ALBANY — In the early 1980s, George Jones was a youthful New York City native in his 20s looking for a good time. When his friends introduced him to heroin, the narcotic sparked a nearly three-decade struggle with addiction.
Jones, 65, finally began his recovery in 2010, just as the deadly synthetic opioid known as fentanyl was beginning to permeate the drug supply across the country, especially in New York. It was a “long and arduous journey,” he said, noting there was days he would look in the mirror “and not recognize myself anymore.”
Now an employee of the New York City-based organization StartCare, which serves some of the neighborhoods hit hardest by the opioid crisis, Jones will often visit people in the throes of their own addiction as part of an outreach team. And that work has a visible impact on highly vulnerable residents who are the most at risk of dying from a fatal overdose, Jones said…