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Speaker talks about her addiction to assembly of Newport students
NEWPORT – Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels’ daughter Sarah spoke about her addiction to fentanyl to an assembly of students at Newport High School Thursday warning them of addiction.
In 2016, Nowels, in middle school, hung out with the wrong crowd, and lied to her parents, saying she was going to a birthday party, but instead went to her boyfriend who was drunk most of the time.
Her behavior didn’t change even as her parents enrolled her in a different school to shield her from bad influences.
Meeting another boyfriend, Nowels soon got addicted to fentanyl when her boyfriend introduced her to the drug.
“I started with ten pills a day and it soon increased,” she said. Nowels’ parents found out about the addiction and forbade her to use in the home.
“Instead, I chose to leave home and stay with my boyfriend,” Nowels said.
That choice turned from bad to worse as her boyfriend spun out of control, becoming argumentative and abusive and blaming her.
“My boyfriend overdosed on fentanyl. I got so panicked I called my parents,” she said.
He was saved by Narcan. By 2022, Nowels depended on 200 pills a day to get her through the day, sometimes taking cocaine to get through a work shift at a restaurant.
“My addiction affected every part of my life,” she said.
Eventually, she got sick from her drug use, an ambulance scrambling to save her life by rushing to the behavioral health floor of Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center.
She was placed on a forced 24-hour hold and stayed what she said as a “long eight days.”
“This didn’t include weekends and holidays,” Nowels said. “When I left I looked horrible. I weighed 94 lbs.”
Despite her ordeal, this was the first time she broke away from her abusive toxic boyfriend.
“I was done with it. After detox, I went home,” Nowels said.
Nowels enrolled in an outpatient program and went to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings three to five times a day.
Today, Nowels is 489 days clean, she said to a cheering audience.
She speaks out at events about her ordeal and her depression which she says helps her and hopes helps others.
“Mental illness and addiction are stigmatized. And they are often co-occurring,” Nowels said.
Sheriff Nowels walked up and hugged his daughter before taking the stage.
He spoke about being helpless as her daughter took a nosedive into addiction, having to set ground rules about not having narcotics in the home or kicking her out.
Nowels painted a picture of an airplane full of passengers crashing to the ground every day and the numbers of overdoses due to fentanyl, saying the public would do something about the crashes, but look away at addiction.
Newport School Superintendent David Smith said the district takes fentanyl seriously. Pend Oreille County is considered a hotspot for poison center calls per capita, averaging 15 compared to just five in King County.
Last year, the Newport School District had a full day devoted to fentanyl prevention awareness.
The school district employs a fulltime prevention specialist who educates students about the dangers of fentanyl, alcohol, tobacco and other narcotics use.
“We will continue to be proactive in education and awareness,” Smith said.
