In the summer of 2018, after a day at the beach, George woke up in the hospital. He had no idea where he was or how long he had been unconscious. That’s when doctors gave him the news that he had overdosed. The drug in his system: fentanyl.
It was a surprise to him because that’s not what he thought he was using.
“They told me after they drug tested me. I didn’t come up for anything else except fentanyl,” says George (last name withheld). Today he is speaking out to help others avoid the same fate, or worse. “I thought I was invincible, but it could’ve killed me,” he says. “I’m lucky I get to live another day.”
By the time George OD’d at age 24, he had been using drugs for many years. He started in high school, using marijuana a few times a week. Eventually, his inclination to self-medicate expanded to harder drugs, including heroin. But he never meant to use fentanyl.
It’s a familiar story for those on the front lines of the opioid epidemic. Highly deadly fentanyl is now hidden in nearly every illegal drug on the market—whether the user is aware of it or not.
George’s near-death experience was a wake-up call that sent him to Recovery Unplugged, a monthlong outpatient rehabilitation facility in Annandale. Now 29, he’s five years clean and has a steady job in Tysons. He considers his story a cautionary tale.
“It’s no joke nowadays,” he says. “The way I look at it, if I ever went back out and started using again, there’s a good chance I’d die.”
George was a habitual drug user. But as many families have tragically discovered, you don’t have to be an addict to be killed by fentanyl. All it takes is one mistake—a single moment of experimentation or one counterfeit pill—to end a life.
Opioids are now the No. 1 cause of accidental death in the U.S., killing more people than guns or car crashes, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Drug overdoses have killed more than 100,000 people per year for the last two years. It is the worst addiction epidemic in American history. In October 2017, the opioid crisis was officially declared a public health emergency.
The main culprit is fentanyl.
Originally developed in 1959 for medical use, fentanyl is an FDA-approved prescription drug—a synthetic opioid most often used to treat postsurgical pain or patients with advanced cancer. Because the drug is cheap and easy to make, it is also manufactured and sold illegally.
Unlike marijuana and heroin, which are derived from plant crops, man-made fentanyl doesn’t require farmland, paid laborers or water. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) says a counterfeit pill can be made for as little as 10 cents and sold for as much as $30—a massive profit margin. It’s also highly addictive, ensuring that buyers will come back for more. As a result, dealers are now lacing illegal drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamines and heroin with fentanyl.
Perhaps most dangerous of all, they are also using it to make counterfeit prescription pills that look like Percocet, Xanax or Oxycontin.
The result is a crisis that does not discriminate. Opioid deaths are striking people of all ethnicities, races and socioeconomic backgrounds, across the nation and here in Northern Virginia.
Dealers are using fentanyl to make counterfeit prescription pills that look like Percocet, Xanax or Oxycontin.
McLean residents Karen and Forrest Stieg have been dedicated to erasing the stigma of mental illness and drug addiction ever since they lost their son Drew to an accidental overdose in March 2023, one month before his 21st birthday. The death of the well-known and outwardly successful 20-year-old rocked the community. Close to 1,400 people attended his memorial service.
Drew Stieg was a good student and a star outfielder, recruited by George Mason University to play Division 1 baseball. Before his graduation from McLean High School in 2020, he earned all-district and all-region baseball honors.
“During that time, though, he was dealing with mental health issues. He began to self-medicate—starting with prescribed ADHD meds,” Karen says.
Drew was open with his parents about his struggles. He came to them for support and sought professional help, starting in high school. After his freshman year of college, he left campus, spent half a year in rehab, and then entered a sobriety house. But his addiction had him in a firm grip. In trying to deal with his mental health issues, he continued to self-medicate. He started obtaining substances online—on the dark web, on Snapchat, on Discord and other easy access portals, not believing the pills he was ordering might be laced with harder and more dangerous substances.
The Stieg family is now on a journey of advocacy. Intent on helping others, they founded the Drew Stieg Aspiring Wellness Program, a nonprofit that seeks to build awareness about mental health and substance use, share resources and foster wellness in McLean and its surrounding communities.
“Drew fought hard to be well,” Karen says. “He wanted to battle the mental health and addiction issues he faced. He fought to be the best version of himself and we needed to honor him in that way. He was a leader, and he was a mentor to a lot of other kids.”
“He wanted to feel better,” Forrest adds. “He wanted to be better. He told us this. He told us he did not want to die. We started the program to keep shining his bright light and to offer others hope.”
The Stiegs urge parents to pay attention. “Today’s children and young adults face pressures that we didn’t experience,” they wrote in an email. “They have easy access to things that can cause them harm. We need to be familiar with the signs of mental health issues and substance use disorder. These are not choices; they are diseases and they need to be treated as such.”
People are still afraid to talk about addiction, Karen says. “They are afraid to be judged. Talking about it is important. There cannot be judgment. We need to offer grace and allow people to feel safe. It’s complex and hard to navigate. Talking about it allows you to tap into people who may be experiencing similar situations and open doors to resources, education and the simple feeling [that] you aren’t alone.”
There were 10 juvenile drug overdoses in Arlington between January and October of 2023, two of which were fatal.
Teen overdoses are a growing problem in Northern Virginia. Arlington County police say there were 10 juvenile drug overdoses in Arlington between January and October of 2023, two of which were fatal.
One of the Arlington deaths was 14-year-old Sergio Flores, who died after overdosing in a Wakefield High School bathroom. Four other students were also reportedly treated by medics on the scene and survived.
In March, several Washington-Liberty students overdosed outside Ballston Quarter. In September, another Wakefield student, Jorge Chavarria Rodriguez, was found dead in an apartment building. Drugs were suspected. Later that month, two teen girls overdosed on fentanyl inside Wakefield High School. They were treated with Narcan, according to county police, and both recovered.
In November, after Loudoun County Public Schools saw a string of suspected student overdoses (many involving fentanyl) across six schools, Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order requiring Virginia school districts to inform parents when overdoses occur on school grounds.
The DEA has issued warnings about a sharp nationwide increase in the lethality of counterfeit prescription pills laced with fentanyl.
“I’ve been doing this job for 20 years. This is the deadliest drug I’ve ever seen in my entire career,” says Jarod Forget, special agent in charge of the DEA’s Washington Division, which covers D.C., Maryland and Virginia. He says the drugs coming into Arlington and the surrounding areas are made predominantly by two Mexican cartels, using chemicals sourced from China.
“The Mexican cartels are here. They’re in Virginia,” Forget says. “We’re working very hard to disrupt and dismantle those criminal networks. This is not simply a law enforcement solution. It’s going to take the entire community.”
The cartels are especially hard to trace, he says, because they conduct their business online using encrypted communication on social media platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Payments are made by phone—which are also hard to trace. The DEA has seen drug deliveries being made right to people’s front doors using Uber and package delivery services. Oftentimes the purchaser doesn’t know the pills are fake.
Forget says it’s impossible, even for experts, to distinguish a counterfeit pill from the real thing. They look exactly like Xanax, Percocet or oxycodone. The only way to find out what’s in them is to send them to a lab for testing.
Another variation called “rainbow fentanyl” is multicolored to look like candy.
“Last year [2022] in Virginia, we seized approximately 115,000 of these fake pills,” says Forget.
“All the fentanyl—the pills and the fentanyl powder we seized in 2022—was enough to kill half the population of Virginia. It equated to about 4 million deadly doses.”
As of September 2023, the DEA had seized three times that amount, he says.
In 2021, nationwide deaths from drug overdoses were more than six times the number in 1999, according to the CDC. Fatalities caused by synthetic opioids like fentanyl climbed 22% from 2020 to 2021. More than 75% of the nearly 107,000 drug overdose deaths nationwide in 2021 involved an opioid.
The root of the epidemic began in the 1990s with doctors overprescribing opioids such as oxycodone and hydrocodone to treat pain. As the medical community tightened controls on prescriptions, many people who started out taking the drugs legally became addicts who, with no other options, turned to illegal street narcotics or began purchasing pills on the dark web.
In 2016, Virginia declared a public health emergency, mainly due to increasing overdoses and emergency department visits, but also because of a spike in blood-borne pathogens from injection drug use, including Hepatitis C and HIV.
In 2022, the Virginia Department of Health recorded more than 2,600 drug overdose poisonings—75% of which were from fentanyl.
Michael Silverman, chair of emergency medicine at VHC Health, says the hospital is responding with a large-scale effort that will bring much-needed services to Arlington. A new Wellness/Behavioral Health Center is slated to open on Carlin Springs Road in late 2025 or early 2026. VHC Health is also awaiting state approval to open three new outpatient behavioral health programs for adolescents and adults.
Silverman says the sudden prevalence of fentanyl is alarming for the region. The hospital has seen an uptick in overdose cases. “Patients who overdose [on fentanyl] and come to the ED tend to be sicker than patients we used to see who overdosed on heroin,” he says.
Fentanyl is 100 times stronger than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin, according to the DEA. A tiny amount—just 2 milligrams—is enough to kill. That’s about the equivalent of 10 to 15 grains of table salt.
DEA division chief Forget says the days of “Say No to Drugs” are done. The DEA’s new slogan is “One Pill Can Kill.” The agency is also disseminating “Spot the Fake” posters in schools and other community settings that illustrate how counterfeit drugs look just like the real thing.
The fact that fentanyl and other synthetic opioids are so pervasive and instantly addictive has also forced changes in treatment protocols.
Fentanyl is 100 times stronger than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin.
“One of the greatest difficulties…is that [people] don’t necessarily know what they’re getting,” says Debby Taylor, president and CEO of National Capital Treatment & Recovery (NCTR) in Arlington, which each year treats more than 4,000 individuals coping with substance abuse and addiction. “So, when we take the urine [sample] usually there’s a dispute. The patient will say, ‘Well, I never did that,’ and we say, ‘Well, you may not have thought you were—but you were.’ And it’s not like we’re handling that punitively. We just really want to know what chemicals have gone into their body so that we know how to protect and assist them during the withdrawal process.”
Taylor, a registered nurse with 50 years of experience, says there used to be a longer runway to dependency. It takes several weeks to become truly addicted to a drug like heroin. But a fentanyl addiction can develop in a few days. That makes it harder to help people before they get into real trouble.
“It is so toxic that someone becomes physically, psychologically and brain-wise dependent on it so quick,” she says. “You don’t have the opportunity to do the interventions that you did with the other drugs.”
For decades, NCTR was an abstinence-based program—until synthetic opioids came on the market. Now, some patients who come to the facility need medication-assisted treatment to come off the drugs. Without it, Taylor says, they are going back out and overdosing.
The FDA has approved three drugs for the treatment of opioid dependence: methadone, naltrexone (Vivitrol) and buprenorphine. These drugs then have to be tapered down until the patient is off everything.
Taylor says her nonprofit is treating more young patients than ever before. In June, NCTR reopened its adolescent program at the county’s request.
“They came to us because of the overdoses they were experiencing in the high schools and they had no real place to send [those students],” she says. The adolescent programs had previously operated since 1990 and closed about four years ago due to lack of demand.
One patient receiving treatment is 15 and has been using fentanyl daily since age 11. It’s an extreme case, Taylor says, but just one example of how widespread the problem has become. Taking risks is normal for adolescents, but now the stakes have changed.
“The environment is so toxic right now that they don’t have the opportunity,” Taylor says. “They try something once and they could literally die.”
“The environment is so toxic right now. [Teens] try something once and they could literally die.”
As the epidemic continues, some parents have found themselves blindsided by unfathomable loss.
Arlington residents Admiral James and Mary Winnefeld are among them. After losing their 19-year-old son, Jonathan, a Washington-Liberty grad, to an accidental overdose, they started a nonprofit to save lives. The SAFE Project (Stop the Addiction Fatality Epidemic) is now a nationwide effort.
“I lost a child to opioids,” Admiral Winnefeld wrote in an April op-ed in USA Today. “Compassion, not criminalization, could spare others my grief.”
Winnefeld, who was vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2011 to 2015, likened the nation’s battle with fentanyl to the front lines he faced in American conflicts around the world. He said the country must fight back.
Founded in 2017, the SAFE Project works with more than 150 college campuses and school systems nationwide—including Arlington Public Schools—as well as communities, workplaces and veterans’ groups. The nonprofit provides education, training and lifesaving resources, such as fentanyl test strips and naloxone, the overdose drug often known by the brand name Narcan.
“This is everyone’s problem. Everyone has to be part of the solution,” says Leslie Plaia, executive director for substance abuse and behavioral health at the SAFE Project. “There are so many times where people think, Oh, that won’t happen to my family or that won’t happen to my community. We’re behind the ball.”
Plaia says curbing the epidemic can’t fall on the shoulders of a single agency or institution. It’s going to take a village. “We want to help equip communities and individuals as fast as possible to really create change in a tangible way.”
In Arlington, the crisis has spurred a coordinated countywide effort. The Arlington Addiction Recovery Initiative (AARI), launched in 2017, is an opioid and addiction task force involving Arlington Public Schools, local hospitals, first responders (fire, EMT and police), the criminal justice system (the sheriff’s office, public defenders and the Commonwealth’s Attorney) and private treatment providers including National Capital Treatment & Recovery, Encore Recovery and Recovery Centers of America. The county’s Department of Human Services runs the program.
AARI’s three-part strategic plan focuses on prevention, treatment and supply reduction. The task force disseminates posters and bilingual educational materials throughout the county, including to schools and doctor’s offices. It conducts educational presentations for youth, PTAs and other community groups.
McLean and Falls Church are covered by a similar initiative—the Fairfax County Opioid and Substance Use Task Force. Fairfax County had 65 fatal opioid overdoses between January and June of 2023, according to county data, compared with 45 over the same time period the year prior.
Fairfax County’s task force says it reached more than 36,000 students last year with substance abuse presentations as part of its education initiative.
Patients at National Capital Treatment & Recovery have told Taylor such presentations, as well as mentoring programs, might have stopped them from trying drugs in the first place. They’ve shared other insights, too.
“They said some interesting things,” Taylor says. “One: Take the fees out of playing sports. Two: Put back intramural sports where everybody plays, even if you’re not on the varsity team. Three: really good after-school programs for music and art…which are proven by science to produce dopamine. Sports are also proven to produce dopamine. When you have a high amount of dopamine pulsating through your brain, you are less susceptible to substances.”
Another tactic at play: drug “takeback” programs that take opioids out of circulation by encouraging residents to turn in unused prescription meds. Fairfax County says it collected more than 6,000 pounds of medication last year.
In Arlington, AARI has converted assets seized during drug arrests into funds to purchase drug take-back boxes where people can turn in unused prescription narcotics.
Most opioid users don’t start with illegal drugs. They start by misusing prescription medications.
“We know that getting rid of unused medications is an important piece of the puzzle,” she says. “We also know that 70% of opioid prescriptions go unused following surgery. So if those prescriptions are just sitting in a medicine cabinet and a teen experiments—if they like that feeling—now they may turn to the street to buy more.”
AARI is working to get naloxone into the community, and trains people how to administer it. Last March, Arlington Public Schools (APS) made naloxone available in emergency boxes on every floor in high schools, says Darrell Sampson, executive director of student services at APS. The boxes were installed three months after the first fatal overdose at Wakefield. More than 1,400 staff are now trained to administer the life-saving nasal spray.
Additionally, students are allowed to carry naloxone, provided they have parent permission, proof of training and promise to call 911 and notify staff if they administer it on school grounds.
“We are willing to do what it takes to have people come to an understanding about how dangerous some of these substances can be,” Sampson says.
Fairfax County Public Schools and Falls Church City Public Schools are also making naloxone available in school buildings and school health clinics. Like APS, FCCPS allows staff and students who have undergone training to carry it, according to FCCPS spokesman John Wesley Brett.
These changes come as local law enforcement struggles to combat a rising tide of drug sales. In October, Arlington police arrested a 19-year-old man and a teen boy in connection with the overdoses of two teen girls at Wakefield High. The Arlington County Police Department (ACPD) says it made about 70 arrests in 2023 for either manufacturing or distributing controlled substances.
Dealers who sell drugs that kill can face serious charges on par with committing a homicide, says DEA agent Forget. Last year, Arlington police charged two suspects with involuntary manslaughter for supplying drugs that resulted in deaths.
In Arlington, most narcotics sales are prearranged using text and/or social media, according to ACPD Public Information Officer Ashley Savage. She says officers are gathering and analyzing intelligence to identify fentanyl sources and distribution networks.
“Prioritization is placed on investigating cases involving heroin and opioids, with the ultimate goal of identifying those who distribute dangerous controlled substances within our community and holding them accountable.”
Savage says ACPD encourages parents to communicate openly with their children about what fentanyl is and why it is so dangerous. Kids should be reminded not to take any pills that were not prescribed by a doctor. Parents of teens can help create an “exit plan” so they know what to do if they’re pressured to take a pill or use drugs.
Local public schools have certified substance abuse counselors and have begun emphasizing prevention and intervention as early as elementary school. In 2022, APS expanded its outreach to include fourth-graders, according to school counselor Jenny Sexton. Messages for the youngest students focus on the dangers of substances like alcohol, tobacco and prescription medications; peer pressure and refusal skills; and who it is safe to accept medication from (i.e., parents or the school nurse).
Some community leaders say it’s still not enough. Judith Davis, president of Wakefield’s Parent-Teacher-Student Association, blasted leaders at a school board meeting last January after the death of Wakefield student Sergio Flores.
“Every single one of you knew that this day would come. Say his name—Sergio Flores. He died. This kid is not going back to his family,” Davis said. “Every single one of you in this room has been told by parents, teachers, students, PTSA community leaders that we will have someone die at Wakefield. Since we came back from Covid that has been the constant conversation and you all failed to address it.”
Sexton, now in her eighth year as a substance abuse counselor for APS, works at Kenmore Middle School and all 25 elementary schools. She says the biggest problem at the middle school level isn’t opioid use; it’s vaping, which some experts claim is a gateway to harder drugs.
Vaping is what most commonly gets teens referred to Second Chance, a program (also part of AARI) offered to Arlington youth who are found in possession or under the influence of illegal substances. Students who complete the three-day intensive course can have suspensions removed from school records or have their court records wiped clean.
Second Chance facilitator Alvaro Alarcon says the program helps young people get to the core of why they are using and learn to make informed choices about their own health.
“What we’re doing, day one, is we’re building rapport,” Alarcon says. Often something in the child’s life or environment is causing them to turn to vaping or drugs. He says addressing that root issue can be enough to spur a turnaround—and stop the behavior before they try something more dangerous.
Students in the Second Chance program participate in group sessions with peers and hear from guest speakers, including police officers and the Commonwealth’s Attorney. Parents are also involved. Outcomes are positive in the majority of cases, he says.
Interestingly, Alarcon suggests that there may be a correlation between excessive screen time and early substance use. While screen time alone doesn’t necessarily lead kids to use alcohol or drugs, it can be a risk factor, he says, given its tendency to dovetail with problems such as social isolation, lack of physical activity and reduced parental supervision—which, in combination, may increase the likelihood of engaging in risky behaviors.
“It’s the same release of dopamine,” Alarcon explains. “The brain doesn’t know the difference. What they’re doing is, they’re overstimulated. And if they can’t be overstimulated by smoking, they’re going to be overstimulated with their phone. They’re just on a high consistently.”
That’s how it all started for George. “My first addiction didn’t start out with drugs. I would say it started out with video games. That was my escape from what was around me,” says George, who grew up in a broken home.
In elementary school, he and his two sisters were removed from their mother and sent to live with a great-aunt. He says drugs were always around. “I would look to other things to kind of branch out and escape from whatever I was feeling.”
George’s mother was a cocaine addict. She died of an overdose last January. The cause of death listed on the autopsy report: fentanyl.
George says entering treatment, meeting new people in group therapy and hearing their stories helped him overcome his past, and his addictions.
It wasn’t easy. The initial withdrawal caused extreme mental distress, he says, including suicidal thoughts. But once the drugs left his system, he began to see things more clearly.
“Just a couple of weeks passed and I swear it was like a light switch changed in my head,” he says. “I’m actually happy. I’m enjoying life. I feel good where I’m at now. Today I can sit out here and say I don’t need to have a drink, I don’t need to have any outside substance to be who I am inside.”
George is now married and living in Woodbridge, with a 1-year-old son. He works as an auto mechanic, enjoys camping in his travel trailer and spending time with his three dogs. One of his life’s ambitions is to use his story to prevent others from going down the same path.
“I’m not afraid to tell somebody this is what I went through. Because you never know. They could be going through the same thing,” he says. “I think it’s hard for a lot of younger people. It’s such a gripping addiction. A lot of people don’t break it.”
Know the Signs of Opioid Overdose
- Small, constricted “pinpoint” pupils
- Falling asleep or loss of consciousness
- Slow, shallow breathing
- Choking or gurgling sounds
- Limp body
- Pale, blue or cold skin and fingernails
Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control
Helpful Resources
Visit these websites for information about opioid addiction; counterfeit pills; naloxone (Narcan) and where to find it; treatment programs; parenting guidelines and more.
- Arlington Addiction Recovery Initiative
- Arlington Public Schools Substance Abuse Prevention, Education and Narcan Authorization
- DEA Drug Fact Sheet: Fentanyl
- Fairfax County Opioid and Substance Use Task Force
- Falls Church City Public Schools Opioid/Narcan Policy
- National Capital Treatment & Recovery
- SAFE Project: Stop the Addiction Fatality Epidemic
Digital editor Helen Partridge has also written about the county’s missing middle plan and Arlington Tech high school.