PASCO COUNTY, Fla. — For Roy Gray, the love of the game has been a constant throughout a life of turmoil.
“That’s all I ever wanted to do was play baseball," Gray said.
Gray played at Ridgewood High School and has since found his way back to the diamond playing softball. Throughout all of those years playing baseball and softball, a lot has happened.
RELATED: Pasco County Sheriff's Office takes new approach to combat opioid crisis
“If I didn’t have this, I honestly don’t know what I’d do," Gray said, looking out at the field. “Using drugs one by one took away every good thing about me.”
As a teen, Gray broke his back while sliding into a base.
“My knee locked up, and it jammed my femur into my hip and fractured three vertebrae," Gray said. "And that’s when I first got prescribed pain medication.”
Doctors prescribed Gray Percocet and then Vicodin.
“It just escalated from there," Gray said.
Gray told the I-Team it was about a year before he turned to getting prescription drugs on the street. When asked if there was a moment when he thought, "I'm in trouble," Gray said it was the moment he realized he had "the physical addiction." Gray was sick, experiencing what his friend had to explain was withdrawal.
"He's like, just take more. And just make sure you don't run out,” Gray said.
Those three words would dictate Gray's life for more than a decade: Don't. Run. Out.
"Before I knew it, I was purchasing pain medication 29 days out of the month, and my prescription would last me one day," Gray said. “The pain management clinics that I went to, all in Tampa — right off Dale Mabry."
No insurance, Gray said. Cash only.
“At the doctor, I felt like he was the drug dealer and I was a drug addict. And same thing with the pharmacies," Gray said.
According to the DEA's pain pill database, made public after the Washington Post filed suit, from 2006-2014, there were enough pain pill prescriptions for every man, woman, and child in Pasco County to receive 57 pills a year.
In 2014, Gray was homeless and overdosed. A Pasco County Sheriff's deputy arrested him for drug possession.
"That was my bottom," Gray said. "Not the overdose. When I was in jail and I got the discovery that I had stopped breathing in somebody's front yard."
With tears in his eyes, Gray said, "I haven't talked about or shared this before. It was, I think, my will to live. For so long, I didn't want to live because my life had gotten so bad, and I knew, I knew it was my fault."
Gray said he didn't know how to stop. Eight months after Gray's arrest, while on probation, his Narcotics Anonymous (NA) sponsor wrote a letter to the judge.
“He is clean + working to make real + lasting changes in his life," the letter said. “He’s worth taking a chance on.”
September 5, 2022, Gray celebrated eight years sober. Reminders, loss, still circle him. In 2008, his brother Nick died of an overdose. Last year, his girlfriend, Chanel, died. They met seven years ago in recovery.
"She overdosed on fentanyl," Gray said. "I was at a meeting one night, and her brother called me and said that she had passed away. That was the hardest, hardest thing I've ever dealt with in my life.”
Continuing in NA, seeing new people come into recovery Gray said, is why he stays sober.
“I think about where I used to be, but where I am now," he said.
Gray came out on the other side. But in the last two years in Pasco County, at least 545 people did not, according to fatal overdose data from the Pasco Sheriff's Office.
Since 1999, around the time Gray's addiction began, overdose deaths involving opioids in the U.S. have increased by more than eight times, according to the CDC. Opioid overdoses killed nearly 69,000 people in 2020 — enough to fill every seat at Tropicana Field twice.
At a smaller ball field, Gray's sobriety is supported by a softball team that gets it.
“Most of the team is in recovery," Gray said. “All the guys that are on this team are grateful just to be alive. And that’s the truth."
Gray said on the field and in the dugout, it's about more than just playing the game.
"It's about life," Gray said.
It's a life he wants others to know is possible.
'She was issued pain meds that eventually... took her life'
Inside the walls of a Pasco hair salon, there's a level of trust, simply walking through the door and sitting down.
"Once you put this cape on, it’s like that freedom, that release that it gives people to open up and talk to you," Jackey Bell said.
Her bond with the clients she serves is strengthened through shared struggles.
“I’ve had clients that sit in my chair that are either under the influence or have lost somebody that’s been under the influence, or has been affected by somebody," Bell said.
The grip of addiction on the community is ever-present. Bell typically keeps Narcan at the salon but recently ran out...after using it on others or giving it all away.
“I’ve been able to offer resources to people that are going through similar situations," Bell said. "I've been able to help them navigate through situations in their life that they might not have been able to... just from my own experience."
Bell's sister Cami was 32 when she died of an overdose.
"She was a senior in high school, I was a freshman, and she was hit by a drunk driver, and it really changed her life from there," Bell said. "She was issued pain meds that eventually, ten years later, took her life.”
Bell said, in the beginning, her sister hid her addiction well.
"For the longest time, I had no clue the hold that it had on her. She was very successful. She ran businesses; I looked up to her," Bell said. "And then every other week or month — Cami was always in jail.”
Bell said one of the last times she saw her sister; she felt like she wasn't there.
“I didn't recognize her at all. And like that entrepreneur, that role, my big sister, right? It's like, where'd she go? It takes your soul. It took her soul way before she died," Bell said.
Cami's last time in jail, four years ago, Bell bailed her out.
“I wanted my sister home, and then three weeks later, she was dead," Bell said, wiping away tears.
She said, as a family, they're doing the best they can.
“I struggled throughout my life, a lot with alcohol," Bell said. "But when my sister passed away, it threw me into a life of — bit of worth living."
Bell met her husband, now has a relationship with her daughter, and is fighting to end the stigma surrounding addiction.
“The beauty of the other side is, it's worth it. Just by living one day at a time," she said, smiling.
New CDC opioid prescribing guidelines
At the end of 2022, the CDC released new opioid prescribing guidelines, loosening the restrictions it put in place in 2016, giving doctors more leeway.
The move prompted backlash from Florida's Deputy Secretary for Health, Dr. Kenneth Scheppke.
In a responsepublished in the Wall Street Journal, Scheppke criticized the updated guidance, which eliminated 2016 recommendations "limiting opioid treatment to three days" and "that doctors avoid increasing dosage past 90 milligrams of morphine a day."
He took aim at the CDC's new report, which says opioids carry "considerable potential risk," writing in his response, "There is nothing potential about it." He went on to say the public should know opioids are not essential for pain management.
“It is very confusing," Professor Troy Quast, with the University of South Florida College of Public Health told the I-Team. "To try to figure out, what is the best way forward?”
Quast has looked at the relationship between opioid prescribing rates and children going into foster care.
"It was very stark findings, especially for Florida. Our initial paper looked at from 2012 to 2015 and found that a typical increase in the prescription rate of opioids was correlated with a roughly 30% increase in the removal rate of children from their homes," Quast said.
He acknowledged the crackdown on prescribing practices likely pushed more people to heroin and now fentanyl. Still, Quast said he is concerned about the potential impact of the new guidelines.e
"It does have this feeling of — we're going back to where we were, to some extent," Quast said, questioning if the CDC is opening the door to more problems. "It does give me some pause."
'It’s getting out of control'
The I-Team was the first to go out with Pasco Sheriff's Behavioral Health Intervention Team as they passed out Narcan to the community, fighting an uphill battle with more people dying from fentanyl overdoses.
“It’s getting out of control. Absolutely out of control," Cpl. Ricardo Ortiz said.
Next week, the I-Team will give you an inside look at the new approach gaining traction in the fight to save lives.
- If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, the National Drug and Alcohol Treatment Referral Service provides free and confidential information, 24/7, at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
- Click here to search for a treatment facility in your area.
