A new vaccine being tested could offer another solution to help opioid users with an addiction.

“All my life, I've been working on drugs of abuse like substance abuse disorder, etcetera,” Marco Pravetoni, an associate professor of pharmacology and medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School, said.

Pravetoni has been working on a vaccine for opioid use for more than a decade at the University of Minnesota.

“It’s a synthetic vaccine that is composed of the target opioid link to a carrier immunogenic protein,” he said.

The vaccine tells the body to make antibodies for oxycodone.

“These antibodies will be selective for the target opioids,” he said.

“The antibodies will bind to the oxycodone molecule and prevent it from getting into the brain, so it should blunt the effects of the oxycodone,” Sandra Comer, Director of the Opioid Laboratory at Columbia University, said.

This prevents the drug “high” and rewarding properties, Comer said.

Comer is leading the clinical trials. Right now, the vaccine for oxycodone addiction is in Phase 1 clinical trial, as approved by the FDA.

“The Phase 1 study is typically focused on safety,” she said. “That study is intending to enroll anywhere between 12 and 24 subjects and then we’ll have to see what they’ll allow us to do next.”

This vaccine will work with other treatments that are currently in use.

“What we’re hoping is that if we give a combination of the vaccine and methadone for example, if somebody relapses after a few months, at least the vaccine-generated antibodies would still provide some protection against overdose,” Comer said.

Emergency physician Dr. Donald Stader said he can see this new, novel solution being helpful.

“We do not know if this is going to be significant in our patient population, but I think it’s very promising,” he said. “We know opioid addiction, even in the midst of the COVID pandemic we’re currently facing, is still the number one killer of Americans under the age of 50.”

“We do see the ravishes of the opioid crisis every day in terms of patients who have overdosed, in terms of patients who come to us in withdrawal, or patients coming to us seeking help with an opioid use disorder. And I will tell you it has gotten much, much worse over the past two years,” Dr. Stader said.

While a vaccine for oxycodone is in Phase 1 trials -- and still has Phase 2 and Phase 3 to go -- Pravetoni said they are developing them for heroin and other drugs as well.

“I've been working on it for so long, but it's also true that this is the first clinical trial ever for an opioid vaccine. And if this works it will open up the field for other medications so that other folks working on cocaine and meth or whatever other type of vaccine that could still help people, that will create a precedent for other teams working on this,” Pravetoni said.

Comer said it will be a while before the vaccine is commercially available, but they hope to eventually create a multivariate vaccine.

“Our overall goal is to develop a series of vaccines that can actually prevent the negative effects of multiple opioids,” Pravetoni said.

RICHMOND, Va. — Jennifer Campbell has faced loss, addiction, and domestic abuse.

“It just took being in the wrong place at the wrong time, at a weak moment, and I used again, and from the next six months was the deepest, darkest hell I've ever known,” Campbell said.

Campbell has even been on the brink of death.

“He beat me so badly, he put me in a body bag in a river and I was unconscious, but I kept waking up," Campbell said. "I don't know if the cold water, but I kept waking up and I try to fight my way out of a body bag. And someone pulled up into these woods, by the grace of God, and he saw them. So he came and got me out of the river and took me back to the house. So God saved me once again.”

It wasn’t until she was arrested for drug distribution that she finally got away from that man. She says she believes God used the time she served behind bars as an opportunity to press the reset button.

After jail, Campbell went to a long-term residential facility called the Mercy House. She’s now been sober for four years. Rosalinda Rivera is the executive director of Mercy House.

“Our home represents probably about 90% of women that have been through sexual abuse, through some kind of physical abuse," Rivera said. "They are victims of violence, domestic violence, who have many of them have turned to addiction to find a way of an escape.”

Rivera says the women go through a series of family classes, job-related training, and relapse prevention. She says a recent study done by the University of Maryland shows 65% of the women who finish the program never go back to their addiction.

“For the 50 years that we've been doing this program, we have seen that the core issue is a lack of hope.”

As the U.S. opioid crisis continues to get worse, Rivera says it was heartbreaking to turn ladies away at the beginning of the pandemic.

“Once we realized that we could do testing and let people in the door, the phones, well, the phones never stop ringing,” Campbell said.

Campbell says there are many reasons people facing addiction have been struggling more throughout the pandemic.

“Probably they lost their jobs and they were struggling financially," Campbell said. "Maybe someone in their family was suffering from COVID-19 and maybe someone in their family passed away due to it. And I mean, that just brings on so many different aspects of grief. And some people don't know any way to deal with that other than to run to drugs.”

According to the CDC, a record 93,000 people died from a drug overdose in 2020.

Dr. Nora Volkow is the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health. She says the opioid crisis has basically been put on the backburner during the pandemic.

“The number of people that have died from opioids significantly rose during the pandemic year of 2020," Dr. Volkow said. "The estimate is that there was at least a 30% increase from 2019. And so this is the largest increase in overdose deaths that we have ever recorded.”

She says the health care system was saturated because of COVID-19 and there’s been a rise in more dangerous drugs like fentanyl.

“The people that are mostly affected are between 24 and 54 years of age, so they are at the prime of their lives,” Dr. Volkow said.

In order to make these numbers go down, Dr. Volkow says we need to end the stigmas surrounding addiction so people aren’t ashamed to seek medical help. She also would like to see an expansion of access to naloxone – a medication that rapidly reverses an opioid overdose.

Places like the Mercy House help these women to view themselves in a more positive light giving them the chance to start a new chapter.

“It's a battle that they're going to deal with the rest of their life, and so if they plug in a community that's thriving, if you get plugged and if they have purpose, so many people are just looking for a purpose," Rivera said. "And when they find purpose, that is what kind of separates them and helps them stay on the path to recovery.”

CINCINNATI — Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio experienced big jumps in overdose deaths throughout 2020, according to estimates released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

How big? A 53% increase in Kentucky, a 33% increase in Indiana and a 21% increase in Ohio. Each number sets off alarm bells for treatment advocates, some of whom said they believe the COVID-19 pandemic played a significant role.

“You know, the isolation may have caused some relapse for people who had significant recovery time,” said nurse practitioner Summer Trenkamp, who works with recovering drug users at Brightview Health, on Thursday.

John Kues, who has been sober since 2012, said he has many peers who struggled to maintain their sobriety in a country on lockdown. He understands, he added.

“In the beginning, the things that got me sober was going to meetings and that interaction with other people, knowing they’ve been through the same thing that I’ve been through, and they’re doing well and they saw it out the other side,” he said. “And even though the meetings changed to where they were online at a certain point, it’s still not that intimate connection you felt with people, and you need that early on in sobriety.”

Kenton County Commonwealth’s Attorney Rob Sanders said he’s starting to notice an uptick in the number of drug cases reaching his courts, which wasn’t the case early in the pandemic.

“A lot less people, during the shutdowns, were getting caught because police officers are just as scared of the virus as everyone else, so there were a lot less traffic stops,” he said. “There are a lot less people being stopped on the street, basically a lot less people getting caught with their drugs, so that’s a lot more people using drugs and, as a consequence, a lot more people overdosing on drugs.”

He also believes a Kentucky state government move to release some defendants from jail to reduce crowding led to more drug use.

“There was a gap where the state was releasing them without the mandate that they go to treatment,” he said.

That’s since been ironed out through the Supreme Court, he added.

Trenkamp and other health workers dedicated to recovery want struggling people to know there’s hope and compassion available for them.

"We treat it like it is it's a chronic disease like anything else, like diabetes, hypertension,” she said. “So when they come here, they're going to get complete care. We look at the whole person."

CINCINNATI — Week after week, I have loved bringing you “Positively Cincinnati.” One big reason is that I typically feel some kind of personal connection to the stories. This week is no exception.

In anticipation of WCPO’s Thursday telethon for Madi’s House, I’m taking a look at how this reaffirming, safe place was born — a place where people can go to get help for what is an illness.

Watch Kristyn Hartman's "Positively Cincinnati" segment on Madi's House in the viewer at the top of this story.

Perhaps you know that WCPO's own Steve Raleigh and his wife, Julie, decided to build it. They say their daughter, Madi, often talked about needing a bridge to “healthy” following rehab — a spot that supported sobriety in everyday life. Madi’s addiction and mental health struggle took her before that dream could become a reality.

But out of her loss, Madi’s House was born.

Julie told me, "Losing Madi was the worst day of my life. I have a hole in my heart."

Sadly, she knows she’s far from alone in that grief.

"It crosses all boundaries," she said. "It doesn’t matter if you’re rich, poor, middle class. It hits us all, hits us all hard."

It’s exactly why the Raleighs are working to bring the Tri-State a place that is warm — one that will welcome people facing the challenges of addiction and mental illness with open arms. The first step is their Madi’s House Annex.

I was there Sunday to see some of the programming — not just for people on the road to sobriety, but their families, too. It is, indeed, a place where people in this fight that affects so many can be accepted for who they are, loved for who they are — no judgment.

And as I watched the community there, I wished something like it had been available to someone I loved.

I am one of those family members who felt helpless in the storm of addiction. The "Madi" in my life was my former husband, Chris. This spring he passed after a long struggle with alcohol.

An accomplished, soft-hearted, good soul, he had great difficulty talking — even with me — about his dependency. I think the stigma surrounding addiction had a lot to do with it. Late in our marriage, when I would encourage him to get help, he would say things like, “You need to apologize to me for accusing me of such a grievous character flaw.” That’s society’s moral condemnation of addiction getting in the way of getting help for what is an illness.

That last point deserves repeating: Addiction is an illness, and that's why Madi’s House is a stigma-free zone. It offers community. It is that place where people can go to relate to other people walking the path to sobriety. They’re working to serve family members, too — something that makes me smile, as I could have used such wonderful support.

That brings us to tonight’s “Positively Cincinnati.” It is our focus on the eve of a telethon brought to you by the good people of WCPO, who see a real need for Madi’s House.

Thursday’s telethon will build on the growing Madi’s House mission. Recently Mercy Health donated a big, beautiful old house with lovely land so the Raleigh family can bring Madi’s dream to even more people. I hope you’ll watch the story, and the telethon, with the full understanding that you never know when someone you love might need it. I never thought it could be my family. And it was.

For the love of every Madi — in hope, in health, in healing.

Amy Daeschel is a woman in long-term recovery.

"What that means to me is I haven’t found it necessary to use a drink or a drug since August 23, 2017,” Daeschel said.

Daeschel had a successful life until she had multiple foot surgeries at the age of 37. She was prescribed oxycontin for pain.

“Five of them, 30 milligrams a day, and this went on for a year and a half," Daeschel said. "And I had built a strong dependency upon this medication. It turned into an addiction when I started treating emotional trauma. My mother had committed suicide, I was going through a divorce, had domestic violence, I mean everything just hit me at once.”

Once the doctor found out about her addiction, she was cut off. So, she turned to the streets.

“That first $10 bag of heroin came and it was over. Within two months, I had lost everything."

She says it wasn’t until she hit rock bottom that she was able to turn her life around. A state-run addiction operation offered her treatment. She’s been sober since. Unfortunately, that hasn't the case for a lot of others across the country.

Julie Burns is the CEO of Rize Massachusetts Foundation – a statewide independent nonprofit focused on ending the opioid overdose crisis.

“In recent months, the opioid crisis has definitely taken a turn for the worse," Burns said. "COVID definitely caused an uptick in fatal overdoses, primarily caused by the isolation with stay-at-home orders and people couldn’t get access to treatment. They found themselves using alone or using in places where somebody wasn’t checking on them.”

Once somebody’s addicted, it is ridiculously challenging to stop.

“Addiction is a disease of the brain," Burns said. "Opioids change the receptor patterns in your brain and it’s a clinical diagnosis. It’s recognized by the DSM so it’s not debatable that it’s a disease, it’s definitely a disease, and it can be treated.”

Researchers are hard at work trying to find new ways to treat people, researchers like Dr. David Fisher at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He's the chair of dermatology and the director of the melanoma program.

Knowing that UV radiation from the sun stimulates the production of both vitamin D and endorphins in our bodies, Dr. Fisher wanted to study if there is a relationship between vitamin D and opioid response. Opioids also trigger the release of endorphins.

“There’s something paradoxical about the idea that we would have evolved a response that leads us to seek the exposure to the most common carcinogen in our environment – which is ultraviolet radiation," Dr. Fisher said. "Why would that exist? And we predicted or we hypothesized that vitamin D could be a perfect explanation for this.”

His team took lab mice and made them vitamin D deficient. Then they measured their response to either UV radiation or opiates. Their hypothesis that a vitamin D deficiency may increase the risk for opiate addiction held true.

“The dependency was exaggerated; the withdrawal symptoms were exaggerated," Dr. Fisher said. "Even pain control – lower doses of morphine were producing fourfold the magnitude of benefits. Very, very large differences if there was vitamin D deficiency present. Whereas if we corrected the vitamin D level or had normal vitamin D levels, then the responses were much weaker to the opiates.”

Dr. Fisher says this research is still new and they need to validate their findings in a human clinical trial. If nothing changes, his research could help doctors be more aware as they’re prescribing opiates.

“Some of those patients have trouble getting off and ultimately become addicted," Dr. Fisher said. "Could it be that if we identify those patients if they’re vitamin D deficient and just correct the vitamin D deficiency, perhaps that would lower the risk of becoming addicted in the first place.”

In the meantime, Daeschel says she plans to continue her advocacy work to end the stigmas surrounding addiction.

"I’ve got massive scars on my arm," Daeschel said. "And people ask me all the time ‘what happened?’ I’ll look them straight in the face and I’ll go ‘heroin’ and their face, they’re just shocked and tell me ‘oh I could never see you doing that.’ And I’m like ‘but that’s the reality of it. Addiction is so close to home. Somebody’s mother, somebody’s brother, father, sister, uncle, whatever.’”

She wants people to know that recovery is possible and there are many different pathways to get there.

“You will find a freedom that you never knew existed,” Daeschel said.

The coronavirus pandemic put a lot of lives on hold for over a year, but Butler County’s health commissioner said she sees a silver lining that might save people from another crisis – this one involving drug overdose and intervention.

In 2020, Ohio emergency rooms saw more than 32,000 overdoses. Butler County statistics show that there were 177 deaths and, according to the coroner’s office, the county is on pace to exceed that number in 2021.

In the past 30 days, Butler County had just one day without an overdose.

“Now that I’m starting to be able to think outside COVID, we’re really ramping up our efforts to reduce overdoses,” Butler County health commissioner Jenny Bailer said

She said local agencies don’t plan to use the same old attack against drug addiction.

“I have most of the important heads of agencies in my cellphone,” Bailer said. “I have their contacts right there. I might not have known them before this, but I know them now and they know me. They can call me anytime, day and night, and I’m happy for them to do that – and we’ll leverage that.”

The Hamilton County addiction coalition, consisting of 40 state, local and federal agencies, launched six years ago when Cincinnati saw its first surge of fentanyl deaths in 2016. Connections between police, fire, public health and others helped get NARCAN on the streets within a week and save lives.

While Butler County isn’t forming an official coalition, Bailer expects partnerships that brought vaccine to fairgrounds, to drive-throughs, pop-up bus clinics and more – to remain a team able to plan, forecast and better respond to addiction and social issues contributing to overdoses.

“So those relationships are not lost and I hope they won’t end,” Bailer said. “We’ll continue to work on things for the citizens of Butler County.”

She also said that local hospitals who were forced to share supplies during the pandemic formed relationships that can be redirected toward addiction and overdose problems

William Stoehr is a world-renowned artist. His technique involves spilling paint and water onto a canvas.

“I like to say that the drip that’s created may be random or an accident, but what I do with it is not,” Stoehr said.

The subjects in his giant paintings are victims, witnesses and survivors. His artwork has a purpose.

“Somehow, I had to cause people to not just respond, but to maybe take some action or to feel differently about a subject,” Stoehr explained.

He wants to end the stigma that comes with addiction.

“My exposure to it really was through my sister. And this is my sister here. This painting," said Stoehr of one of his paintings. "And she overdosed. She had been suffering from alcoholism and addiction for probably 30 or more years. She succumbed and it was tragic.”

His own life experience with his sister, who he calls ‘Emma’ in his artwork, is what drives him to make a difference in this world.

“I learned that it was very difficult," Stoehr said. "One, for our family to talk about this, but two, for my sister to seek help. And it was because of the stigma. In fact, one day, she said she was evil. She’s not evil. She had a disease.”

Neuroscientist Nora Volkow has been instrumental in demonstrating that drug addiction is a disease of the human brain. She’s the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

“People still think that people are doing this to themselves,” Dr. Volkow said.

Dr. Volkow uses imaging to understand the changes in the brain that addiction causes. She compares it to the way our bodies memorize a pleasurable response every time we eat or drink water. It motivates our bodies to continue doing those things without thinking about it because it’s necessary for survival.

“But drugs have the capacity to generate and stimulate artificially those same systems creating this strong memory that leads you to want to take the drug the next time you are in the same environment,” Dr. Volkow said.

Dr. Volkow and Stoehr are working alongside each other to change people’s perceptions of those struggling with addiction. They say art communicates emotion and a way to see things differently. Stoehr uses specific methods in his artwork to make people connect.

“It just grabs you as an emotion. I mean, these large faces,” Dr. Volkow said about Stoehr's artwork.

Stoehr says neuroscience taught him that people react strongly to a face with prominent eyes. Moreover, the ambiguity in his paintings forces people to fill in the blanks, allowing us to see ourselves in the paintings, too.

“They are no different from us," Dr. Volkow said. "They feel like us and reach out to you to sort of feel that empathy, to generate that emotional reaction to them as opposed to what we do in society, which basically just rejects them and stigmatizes them and sort of looks the other way.”

Stoehr's art also connects with survivors of addiction and encourages them to seek help. His art is what led his sister to rehab.

“I had tried everything," Stoehr said. "I was at wit's end, and you know, just trying to remain calm and tell her I loved her. And I went up to her door and I said, ‘I’ll paint you a portrait if you go into rehab’. The door opened just a crack and she said yes."

When survivors look at his art, he says they can relate.

“A woman looked at one of my pieces and she said that I knew exactly how she felt and that she wanted to die," he recalled.

Even though his art may seem dark and solemn at first glance, they also portray hope.

“She said that she looked at the very same piece the next morning and saw hope in the woman’s eyes. And then she said, ‘you saved my life.' Now, if that only happens once, I’m a success as an artist.”

Stoehr says he plans to continue his quest to normalize the conversation surrounding drug abuse.

"I don’t want people to feel bad," Stoehr said. "I want them to respond, to understand, to understand that they’re not alone and then to seek help. To take action.”

Editor’s note: With our coronavirus coverage, our goal is not to alarm you but to equip you with the information you need. We will try to keep things in context and focus on helping you make decisions. See a list of resources and frequently asked questions here.

CINCINNATI -- Social distancing may help prevent the spread of COVID-19, but those methods are taking their toll on people battling addiction. A number of treatment centers, including Greater Cincinnati Behavioral Health Services, haven't closed their doors completely, but they've had to change how they provide care.

“Now more than ever, I worry about them getting stressed out and not calling and reaching out," said Chris Miles, peer recovery coach at Greater Cincinnati Behavioral Health Services, "I worry about their safety.”

Changes in care can cause anxiety and stress, which can be a trigger for some addicts.

“When we ask people to stay at home, that is a dangerous and potentially very risky situation for them,” said Alicia Fine, vice president of employment and recovery at the Greater Cincinnati Behavioral Health Services.

Addiction recovery is already an uphill battle, but without group therapy sessions or meetings like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous -- there's a greater risk of relapse.

“When you’re here 3 times a week, 3 hours each day, when you go down to individual sessions through telehealth -- when we take that away, that group dynamic, that support, that’s been significant and really hard for our clients,” Fine said.

To fill that void, Alicia Fine with the Greater Cincinnati Behavioral Health Services says her team is conducting more one on one sessions over the phone or via video chat.

“We are proactively reaching out to every single client that’s open to our services," Fine said. "Our counselors are pursuing people.”

Peer recovery coach Chris Miles has been sober for almost 4 years -- she said her phone has been ringing around the clock.

“I get calls from clients at 11 at night asking, where can I find a meeting," Miles said. "The anxiety is very real. It's real for all of us in recovery.”

Miles said more virtual AA and NA meetings are taking place on video chat platforms like Zoom.

And according to Miles, within the last couple days, more virtual AA and Narcotics Anonymous meetings are taking place on video chat platforms like Zoom. But for recovering addicts who don’t have a phone or computer, there are some solutions in the works

“Those are some barriers that we’re still trying to break down," Fine said. "We’re giving thought to, maybe we need to give people disposable phones to make sure we can reach them during this time period.”

The Greater Cincinnati Behavioral Health Services are keeping their doors open to anyone looking to begin treatment.

“We have had to make adjustments to the way we’re doing things right now," Miles said. "But we are not going anywhere, we’re still going to be here.”

If you or someone you know needs treatment, call the Center for Addiction Treatment at 513-381-6672.

Here are more virtual services for people in recovery:

Numbers you can call for support:

• Greater Cincinnati Area Hope Line: 513-820-2947
• Northern Kentucky Hope Line: 859-429-1783
• Indiana Addiction Hotline: 1-800-662-HELP (4357)