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Photo Courtesy: Drug Enforcement Agency

‘Playing Russian Roulette… With Two Bullets’: How Fentanyl Addiction Tore A Santa Clarita Family Apart (Part 2)

While most users are unaware that they’re ingesting a pill that could likely kill them in seconds, this Santa Clarita couple is. Here’s an inside look on how their lives have been forever tainted by fentanyl-tainted pills. 

Their lives resembled those of the many trapped by addiction – in and out of rehab, jail cells and hospital beds – until the two Santa Clarita parents suffering from fentanyl addiction received a FaceTime call from their 4-year-old daughter several weeks back. 

“Our daughter was taken from us… and I hadn’t talked to her in four days,” said Dante. “When I finally had the chance to talk to her and when we were saying goodbye, she was holding back tears. I was crying so hard, and I think it was the next day when I was thinking ‘I can’t believe I did this. I did this to my little girl.’”

Dante and his wife had been experimenting with opiates for 15 years, before their casual weekend sessions evolved into daily doses of methamphetamine and fentanyl – a routine that left the couple homeless, and separated from their daughter. 

“Your daughter deserves a mom and a dad, but right now she’s got junkies,” said Cary Quashen, Chief Executive Officer of ACTION Drug Rehab in Santa Clarita. “Playing with fentanyl – it’s like a game of Russian roulette… but with two bullets. It’s not ‘get clean or not’ it’s ‘get clean or die.’”

A Decades-Long Addiction

With the monotony of everyday life, the couple found excitement in the occasional opioid trip, but things took a turn for the worst when they found themselves indulging during hard times, along with the good. 

“For the last 15 years, we’ve been on opiates, and just moved on up, graduating to fentanyl now,” said Dante’s wife. “With heroin – I wasn’t feeling it at all anymore. As with anything, you build a tolerance after you’ve been using it for so long, and I just could not feel the euphoria from heroin anymore, at all.”

Fentanyl, a pharmaceutical drug originally intended to treat severe pain for advanced-stage cancer, has become the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 45, largely due to distribution through illegal drug markets for its heroin-like effect, according to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. 

The synthetic opioid has become the single biggest killer in the drug market due to its potency 50-100 times higher than morphine, yet is being laced in almost 100 percent of illicitly manufactured drugs – mainly because it is cheap to make and has highly addictive effects. 

For the couple, fentanyl has become their daily poison, but withdrawal has become their hardest battle. 

“It feels like you’re going to die,” Dante’s wife said. “Even though it’s not necessarily possible to die from opiate withdrawal, it feels like you are dying, and you will do anything to get well. It gives you chills, cold sweats, vomiting, restlessness. It’s hell. It’s literally hell.”

Throughout the last decade, the couple has been fluctuating between addiction and recovery, and together they have amassed over 15 times in jail, one overdose and eventually an eviction from their family’s home. 

“We don’t like each other at all when we’re using,” Dante’s wife said. “I don’t like seeing him high. He doesn’t like seeing me high. We argue so much, but when we’re sober we’re just happy little clams, and there’s no worries.”

Commitment To Sobriety

While addiction can more often than not take precedence over jobs, housing, hobbies and relationships, it takes a rock bottom moment to encourage addicts to help themselves. 

“You chose drugs over everything, including your kid,” Quashen said. “That’s the power of fentanyl. There’s numerous services here, but they can only help you when you decide to help yourselves.”

For the couple, their rock bottom moment occurred in the days after their 4-year-old daughter called them with tears in her eyes. The traumatic moment hit hard enough for the couple to pack up their car with all their belongings and head to ACTION Drug Rehab in Santa Clarita, where they intend to kick fentanyl for the very last time. 

The physical part is just the beginning,” Quashen said. “The emotional addiction to fentanyl is like no other drug that’s ever been around before. It really makes it tough, but when you come into treatment, we treat both your physical and emotional addiction.”

Even though fentanyl is commonly considered one of the most powerful addictions, the couple wants their daughter to know that she is loved, and that she is worth so much more than their addiction. 

“I’m still in this,” Dante’s wife said. ”I’m going to do whatever it takes to give myself the life that I know that I deserve, and that my daughter deserves… I love you guys so much, and I want you to know that I never meant to hurt you. I’m going to do whatever I can do.”

If you or a loved one struggles with some form of addiction, including drugs, alcohol, opioids, etc. the team at Action Drug Rehab in Santa Clarita can help.

“The worst part about where we’re at today is every drug that our children are using today is physically and emotionally addictive,” Quashen said. “So that’s why the (Drug Enforcement Administration) finally had to come out and say ‘We’re in a pandemic now, more people are dying than ever before and we’re expecting mass overdose deaths in the near future.’”

For more information on these findings, overdose, addiction and the ACTION drug rehabilitation center, click here.


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‘Playing Russian Roulette… With Two Bullets’: How Fentanyl Addiction Tore A Santa Clarita Family Apart (Part 2)

5 comments

  1. This is an ad disguised as a news story. NOT buying it or it’s hard luck premise. They made bad choices, now they need to live with them. NOT a news piece and NOT interesting. Unless your an addiction, in which case they wouldn’t be reading the posts any way.

  2. Yep, another story of death, despair & everyone’s misery from Xiden’s & the Liberals open borders!! Last week was another story of 51 Illegal Aliens cooked to death & their funeral was respectfully treated with Meat Tenderizer! There’s a right way & a wrong way to enter this once wonderful country, so wait in line, get educated, learn English like everyone else did with respect & decency for a great life by assimilation & hard, honest work! Have a great Independence Day!

    • Bill: You’re off subject. If the borders were “open” they wouldn’t have to be smuggled into the country.

      It’s about making the right choices and adulting instead of being driven by whims and appetites. “Feeling good” by being out of your mind is not an adult option, but a selfish act.

  3. The people in the truck were IN HIDING so obviously not just allowed in! The driver was high and the whole situation is so sad.

  4. Be the respectful, upstanding, decent person you want to see in others.

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About Rachel Matta

Born and raised in Santa Clarita, Rachel Matta has always had a love for writing and media. The first time she ever smiled was actually while she was laying next to her mom as she flipped through the pages of a magazine. Upon graduating from high school in 2019, she chose to major in both journalism and political science at College of the Canyons with the intention of concentrating in news reporting. She began her journey at KHTS as a news intern in the summer of 2020 and officially joined the newsroom in the spring of 2021, intending to move forward with compassion and inquisition.