Peer navigator shares story

By Rory Harbert

Erica Otero, born and raised in Pueblo, has two kids and has been sober for four years. She is also a peer navigator at the Southern Colorado Harm Reduction Association.

“I’m 35 years old, and I started using drugs when I was 15,” Otero said. “I got really bad onto pills. And then when I turned 20, I was introduced to heroin. So, I spent, I would say, about a good ten years of my life just addicted to heroin and meth.”

When she was 15, a family member introduced her to crack. From there, she said she experimented with “literally everything.”

“I think about it now and I’m like ‘wow,’ we were just these young kids experimenting with crack, cocaine and hardcore stuff,” she said.

But what she said caused her to be addicted was not the drugs she used with her high school friends, but her prescription for Oxycontin. In 2006, she had surgery on her ankle at 18 years old. She said her prescription was high dose and seemingly endlessly refilled. She said she had friends suggest snorting it and other methods of administration. She said when the pills ran out, she turned to the streets and when the pills were not being sold, she turned to heroin.

Otero spent three years in a halfway house. “That’s kind of what changed me,” Otero said. “I had got pregnant, and I still suffered from addiction during that pregnancy. And during that pregnancy, I didn’t have any help from any medical doctors. I didn’t have any support.”

At 22 years old, she had a daughter. She said she was ‘in-and-out ‘ of jail. Otero said that when she was using, she did not know of any programs or peer counseling.

“I continued to use dirty needles,” she said. “I would reuse my own needle, and by the grace of God, I do not have any major diseases from that.”

At that time, she lost the rights to her daughter, who was taken in by her mother. Otero was going to school for a nursing degree.

“I lost everything I had worked for,” Otero said. “I lost my nursing degree, my cars, my house. I had just watched everything crumble in front of me and it was just a constant battle. I went through countless rehabs, countless detoxes, and spent so many days on the streets just wandering around. I mean, I would smoke so much meth, just so I could stay up and not have to worry about sleeping.”

Eight years later, Otero found herself pregnant again. A boy. “When I was pregnant, I had him in county jail,” Otero said. “They literally ripped him

Harm reduction service staff’s lived experience promotes connection

away from me. Like I had him, and they took him that way, and they took me this way... back to the jail. And I just remember how painful that was. Just a painful experience. I went back to the jail, I had to do three months, away from my newborn.”

Otero said she suffered severe postpartum depression, compounded by recovering from C-section without pain medication. For Otero, that was her “ultimate wake-up call.”

“I got out of jail and got reunited with my family,” Otero said. “And I relapsed again. There was no support, being a new mom, I just relapsed. That was the worse relapse of my life. And finally, I was getting ready to sign rights over to my children and I had this spiritual awakening where I was like, ‘This is not what I want to do with my life; I can’t do this.’”

Her dream, before she was exposed to drugs, was to be a registered nurse. When she found herself as a a patient, months after giving birth, she was treated poorly by the nurses she could have called her peers.

“I remember walking into the ER, and I had an abscess in my arm, ready to lose my arm, and they were pointing and laughing at me,” Otero said. “All the nurses made me feel really bad and I just that’s when I knew like people should not be treated like this and I knew I had to get out and help and make a difference, so that’s what I’m trying to do.”

Otero said that this happened at Parkview Medical Center, almost five years ago. “It took everything I had and needed not walk out and go get high,” she said. “But instead, I went through and I, you know, let them take care of me and stuff.”

Otero was there to start her treatment by first taking care of her abscess. This was not her first brush with degrading experiences as she paved her way to sobriety. “I remember just always going to different treatment centers and providers and they made like feel like this” as Otero makes a pinching gesture.

Otero said that she remembers “feeling like no one should ever feel like this.”

Otero eventually became sober via “cold turkey” by withdrawing on her mother’s couch for three days before approaching Front Range Clinic for MAT treatment, or medication-assisted treatment.

She has been sober since those three days.

“I’ve been using suboxone for four years now today, and it saved my life,” Otero said. “I’m a productive member of society, I’m a mom, and that’s what brought me to this line of work.”

MAT treatment helps to manage systems of opi- oid addiction. These treatments utilize methadone, buprenorphine (brand name: Suboxone) and naltrexone brand name: Vivitrol). According to Denver Health’s website, methadone and buprenorphine “stop the effects of withdrawal, decrease the cravings for opioids, block the effects of opioid misuse and reduce relapse,” while naltrexone “binds to and effectively blocks opioid receptors” to reduce cravings.

“I educate all my clients on the importance of how great that treatment is and what it does for people,” Otero said.

Otero shares her story and how MAT treatment helped her personally for clients that are considering or seeking treatment. She said she wants her clients to know that it is possible that these people care for you. She said Front Range Clinic was the first place that took a chance on her, showed her respect and treated her like a person.

She was sober and employed for three years before she was hired on as a peer staff at SCHRA. Otero said she felt the need to give back to her community and was told to check out SCHRA. She started volunteering during her free time. When she was seeking employment, Solano monitored how Otero interacted with clients before offering a position as a peer navigator.

Otero said, having this job, completes a chapter and a goal in her life. She said that while she recognizes that “when you’re a little kid, not everybody says ‘I want to be a peer counselor’ because, obviously, in order to be a peer, you have to have the lived experience.”

She feels that she was “put here on Earth to do this kind of work.”

“Anything I can do to help somebody get one step closer to being successful in their sobriety, to keep them with their children—those are my ultimate goals in life,” she said.

Otero reflected on what SCHRA would have meant for her, if it had been open when she first was exposed to drugs.

“I just wish in my addiction that there would have been this harm reduction,” she said. “If I could have had one wish, it would have been this place would have existed because I know I wouldn’t have made it that far in my addiction.”