Overdose deaths decrease nationwide, and here in the Upstate
'You realize you have a problem, you know true leadership is dealing with the problem and then putting the plan in place, and I believe that's probably what's happening nationwide,' said Spartanburg Co. coroner Rusty Clevenger.
Clevenger's data showed overdose deaths in Spartanburg Co. skyrocketed during Covid. He said it was then that he and state officials knew they not only needed to track the deaths, but exactly where these drugs were coming from and which ones were the cause.
'We had to figure out where the hotspots were at so we could put you know, measures in place to try, whether it be education or whatever, and it seems to be working as well,' he said.
Data showed Spartanburg County saw a marked decrease in overdose deaths in 2024. 'The numbers are holding steady about last year's levels, maybe a little bit less right now,' Clevenger explained.
However Keith Blanton, the Pastor and Superintendent at Faith Home, a non-profit Christian recovery center, said beds in their facilities across the Upstate stay full. He told us between their four locations, there are 135 beds.
'I think more people are getting help,' said Blanton. 'I just do. I think that you know, Narcan is a good thing. It saves people's lives and as long as they're alive, you know there's a chance.'
Blanton said thanks to the coroner's office and law enforcement agencies tracking 'hotspots' and providing education, drugs no longer have to be the end of every user's story.
'It's tough,' Blanton said. 'It's tough at first especially, but it gets easier, and it gets better. But if I had one thing to say, you do not have to live that way, there's a way out if you want out.'
Blanton told 7NEWS over the years that the people they serve have become significantly younger.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
1 dead, 22 sickened by Harlem Legionnaires' disease cluster
July 31 (UPI) -- An outbreak of Legionnaires' disease in Harlem has killed one person and sickened nearly two dozen others, New York City health officials said. The cluster was first detected Friday, and as of Wednesday, one person has died from the severe lung infection and 22 others have become sick with the disease. Legionnaires' disease is a type of pneumonia caused by Legionella bacteria that grow in warm water. Those who inhale mist that contains the bacteria can get sick with the disease, which can cause flu-like symptoms, while complications can be fatal. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 8,000 and 18,000 people are hospitalized with Legionnaires' disease each year in the United States. The New York City Health Department said in a statement Wednesday that all operable cooling towers in the investigation area have been sampled and officials have directed building owners with initial positive screening results to initiate remediation within 24 hours. "Anyone with flu-like symptoms should contact a healthcare provider as soon as possible," Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr. Toni Eyssallenne of the NYC Health Department said. "Legionnaires' disease can be effectively treated if diagnosed early, but New Yorkers at higher risk, like adults aged 50 and older, those who smoke or have chronic lung conditions, should be especially mindful of their symptoms and seek care as soon as symptoms begin." The investigation into the Harlem cluster is ongoing.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
I Nearly Died From 'Broken Heart Syndrome' — And Here's Why You Could Be At Risk, Too
'I hope you're taking care of yourself.' That's the line that's been coming at me for years now –– across my texts, LinkedIn DMs and voicemails, across dinner tables and Slack messages, and haven't-seen-you-in-forever emails. I know people mean well. I can feel their complicated mix of sympathy, pity and thank-God-it's-not-me relief. But the words roll off tongues with an ease and frequency usually reserved for basic, mindless tasks –– not the truly daunting business of righting yourself after being pummeled by one (or more) of adult life's most stressful experiences. According to The Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory, I've been through a whole host of those experiences –– some of them a few times over. My father and maternal grandmother both died of cancer the same year, I've moved more than a dozen times since graduating from college, and I've lost three jobs. In the past year alone, I've gotten laid off; had my 3-year-old son diagnosed with a rare, difficult-to-control epilepsy; and tested positive for COVID on my birthday. My friends have dubbed me 'a warrior,' 'a real-life superhero,' and 'the queen of coping.' And while I don't know if those are fully-earned monikers in a country where almost 38 million people are living below the poverty line, I've admittedly asked myself: Is this a normal amount of stuff to deal with? But at the end of the day, I know I'm not special. At the very least, we're all being subjected to the truly head-banging soundtrack of everything that's going wrong in this world, including deep-rooted racism, misogyny, gun violence, natural disasters, political turmoil, the aftershocks of a global pandemic, and more. And these chronic stressors –– in addition to isolated events –– are heavy contributors to any given person's cumulative stress level. But we keep on keeping on, right? After being repeatedly Whack-a-Mole-d by a few of life's most stressful events, I continued making plans where I could. I started my own business, and I scheduled an elective plastic surgery I'd been considering for a long time. I was excited about the expected results after staring at a postpartum body I barely recognized for three-plus years. So, on Jan. 17, 2023, at 5:30 a.m., I arrived at the hospital for my surgery. The night before, I half-jokingly said to my mom and my husband, Pearse: 'If anything happens to me, I love you!' 'You'll be fine!' They both replied in rapid succession. 'I know, I know,' I said. 'I'm just saying it.' They put me in bay number 13 for the surgery prep. I wondered aloud to Pearse over the phone if that was bad luck. We quickly chuckled about it and then it was time for me to go to the induction room. The anesthesia team gave me some medication to calm my nerves, wheeled me into the operating room, and put me to sleep. About 10 minutes later, everything went sideways. My medical team couldn't get a pulse on me –– femoral, radial, carotid –– nothing. They started CPR. After a few minutes, they were able to resuscitate me, and I was emergently transferred to the cardiac catheterization lab. When I regained consciousness later that day, I tried to take stock of my surroundings and my body. I was still out of it from the anesthesia, but I knew this wasn't the way I had expected to wake up –– with a breathing tube down my throat and a still-undetermined amount of lines coming out of my neck, arms and hands. I eventually learned I was in the cardiac intensive care unit, where I stayed for the rest of the week recovering from being brought back to life, undergoing invasive cardiac testing, and hosting a revolving door of medical professionals. 'Are you under any significant stress?' One of the cardiologists asked me during rounds the next morning. I stared at him blankly. I thought about all the days when even four anti-epileptic drugs couldn't stop our son from having close to 1,000 seizures. I thought about all the nights I'd spent picking up and putting down our resurrected baby monitor, in a constant panic that every breath, every shift, every groan from his room was a seizure. I thought about his medical ketogenic diet that requires us to painstakingly weigh every morsel of food to the tenth of a gram. I thought about holding him on his side time after time as he convulsed, staring at the stopwatch on my phone, silently begging some unknown higher being to make it stop. I thought about losing my job six months ago in the never-ending river of tech layoffs meandering through the workforce. I had vowed to myself I wouldn't lose my professional edge through parenting, the pandemic, and getting cut from yet another full-time gig. Was that happening now that I'm self-employed and only working part-time? And do I even care anymore? I thought about my dad –– a former pediatric anesthesiologist –– and how I wished he was there to tell me everything's going to be OK. I thought about how grief has a cruel way of forever siphoning off just a little bit of the joy that comes with every celebration-worthy event, every achievement. And I thought about how ironic it was that I'd coded on the operating table after getting anesthesia –– my dad's exact work. Ultimately, my heart function eventually returned to normal and my medical team ruled out every cardiac condition except one: stress cardiomyopathy, also known as 'broken heart syndrome.' It's a complex condition in which the heart muscle is quickly, but temporarily, weakened, often as a result of intense emotional or physical stress. According to my cardiologist, Dr. Anna C. O'Kelly, a fellow in cardiovascular medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, my case, like many stress cardiomyopathy cases, isn't clear cut –– and was likely multifactorial. 'It is hard to know which came first,' said Dr. O'Kelly. 'Did you develop stress cardiomyopathy from all the many life stressors you have... which placed you 'at risk' for the cardiac arrest? Or did your body interact poorly with the anesthesia leading to your cardiac arrest, which then caused a stress cardiomyopathy?' The role stress played in my situation is a mystery I'm still very much grappling with. And a frustrating mystery at that, because while I probably had above-average stress in my life, I wasn't just letting it go unchecked. I've been seeing a therapist regularly since my dad died, I've test driven many stress management techniques over the years, and I'm hyper-aware of what I'm doing (or not doing) on a daily basis to fortify my mental health and well-being. I now take an hour-long walk every day, I just finished a 12-week cardiac rehabilitation program, I joined a gym, I'm on a beta-blocker, and I've finally let myself spend a few nights away from home to sleep without staring at the baby monitor all night. But fitting all that in on top of day-to-day life –– figuring out how to 'take care of yourself' today –– sure feels like a bonafide burden. Like that to-do list item you can never cross off. An extra responsibility that comes at you day after day with the cliché laundry list of yoga and just-10-minutes-of-meditation and daily exercise and weekly therapy and time with family and time with friends and time to yourself and time for the hobbies that help you feel like a person. And if I –– an upper-middle class, straight, white homeowner, with a master's degree, community support, a stable of resources, and an incredible amount of privilege –– can't take care of myself in America today enough to avoid stress-induced heart failure, then how can anyone? So, where do I go from here? Where do any of us go from here? After all, when it comes to stress, I'm certainly not alone. According to the American Psychological Association, 27% of Americans report they are so stressed they can't function. 'That's huge,' Dr. Lynn Bufka, associate chief for practice transformation at the American Psychological Association, and a licensed psychologist in the state of Maryland, told me. Dr. Bufka also says this type of collective, debilitating stress produces a ripple effect that seeps into just about every crevice of society. 'It's not about one person being so stressed they can't function,' she said. 'It means workplaces aren't functioning as well, students aren't learning as well.' This type of widespread underperformance as a result of our stress only adds to our stress level, creating a vicious cycle that's very hard to break. Plus, chronic stress –– the kind that comes from things like having your basic human rights stripped away based solely on your gender identity or sexual orientation, or caring for someone with a disability –– can impact almost every system in the body. And those resulting physical health issues (hello, broken heart syndrome) are, you guessed it, stressful. 'There is definitely a link –– which we are increasingly appreciating –– between our psychological and cardiovascular health,' said Dr. O'Kelly. 'The exact mechanism is not entirely clear, though it is likely bidirectional. For example, depression is a risk [factor] for heart disease, but you can imagine ways in which heart disease is also a risk factor for depression if you aren't able to be as active, or have shortness of breath, or frequent hospital admissions.' Nevertheless, many of us who have the means and wherewithal, try and try again to tunnel our way through the stress wall, doing our yoga and just-10-minutes-of-meditation and daily exercise and weekly therapy and time with family and time with friends and time to ourselves and time for the hobbies that help us feel like people. But this isn't something an açaí bowl or putting down your phone during dinner can fix. We need a lifeline. Because in the face of no federal bereavement policy, 12 weeks of unpaid family leave, average annual child care costs coming in north of $10,000, average bachelor's degree loan debt clocking in at $28,400, a health care system that will bankrupt most people at the first sign of a significant health complication, and much more, another thing is becoming abundantly clear: Even those of us with a roof over our head and food on our table are out here falling through a safety net that was already tattered and torn at best. Dr. Bufka acknowledges that constructing an adequate safety net –– in addition to pursuing the activities and boundaries that keep our individual stress levels in check –– is crucial in helping Americans manage their stress levels. To be sure, that's a daunting challenge all around. Just to lay a strong nationwide foundation, we're talking universal access to annual mental health check-ups, improved distribution of stress management resources in communities across the country, every workplace and school being equipped to take on mental health challenges, and fixing complex systemic issues –– like racism, sexism and food instability –– that contribute to chronic stress. Of course, there are many dedicated professionals already working to make progress in these areas. But when 76% of people nationwide have stress-induced health problems, doesn't it seem like our leaders' urgent duty to help us move the needle? Shouldn't their main responsibility be to hold fast to the ideal of having a country full of people who are in a position to achieve contentment? Can we really say we're the home of the American dream –– the land of equal opportunity for success –– if we don't address the stress elephant in the room? The simple fact is that a bunch of us are out here not functioning or literally coding on operating tables, because no matter how hard we try to chip away at our individual stressors, our country isn't meeting us halfway. I'll happily relinquish the 'queen of coping' crown and the 'real-life superhero' cape in exchange for more systems and policies that take a little pressure off everyone. After all, I'm just one member of an army of stressed out soldiers who I can only imagine are waving their white flags, ready to openly admit that a few weekly down dogs and sun salutations will never fully combat the stress that comes from living paycheck to paycheck, worrying your child is going to catch the next bullet, or grappling with medical trauma. We're all warriors. We're all resilient. We can move through hard things. We can withstand the blows life deals us. We just need a little help stopping the bleeding along the way. This story was originally published in September 2023 and is being rerun now as part of HuffPost Personal's 'Best Of' series. Melisse Lombard is a writer, editor, content professional and former journalist, now running her own editorial content production company. She lives outside Boston with her husband, Pearse, their son, and their pup. Melisse is also a co-founder of and singer in award-winning professional a cappella group, Sound Off. Do you have a compelling personal story you'd like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we're looking for here and send us a pitch. Related... I'm A Doctor Who Almost Died Because My Own Doctors Refused To Do This 1 Basic Thing My Doctor Offered Me A 'Modern Medical Miracle.' Then A Side Effect Changed My Life Forever. If I'd Listened To My Doctor, I Would Be Dead Right Now
9 hours ago
More Trump administration figures who met Laura Loomer's ire are out. A look at her influence
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- President Donald Trump has downplayed the influence of Laura Loomer, a right-wing provocateur known for her incendiary social media presence, in his administration's decision-making. But the list of administration officials who have drawn Loomer's ire and swiftly thereafter gotten the axe from Trump has been growing. Among the latest is Dr. Vinay Prasad, the Food and Drug Administration's polarizing vaccine chief, who announced this week he was leaving the agency after a brief tenure that drew the ire of biotech executives, patient groups and conservative allies of Trump. Prasad had recently become a target of right-wing activists, including Loomer, who flagged Prasad's past statements criticizing Trump and praising liberal independent Sen. Bernie Sanders. On Wednesday, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll directed the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to remove Jen Easterly, a newly announced hire who led the nation's cybersecurity agency under President Joe Biden, shortly after Loomer criticized her. Loomer, who has publicly encouraged Trump to purge aides who she believes are insufficiently loyal to the 'Make America Great Again' agenda, has taken credit for some of the ousters, tearing into some of Trump's allies and advisers and calling out what she calls a 'vetting crisis' within the White House. Trump, meanwhile, has long praised Loomer while distancing himself at times from her most controversial comments and downplaying her direct impact on his choices. Here's a rundown on connections between Loomer's criticism and Trump administration departures: Two people familiar with the situation told The Associated Press that Prasad was ousted following several recent controversies. The people spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal personnel matters. Last week, Loomer posted on X of Prasad, 'How did this Trump-hating Bernie Bro get into the Trump admin???' Prasad did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday morning. He joined the FDA in May after years as an academic researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, where he frequently criticized the FDA's approach to drug approvals and COVID-19 vaccines. Loomer was also vocal in opposition to Trump's first choice for surgeon general, whose selection was ultimately withdrawn. Trump pulled the nomination of former Fox News medical contributor Janette Nesheiwat just before Senate confirmation hearings in May. Loomer had posted on X that 'we can't have a pro-COVID vaccine nepo appointee who is currently embroiled in a medical malpractice case and who didn't go to medical school in the US' as the surgeon general. Driscoll's directive that West Point remove Easterly, shared on X, came just a day after she was announced as the Robert F. McDermott Distinguished Chair in West Point's social sciences department. Easterly had served as director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, facing harsh criticism from Republicans who argued that her work to counter misinformation about elections and the COVID-19 pandemic amounted to censorship. On Tuesday, Loomer posted on X about Easterly's new role at West Point, saying 'Biden holdovers' at the Defense Department were 'undermining' Trump's administration. On April 3, Loomer presented 'research findings' to Trump, Vice President JD Vance, chief of staff Susie Wiles and others including then-national security adviser Mike Waltz, during an Oval Office meeting, according to people speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters. A day later, Trump said he had fired 'some' White House National Security Council officials, downplaying Loomer's influence on the moves. The departures included the director of the National Security Agency, Air Force Gen. Tim Haugh, who also oversaw the Pentagon's Cyber Command, along with Haugh's civilian deputy at the NSA, Wendy Noble. When reached for comment, Loomer referred The Associated Press to an X post, saying she was not going to divulge any details about her Oval Office meeting with Trump 'out of respect' for the president. In a subsequent X post, Loomer appeared to take credit for the firings, writing, 'You know how you know the NSC officials I reported to President Trump are disloyal people who have played a role in sabotaging Donald Trump?' She noted, 'the fired officials' were being defended by Trump critics on CNN and MSNBC. Loomer called for Waltz's ouster in the weeks following revelations he had mistakenly added The Atlantic's editor-in-chief to a Signal chat being used to discuss military plans. As reports began to circulate that Waltz could be leaving the administration — he was ultimately nominated as United Nations ambassador — she appeared to take credit, writing 'SCALP' in an X post. Adam Schleifer, an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, received an email in March saying he was being terminated 'on behalf of President Donald J. Trump,' according to a person familiar with the matter. The email came exactly an hour after Loomer called for him to be fired in a social media post that highlighted Schleifer's past critical comments about Trump while Schleifer was running in a Democratic primary for a congressional seat in New York. Earlier this month, Loomer took a victory lap after the Justice Department fired Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI director James Comey and a federal prosecutor in Manhattan who worked on the cases against Sean 'Diddy' Combs and Jeffrey Epstein, three people familiar with the matter told The AP. Comey's ouster, Loomer said on X, followed her two-month 'pressure campaign.' Yes, chief among them Attorney General Pam Bondi. Loomer has called for Bondi's resignation over failure to keep promises to release more files from the Justice Department's sex trafficking investigation of Epstein, branding her a 'total liar.' Earlier this month, following DOJ's revelations that no Epstein 'client list' existed and no more files would be released, Loomer posted on X that she was told that FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino was 'seriously thinking about resigning' amid his ongoing clashes with Bondi over the case. Weeks later, both Bondi and Bongino were still on the job. In April, Trump denied that Loomer had anything to do with aides being ousted from their jobs at the National Security Council, calling her a 'very good patriot and a very strong person' who only made recommendations. 'Sometimes I listen to those recommendations, like I do with everybody,' Trump said then, adding: 'She's usually very constructive. She recommended certain people for jobs.' Loomer was seen traveling with Trump during last year's campaign, accompanying him on a trip to New York and Pennsylvania as he commemorated the 9/11 attacks. She also traveled with Trump to Philadelphia for a debate against then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Loomer said she never officially joined the campaign after Trump's allies preferred he would keep his distance. After a Harris-related post on X in which Loomer played on racist stereotypes, Trump called Loomer 'a supporter of mine' with 'strong opinions,' but denied knowledge of her comments. He later posted on his Truth Social account that he disagreed with what she had said.
