Pregnant and Addicted to Heroin

Detox Facilities Hard to Find

Total detox, Doerr says, is unbelievably difficult.

Inside the crime lab at the Richland County Sheriff's Office, an officer shows "Nightline" black tar...

Inside the crime lab at the Richland County Sheriff's Office, an officer shows "Nightline" black tar heroin. The heroin is wrapped in wax paper and then tied into a balloon or sometimes wrapped again in tinfoil. This is then sold as a "balloon". The street value of one balloon in Columbus, Ohio is about 20 dollars. In the background sits a whole bag of balloons confiscated by the Sheriff's department during a drug bust.

(ABC News)

"I might make it to the second day and I'm just spazzing out and panicking. And the second day I'm trying to find a fix. I can't do it," she said. "People say, 'Well, if you love your daughter, you will shape up.' It's not really a question of loving my daughter. I'm a mother. I love my daughter as much as any mother could love their daughter. It's a matter of loving myself enough and doing what I have to do, you know? It's not a matter of how much I love her."

Doerr often contemplates if her decision to raise Riley, her 4-year-old, was wise.

Related

Afghanistan's Most Wretched Battle Addiction

$700M OxyContin Settlement: Enough?

"Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't have given her up for adoption," she said, crying. "Because she has to see me come in and out of her life, and it's not fair. It's not fair. And it gets harder the older she gets. ... As a parent nobody wants that for their daughter."

Doerr's mom, Patti, has custody of Riley, and cares for her while desperately trying to find help for her daughter. But help is hard to find in the heartland.

Despite the rampant heroin abuse here, there is no detox facility in the entire county, meaning most addicts must wean themselves off of the drug at home. Experts say while heroin detox is painful, it's not usually dangerous in the way other drug withdrawals can be. So emergency rooms usually turn down heroin addicts looking to detox, because hospital supervision is rarely considered medically necessary.

For most addicts, staying clean after detox requires a long-term rehabilitation program. And many of those programs require insurance, something few addicts have.