ALEXANDRIA, Va. — At only 16-years-old, Mohamed Coly Jr. has been fighting his addiction to fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid intensifying drug overdoses across the country for years.
He’s making a second attempt to stay sober under a court order from a Fairfax County judge, a couple of months after he believed he overdosed at a laundromat, where he frequently would visit as a place to sleep.
The Alexandria teen’s addiction began at 14-years-old when he was invited to a friend’s house. He watched a friend take a fake Percocet pill and decided to join.
Unaware of the presence of fentanyl at first, Coly Jr. quickly felt the desire to consume again.
“I saw them trying it, so I wanted to try it,” he told WUSA9. “At that moment, I was not really thinking because once you start using it, you just want to get high every day.”
He said he would take up to five fake pills a day, without knowledge of how much fentanyl has been pressed in each one. His family said he eventually would disappear from home for a long period of time while he would sleep in laundromats and get arrested several times. Coly Jr. would seek drugs from strangers at convenience stores.
“I didn’t feel good about what I was doing but my body felt good,” Coly Jr. added. “It made me a bad person. I used to be outside for days to get high.”
Youth overdoses have been a concerning trend in northern Virginia where some school districts experienced an outbreak. Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) vows to put more resources into tackling the crisis and support mental health services.
There are federal efforts underway to tackle fentanyl trafficking.
Overdose deaths among teens in the country nearly doubled in 2020 and increase another 20% in the first half of 2021, according to UCLA research.
Mohamed Coly Sr. said he didn’t realize his son was abusing drugs until it was too late. He watched his son transform from the bubbly and active soccer player that he knew.
“I never thought this would be at my doorstep,” Coly Sr. said. “I break down now. It’s affecting my heart. I’m going to fight it. One thing I will not do is I will not keep this a secret.”
His father wants to raise more awareness to other families that opioid addiction can strike anyone.
The father-and-son duo are visiting Manassas Addiction Center so Coly Jr. could seek recovery through medicated-assisted treatment. The center office offers Vivitrol, a medicine that helps block the effects of narcotics on the brain.
Family nurse practitioner Steve Lucynski said his clients are seeing the positive effects, but they’re continuing to experience teens needing help.
“I’d say majority of our patients are definitely,” Lucynski said. “More than 50% of patients are under 18, some as young as 12 with full-blown withdrawals.”
Lucynski said there’ a shortage of local clinics providing drug treatments to adolescents out of fear. There’s a need for more education since a lot of his patients are immigrants who have no clue about the dangers of fentanyl.
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