OCEAN CITY – Attendees started gathering on the beach between 2nd and 3rd streets Wednesday night. More than 40 people were in attendance and no one was alike.
In honor of International Overdose Awareness Day, the Worcester County Warriors Against Opiate Addiction members and newcomers gathered around to represent loved ones, deceased and living, who have suffered addiction and overdose.
In a similar ceremony 30 miles to the west, at the Riverwalk Park in Salisbury, the city and Wicomico County Health Department held its own Awareness Day commemoration.
Worcester County Warriors Against Opiate Addiction co-founders Heidi McNeeley, Cheryl Hassett and Jackie Ball are pictured at Wednesday night’s event.
Whether on a beach, in a park or in another country, people around the world took part in this annual event to break the stigma of opioid addiction.
“It doesn’t discriminate,” says Cheryl Hassett, Warriors member and cofounder. “That is for sure.”
Hassett, along with co-founders Heidi McNeeley and Jackie Ball, know what it is like to see someone they love struggle with addiction.
To promote support, help and awareness, McNeeley, Ball and Hassett began the Warriors group.
“Our mission statement is to provide support, awareness, education and navigation of resources to people of Worcester County that have been impacted by opiate addiction,” McNeeley says.
Fifty people attended their first meeting at the Ocean Pines Library April 7.
By their second meeting, there were almost 300.
“I think as moms, there is so much shame in this, and there is so much loneliness, McNeeley says, “And people are starting to talk about it freely.”
In 2015, the state reported 190 heroin-related deaths, according to the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Preliminary numbers from January to March of this year lists 216.
Most attendees of Wednesday night’s event discovered the group on Facebook.
Some came with pictures and T-shirts with faces of the deceased. Others came just as they were.
As Ball passed out candles, a group of musicians played songs on their guitars.
With families in attendance, McNeeley began to read aloud the names of 27 overdose victims and addicts.
One attendee, Gary Howard, lost his daughter, Mallory, a month ago. She was clean for a year before health complications from heroin claimed her life.
Clarissa Noyola holds a keepsake of her cousin, Amanda McCoy, who died at the age of 31.
“They think all the years of doing heroin weakened her heart,” Howard says. “She had a massive heart attack and died.”
She was an addict for 14 years.
For others in the crowd, their fight continues.
Angel Timmons, the mother of two recovering heroin addicts, says she is there to support her children and their friends.
Her daughter, 24, is 11 months clean. Her son, 22, is 202 days clean.
“[Warriors] has done a lot,” Timmons says. “Without them [the co-founders], I don’t believe [Warriors] would be as far as we are right now.”
For some, the occasion was a somber reminder of the ones they lost to opioids.
For others it was an opportunity to let their voices be heard.
“We are standing here tonight as one for Worcester County and as a whole United States,” one attendee says to the crowd. “This country is in trouble, but we stand here together with love and union.”
