Perry Hall Woman Calls Overdose Antidote Expansion Law 'Bittersweet'

Perry Hall resident Toni Torsch struggles every day knowing she can’t bring her son back, but she takes some solace that a new Maryland law might prevent another mother from experiencing her nightmare.

“I thought maybe it was his heart.”

“He was being healthy, going to the gym.”

“I thought it might’ve been the supplements that he was taking.”

Her son Daniel Torsch had been clean and sober for nine months. Surely it couldn’t have been the heroin that forced paramedics into Toni’s home on that cold December day back in 2010.

“I was trying to make deals with the devil at that point,” she recalled thinking to herself as she watched medics trying to revive her son.

A week later, an autopsy report confirmed her worst fear. Her son Daniel—24 years old, a graduate of Perry Hall High School, a standout athlete—was dead from a drug overdose.

“I can’t put into words what we felt,” Torsch said. “It turned our family upside down.”

Two and a half years later, Torsch has made a career of researching opiate addiction and treatment to ensure other parents and siblings won’t have to feel her pain.

She founded the Perry Hall chapter of Grief Recovery After Substance Passing (GRASP), a support group for families struggling with the death of a loved one from opiate overdose. She also started the Daniel Carl Torsch Foundation, a nonprofit named after her son, which helps families cover the costs of addiction treatment.

“Over the years, we spent everything … to keep getting help for Dan,” Torsch said. 

On Tuesday, Maryland lawmakers sign into law a bill she helped push through the 2013 General Assembly.

Parents, friends, siblings and/or sponsors of individuals suffering from opiate drug addiction can now become certified to obtain and administer an “antidote” drug that can potentially reverse the effects of an opiate overdose.

The drug Naloxone, also known as Narcan, before Tuesday was not available for prescriptions to third parties. The new law removes that barrier.

“It wasn’t even available any where in our state, except for the city,” Torsch said. 

Mothers, fathers—anyone who gets certified to administer the muscular injection in an emergency situation could possibly “reverse of the effects of opioids on the brain, respiratory system, restoring breathing, returning the victim to consciousness an preventing death,” according to bill language.

“Knowing that it will save someone, that is a good thing,” Torsch said.  “I can’t help but think what would’ve happened if I had it then. … I keep asking myself, ‘why didn’t he get that chance?’”

Although the bipartisan bill passed unanimously in both chambers, it is not without its critics.

Mike Gimbel, drug expert, recovering addict and former Baltimore County drug czar, calls the legislation a type of “harm reduction” that does little to address the issue of drug addiction.

“Harm reduction says do anything to keep them alive because it’s better than them dying,” Gimbel said. “When you’re a parent you think another day alive is another day of hope.”

But to Gimbel, the proposal could actually do more harm than good.

“There has to be consequence for [an addict’s] behavior,” Gimbel said, speaking from experience.  “It does not solve addiction. … This is a feel-good, pie-in-the-sky way of dealing with addiction.” Gimbel, at “not quite 20 years old,” overdosed twice in one week. He said he survived because paramedics revived him.

Gimbel, who is now 40-years sober from drugs and alcohol as of Oct. 1, said that a severe drug user is less likely to come to terms with his or her addiction if someone close by has a life-saving cure-all.

“Everybody thinks it’s an easy, single solution. But it’s not,” Gimbel said. 

Gimbel believes Narcan should be in the hands of paramedics who can determine the true scope of addiction and other afflictions related to intravenous drug use. Medical professionals have the power to get addicts the help they need, he said.

But one place where Gimbel and Torsch agree is that there aren’t enough resources to address addiction treatment in the state Maryland.

“The only people that can get help are the people that get arrested,” Gimbel said, speaking specifically of addicts who hit rock bottom.

Gimbel and Torsch also agreed that there is a major problem of heroin sifting through Baltimore County’s suburbs.  

 “You can’t live next door to the heroin capital of the nation without getting a little spillover,” Gimbel said.

Daniel Torsch had been treated in four different rehabilitation facilities outside of Maryland. He began taking prescribed pain medication when he was 17 years old to alleviate a shoulder injury sustained from playing sports year-round.

But his prescription soon turned to addiction. His pill addiction then gave way to heroin addiction. It’s an all too common cycle outlined in testimony heard in the Maryland Senate regarding SB610, “Expanding Naloxone Access in Maryland to Save Lives.”

The literature states:

Drug overdose deaths increased by 6 percent in Maryland from 2011 to 2012, even though prescription opioid-related overdose deaths declined. The spike has been associated with the increased use of heroin as an alternative to prescription opioids. Young people have tragically borne the brunt of this epidemic with heroin-related deaths increasing by 53 percent among people ages 15 to 24.

The Baltimore City Health Department’s Staying Alive Drug Overdose Prevention and Response Program credits 220 opioid overdose reversals to Naloxone since 2004.

“It was a no brainer,” said State Sen. Kathy Klausmeier of her decision to sponsor the bill. “They’re not asking for much. They’re asking to save other peoples’ lives.”

Torsch, her husband and another couple presented Klausmeier with the idea to allow Naloxone prescriptions to third parties in 2012.

Klausmeier said she made her decision to endorse the legislation over Memorial Weekend. Weeks later, one of Klausmeier‘s friends in Bel Air would lose her daughter to drug overdose.

“I’m coming at this from a parent’s point of view. That’s what motivated me,” Klausmeier said.

But more work will need to be done, Torsch said, promising that legislative agenda wasn’t cleared.

“I feel confident that she’s not done yet. I hope she’s not done yet,” Klausmeier said.