get out.”
Turning her life around
But her arrest on Aug. 29 — for giving false information about her boyfriend’s name and whereabouts — and Penelope’s subsequent arrival gave her a way out.
During their drive to the hospital, Rebekah had told her mother she wanted to give the baby up for adoption and she didn’t want to tell her boyfriend about her pregnancy. Kathie and her husband, however, were prepared to adopt “Baby Girl Barstnar” to keep their family together.
That is a common solution to cases in which children need to be placed in the care of someone other than their parents, said Dan Makelky, Douglas County’s director of human services. The department first looks for responsible relatives who are willing to take in a child. Only if that is not an option is a child moved into the foster-care system.
But Rebekah decided she would keep her baby and called her Penelope, a name she’d always thought she’d pick should she have a daughter.
The county’s Department of Human Services opened what officials call a voluntary or non-court-involved case as the family made plans and cooperated with the agency.
Dudley, Rebekah’s caseworker, said Rebekah made her job “very easy,” insisting on calling the rehab facilities herself.
“It’s awesome. It makes me so happy. It’s rare, to be honest with you,” Dudley said. “Most of my cases that have parents who are using drugs, they don’t have their children.”
About 10 days after Penelope’s birth, Rebekah checked into Valley Hope of Parker, an inpatient rehabilitation facility offering detox and residential treatment. She spent 26 days there while her parents cared for Penelope.
“I think she thought, ‘If Penelope can go through this, I can go through this,’ “ Kathie said of withdrawal.
Babies born addicted to heroin or opioids also experience withdrawal symptoms and are monitored closely after birth. Penelope struggled to eat, trembled and was sensitive to loud noises, Kathie and Rebekah said. Doctors and nurses used an extensive checklist of symptoms to gauge Penelope’s condition, and during her 1 1/2-week stay in the hospital she was able to go through withdrawal without medical assistance. In some cases, the heroin is substituted with other opioids, such as methadone, then gradually decreased in dosage.
So far, Rebekah said, Penelope has not shown any developmental problems.
While Rebekah was at Valley Hope, Kathie brought Penelope to visit at least every two days. Rebekah found herself longing for more time with her daughter.
“What I kept having to remind myself of in those moments was, ‘I’m fighting to be able to be the best mother that I can be, and to spend the rest of my life with her, and we’ll be able to make up for those lost times,’ “ she said.
When Rebekah left Valley Hope, she entered a six-week outpatient program, also run by the same treatment center, where she works with a sponsor and attends support-group meetings. She remains an active member of a 12-step program, sometimes attending meetings twice a day. Being surrounded by people who understand addiction and what it takes to recover is a comfort and key support system, Rebekah said.
Rebekah also ended her relationship with Penelope’s father. He has seen photos of Penelope but has since moved out of state to live with family, she said.
She is telling her story, Rebekah said, to give hope to other drug addicts, to show them recovery is attainable.
On a late March afternoon, Penelope, now almost 7 months old, sat in her mother’s arms in Dudley’s office. The rosy-cheeked baby, with a full head of dark hair, wore a crisp white shirt, ruffled pink pants and matching pink shoes. She took in the world around her, glancing back and forth from her mother to her grandmother to Dudley.
“She’ll let you know when she’s hungry, but she never cries for long,” Rebekah, now 24, said. “She’s had no development issues. She’s just overall a very happy, healthy and good baby, and I am very blessed to be able to say that.”
On Rebekah’s left forearm is a tattoo she got in February that says “9.9.17.” The stylized, scrawling script commemorates her “clean date,” the first day after she last used heroin.
When she saw the tattoo in a mirror, Rebekah noticed something surprising.
The 9.9.17, in reverse, looks as if it spells Free.