BIDDEFORD — Henry “Skip” Gates lost his son Will six years ago to a heroin overdose. He was teaching a math class at Lawrence High School when he was called to the principal’s office to receive the news.

“It seemed to me like the floor opened up and I began to fall, and I’m still falling,” Gates said Wednesday.

Will was a charismatic and athletic 21-year-old, his father remembers, a champion skier and molecular genetics major at the University of Vermont.

“He’d be the very last person you’d ever expect to get mixed up with heroin,” he said.

But at the same time, Will was always “pushing the limits,” said Gates, and he believes that’s what led his son to try heroin in the first place. It was the same quality that allowed him to excel in skiing, he said.

Gates said since his son’s death in 2009, he has dedicated his life to sharing his story with the hope it will prevent what happened to Will from happening to others.

Gates was one of seven panel members who spoke to a crowd of a few dozen at the New Life Church on Alfred Street Wednesday night. The event marked the second gathering of a countywide task force aimed at combating the rising levels of heroin and opioid addiction local law enforcement and medical professionals have been seeing.

“This problem has truly gripped our county,” York County Sheriff William King told the crowd. “This is not just a policing problem. … We can’t arrest our way out of this situation.”

Michael Wardrop, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agent who works in Portland, was there to educate audience members ”“ many of whom were recovering addicts ”“ on the drug trends currently sweeping Maine and the nation as a whole.

Fentanyl, a painkiller 80-100 times more potent than morphine and 15-20 times more potent than heroin, is perhaps the largest emerging trend, he said, and it’s contributing to a higher incidence of overdose. Wardrop explained that fentanyl is often used by drug dealers in place of heroin or opioids unbeknownst to the user.

Wardrop and other panel members also pointed to the fact that, as law enforcement agencies have in the past decade cracked down on so-called “pill mills,” prescription drugs have become more expensive and harder to come by, leading opioid addicts to turn to heroin.

That’s not to say prescription drugs are not still a major problem. In fact, two panel members said heroin and opioid addiction continues to commonly be sparked by the prescription of a painkiller to treat a legitimate ailment.

Additionally, King said trends seen over the last few decades have changed the face of the typical heroin user, from a junkie hunched over in a dark, dingy corner to today’s average user: a white female in her early 20s.

On that note, King showed a photo of Molly Parks, a 24-year-old Old Orchard Beach High School graduate who died of a heroin overdose in Massachusetts last month.

Molly’s parents were looking on from the audience when their daughter’s face was projected onto two large screens. Later in the night, during a Q&A session with audience members and the panel, Molly’s father, Tom Parks, was one of several people to air concerns over the state’s lack of affordable in-patient drug rehabilitation clinics ”“ particularly for women.

“I had insurance and I couldn’t get her into any place in the state of Maine,” he said of his daughter, adding that local hospitals wouldn’t take her because she wasn’t suffering physical withdrawal symptoms.

Panel members responded to Parks and others by saying one of the task force’s goals moving forward will be to address those issues regarding the cost and availability of drug addiction treatment programs in the state.

Dr. Andrew Powell agreed that more treatment options are needed in Maine, but he also said sometimes the hardest part in an addict’s road to recovery isn’t finding a place to get help, but wanting to get help in the first place.

Powell, an ER doctor at Southern Maine Health Care, said the vast majority of patients he sees who have just overdosed simply want to go home.

“Even though they may have been dead 10 minutes ago, they don’t want help. They want to go home,” he said. “It astonishes me.” Powell recalled one experience he had in Sanford, where he saw the same patient overdose twice in a 24-hour period.

Wednesday’s forum also saw its share of success stories, too, from folks like Matthew Braun, 26, of Portland, who used a 12-step program to swap alcohol and pills for spirituality. Braun now works as a recovery consultant and public speaker.

“We need to stop over-prescribing and we need to start changing community norms around this stuff,” he told the crowd.

Attorney General Janet Mills made a brief appearance at the event, telling the crowd she had coincidentally been in Augusta all day working on keeping Maine’s drug laws strong.

“It’s heartwarming to me to hear about recovery and success stories,” she said.

— Staff Writer Angelo J. Verzoni can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 329 or [email protected].