WELLS — One of the brochures calls heroin a “Killer High.” At least two people, both of them mothers, who attended an event in Wells Thursday designed to highlight the startlingly robust presence of heroin in York County, can attest to that sad reality.

Both lost their daughters to opiates. One of the daughters had struggled with drug use and mental illness for 30 years; the other was 19 and influenced by her boyfriend.

Both are dead, and their mothers weep. There’s no solace.

Heroin is here ”“ lots of it ”“ those engaged in law enforcement, the medical field and social services say. And the concept many carry of a junkie slumped on the floor of a dirty bathroom, shooting the drug into a vein, isn’t an accurate one. Heroin addicts can be a son or a daughter, a brother or a sister, a neighbor or a friend, they say. Addiction can happen swiftly, overdoses happen regularly, and deaths ”“ quickly or eventually ”“ follow.

So representatives of those fields and others got together Thursday to begin the conversation about heroin and its opiate cousins. This meeting of the York County Public Health Council was the setting for the conversation before the next step: Creating a new countywide task force designed to spread the word.

Some of the most powerful words came from recovering opiate addict Matthew Braun, who has been in recovery for six years; and from Susanne Michaud, whose daughter Sonia died of an overdose in November. A number of drugs were found in Sonia’s system.

Sonia had battled depression and addiction for 30 years, her mother said. Michaud talked of her daughter’s struggle with bipolar disorder and the drawers full of pills ”“ from Vicodin to oxycodone to Percocet and Percodan ”“ all prescribed by the same physician. She spoke of her daughter’s use of drugs, incarceration, and the spiral that eventually led to a knock on the door and the words she had expected someday to hear, but hoped she wouldn’t.

“The hardest part is I was not there to save her, to say, ”˜I forgive you and I love you,’” Michaud said.

Braun took part in rehabilitation and has followed the 12-step program.

“Having had a spiritual awakening, I no longer obsess about drugs and alcohol,” he said. “Opiates controlled my life for so long.”

Braun said he never bought his drugs ”“ instead he acquired them from homes in his neighborhood.

“I used drugs for one reason,” he said: “For the way they made me feel.”

Braun wasn’t the sort of person you’d suspect was an addict; in fact, he was an Eagle Scout, earning that honor shortly before diving into a sea of opioids.

Depressed and possessed of a world of self-loathing, Braun said he felt powerful when he was doing drugs, even though he was powerless to quit. Eventually the law gave him a choice ”“ years in jail or rehabilitation.

“I’ve come face to face with opioids and it doesn’t control my life anymore,” he said.

Dr. Andrew Powell, associate director of emergency services at Southern Maine Health Care, estimated that between the Biddeford and Sanford medical centers, “not a day goes by” without an overdose.

He said he’s seen significant increases in the past 18 months, too.

“We only see the ones that haven’t died,” said Powell, who works primarily in Sanford, though his job also takes him to SMHC’s Biddeford campus.

Part of the reason might be that heroin is increasingly being found to contain Fentanyl, a drug described by Michael Wardrup, the agent in charge of the Portland office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, as 100 times more lethal than heroin.

“Fentanyl is the wild card,” said Wardrup, who traced for the audience the route of the heroin trail from Mexico to New York, to Lawrence and Lowell in Massachusetts and then up to Maine.

Fentanyl is regularly used in hospitals and is fine when used appropriately in that setting for specific medical reasons, Wardrup said. But like many other opioids, it is the illegal use that robs communities of its citizens.

A drug bust in Sanford in October yielded 85 grams of what law enforcement officials first thought was heroin. As it turned out, the drug tested as Fentanyl. Wardrup said drug users often think they’re shooting or snorting heroin, when what they’re really taking is Fentanyl.

He told the audience that last week, there were three overdoses in Biddeford, two in Old Orchard Beach and a third was a Saco resident who overdosed in Windham; one of the overdoses resulted in death,.

“Often inmates say, ”˜Thank God I’m incarcerated,’” said York County Sheriff Bill King, who said inmates often tell him being in jail is the only way to stop doing drugs.

Not all do. King said one inmate, who was released when his sentence was complete, overdosed and died four months later.

King said Maine is a market for drug dealers from New York and beyond. He told the group that two weeks ago, a man from the Bronx was arrested after he was found to have a significant quantity of heroin on him.

“We found a map on the guy that showed him how to get to New York to this little community” in rural York County, King said. King didn’t say which community. The incident is still being investigated.

“The majority of my cases are heroin related,” said Raphaelle Silver, an assistant attorney general assigned to York County drug cases.

She said addicts steal from their families, and rob people or burglarize homes to feed their addiction.

She said sometimes jail is the only option, but the prosecutor said she sees a need for treatment, too.

“My caseload has exploded in a year,” said Silver. “We see a lot of overdoses, weekly and daily, heroin or heroin laced with Fentanyl. It’s killing them.”

— Senior Staff Writer Tammy Wells can be contacted at 324-4444 (local call in Sanford) or 282-1535, ext. 327 or [email protected].