MARION — Julie Pennington didn’t look like herself.

The 57-year-old mother of two was always one to have her hair styled, her makeup on, and her nails painted, usually in a shade of pink or purple. Even if she was just going to sit at home all day, she would get dressed up, her daughters said.

But that wasn’t the case early on a May morning last year, when she overdosed on fentanyl, the potent opioid 30 to 50 times more powerful than heroin.

Julie was rushed to Marion General Hospital, where she was placed on life support in the intensive care unit May 25. 

Underneath the tubing keeping her alive, she looked even less like herself, daughter Adena Pennington said.

“I felt like I had been thrown into a whole different realm in the universe,” Adena said. “It didn’t feel real at all.”

In the end, she and her sister Allison Pennington made the decision to remove their mother from life support.

“I didn’t want her to suffer. I felt like she had fought so hard anyways through her addiction and through these overdoses, that it was time for her to move on,” Adena said. “It was really hard.”Pennington was the 10th of 25 people to die of an accidental drug overdose in Marion County in 2018, according to autopsy reports obtained from the Marion County Coroner’s Office. The overall deaths are down from a record high of 32 people in 2017.

The victims last year ranged in age from 22 years old to 57 years old. The average age was 40. Ten were women and 15 were men.

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Most overdoses involved more than one drug. All but five of the overdoses involved fentanyl. Heroin was a factor in only three overdose deaths.

Marion Police Lt. Chris Adkins, of the MARMET Drug Task Force, said that heroin has become much less commonplace.

“We rarely see any results coming back as heroin,” he said. “It’s all coming back fentanyl.”

Methamphetamine, which local law enforcement says is having a resurgence, was a factor in five cases. Cocaine was involved in four of the overdoses.

Two overdoses involved prescription drugs used as a muscle relaxant.

“I think what we’re seeing now is we’re shifting maybe from an opiate-specific epidemic to a broader addiction crisis,” said Brad DeCamp, executive director of the Crawford-Marion Board of Alcohol, Drug Addiction, and Mental Health Services, when asked about the decline in the number of opioid overdose deaths locally.

He said the focus should be less on the drug of the day and more on the addictive behavior itself.

“I think there’s always this rush to identify a substance or substances and so the funding follows that substance of the day, and that shifts. … We just have a broader addiction issue,” he said. “Just because someone’s not using heroin doesn’t mean they’re not doing something that’s harmful.”

For the Pennington women, addiction runs in the family. Both Adena and Allison have been sober since 2015, when they began recovering from heroin addictions. They learned to distance themselves from their mother during their recoveries, with whom they used to use drugs.

“I had to learn that our relationship was pretty toxic, co-dependent, so I had to learn to set healthy boundaries with her,” said Adena, who now lives in Delaware.

At the same time, Adena said, her mom was very supportive of her recovery, visiting Adena at Foundations Recovery Center and using some of her pension to buy Adena a car.

“She was very giving. Biggest heart I’ve ever seen,” Adena said.

They are not sure when their mother’s addiction to opioids began, but Adena said she thinks her mom began misusing prescription painkillers after undergoing multiple hip replacement surgeries.

It wasn’t until early 2017, when their mother was sent to jail for violating the terms of her probation in a misdemeanor criminal case that she became sober, they said. Those are happy memories for Adena and Allison.

“She laughed more. She socialized with people more. She was very charismatic. People were just drawn to her,” Allison said.

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It was a particular sense of humor that she and her mother shared.

“That’s how me and her connected,” she said. “I could always mess with her and she would always give it right back. … People would think I was picking on her, … but she would just crack up.”

Julie spoiled her grandchildren, especially 8-year-old Roayn, buying them pricey Halloween costumes, picking up fast food of their choice and warming their towels in the dryer before they got out of the bath or shower, Adena said.

Roayn earned the nickname “little boss,” when she was living with Julie to finish the year at Marion City Schools.

“She ran my mother’s house when she lived there. … When I was a kid, I didn’t get to pick what I wanted to eat for dinner,” Adena laughed.

But Julie began misusing drugs again in early 2018, Adena believes.

It was gradual, Adena said, but when she could tell her mom was high on heroin, she stopped letting Roayn stay at her mom’s house. Around the same time, Allison moved out of her mom’s house for the first time since 2013.

“I think she felt alone,” said Allison. “I wish she just would’ve knew how much we did love her.”

On top of losing her mom, Adena’s ex-husband and the father of her two oldest daughters also died last year. He also was one of the 25 who died from a drug overdose.

Now as a peer supporter with Marion Area Counseling Center, Adena hopes that other addicts can learn from what she has experienced.

“I think by me losing my mom and my kids’ dad, I can show people that things happen. Things happen all the time, and it doesn’t mean you have to use,” she said.

Her clients often ask how she got through it, how she managed to move forward, she said.

“Honestly, I don’t have an answer for that,” she said. “I don’t do anything special. I just kept my life going. I didn’t stop. And me relapsing, me sitting around being upset about it, me not moving on with my life isn’t going to bring either of them back.”

She isn’t sure what would have happened if her mom had died earlier in Adena’s sobriety, when she was less stable.

Adena keeps part of her mom’s remains by the door and says “hello” and “goodbye” when coming and going.

She sees reflections of her mom in her daughters. The oldest, 13-year-old Havyn, has red hair, like her mom. Roayn is particular about her looks, too. She likes to paint her nails in the same way Julie did, Adena said.

svolpenhei@gannett.com

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