FLAGLER BEACH, Fla. (August 31, 2023) – It’s been more than a decade since pill mills were in the headlines, with law enforcement moving to shut them down and communities declaring war on the heroin epidemic. While drugs and overdoses may have faded from the headlines, the effects oxycontin and now fentanyl are having on families is still front and center.
Recognizing International Overdose Awareness Day on August 31, community members and their loved ones directly affected gathered under the setting sun in Flagler Beach to connect and share a few moments of understanding.
One Pill Can Kill
They were words that resounded sharply in the ears of the two-dozen people gathered Thursday evening. Renee DeAngelis lost her 23-year-old daughter Savannah DeAngelis in 2017 to a heroin and fentanyl overdose. Since then, she’s made it her mission to help prevent that same devastating loss from happening to other families, first as a member of the Flagler County Opioid Task Force and now through the Flagler County Drug Court Foundation.
“I just felt like I needed to do something, my family, myself as a parent, I didn’t want to see anybody else go through this unnecessarily” she said, helping secure the first grant for NARCAN in Flagler County, going on to pass out the lifesaving treatment and training people how to administer it.
Determined to help create prevention through education, she spearheaded the effort that led to Flagler Schools taking the important step of stocking NARCAN in all 10 of the schools in the district.
“I heard last summer that Governor DeSantis had passed legislation allowing NARCAN into the schools in Florida under the Good Samaritan Act, so I immediately that day called the school system and I got in touch with the director of student services. Started the conversation with him, Mike and I, we went to several appointments with him, then we brought it before the schoolboard. We told them we would donate the NARCAN if they would have it on campus. Our selling point was ‘how about if someone overdoses and you don’t have it?’. With fentanyl and it being in everything, the chances are you might not have a high school student who’s an addict, but you might have somebody try something. So, you need to have this on campus. They were wonderful about it, very progressive in their thinking, and we were just overjoyed when they voted on it and decided to have it in the schools.”
It’s not only the school aged youth she’s concerned with.
“When we do our NARCAN trainings, we include seniors as part of our talk,” said DeAngelis. “If you have a senior you know, take NARCAN, take it with you. Not only do seniors not always know if their medication is an opiate, they might have grandchildren that are fishing through their cabinets, so that’s another reason to have it in the house. The surgeon general of Florida wishes for everyone to have a box of NARCAN in the house.”
Every Day Clean is a Successful Day
In full on recovery, for Kim Schattner, every day sober is a good day. It’s not always easy, but it’s worth it. The turning point came while in prison in 2016, unable to comfort her son after discussing the passing of his father. As any program will say, a person has to make the decision to change, and for Kim, that was the moment.
“My coping mechanism was to use drugs,” shared Schattner. “We talked about how our addiction always made them second fiddle and put them on the back burner. He was very angry and at that moment, in recovery they call it a spiritual awakening, and I realized that my kids, their whole life has just been flipped upside down.
“I remember going in my cell, and just praying to some God. I’d always believed in God but I just didn’t have a relationship. I just said ‘I cannot do this, I need your help.’ The next day is when my recovery journey began.”
Seven and a half years later she’s the Vice President of the Flagler County Drug Court Foundation and working with members of the community seeking a second chance and an opportunity to turn their lives around.
“I felt like I’m just a regular person and I’m vigilant about my recovery every day,” she said.
“I’m one of the only other people on the drug court team that is in recovery so I know what it feels like to be going through the court system, how confusing that is, what it’s like. Some of these people are getting straight out of jail and going to treatment, and I have that experience, to share it and say, ‘If I can get clean, you can get clean.’
Her testimony before hundreds, maybe thousands over the years has deeply impacted listeners, and some of the most precious moments to her are those when a person comes back to express their appreciation or share the value of her wisdom.
“It’s amazing. It’s a definite crying moment. They had the world convention, I’m a member of Narcotics Anonymous and someone came up to me and was like, ‘did you go into the detoxes and speak?’ and I go ‘yeah’, and they go, ‘I remember you’. Tens of thousands of people at this convention and this person found me.”
Helping to lead the remembrance and vigil on Thursday evening, her ‘been there, done that’ life experiences help put those in active recovery and those there to remember a loved one lost, at ease.
“I feel like every bad choice I’ve made or every awful thing that’s happened to me has happened for a purpose. I remember talking to my mom in prison and I said I really need to go to meetings, and she told me ‘I really don’t think that there’s people like that here’. My mom just didn’t know. I want to spread the word that your family, your loved one is not the only one that is going through this. There are places and people who can help them get through it.”
The Role of Making a Difference
Among the earliest to address the opioid crisis in Flagler County alongside recovery landscape giants in the community like Pastor Charles Silano, Michael Feldbauer is determined to make a change and has no qualms about addressing systemic problems publicly and quickly.
Committed to seeing genuine recovery through the Flagler County Drug Court Program, he heads the foundation as the president. Candid about the shortcomings of the various community response programs, his focus is on the things he can make better and the people he can help.
“The Drug Court Foundation was founded and it’s primary focus is to help people in the drug court program with things that the court can’t help them with. We help them with education, getting their GED, job training, all kinds of things that are not really related to the judicial system but it’s important for people in recovery to have that,” said Feldbauer.
“It takes some of the weight off their shoulders so they can concentrate on their recovery. As we’ve grown, as you heard tonight, we’re getting more and more involved in community education. We were the first in the county to get the NARCAN grant to give NARCAN away.
The remembrance and vigil offer an opportunity to reach out to residents navigating the addiction and recovery landscape in addition to providing lifesaving NARCAN.
Greeting attendees by name as they arrived from their walk over the bridge to Veteran’s Park, he knows that the work provided by the team of volunteers, dedicated to saving lives, offers a chance for a brighter future ahead.
