Prineville native recovering from opioid addiction

Last year, more people in Oregon died from opioid overdoses than from car crashes.

These statistics hit home for many people.

Halie Jones grew up in Prineville and was at Crook County High School Just a few years ago.

“Yeah, opiates got introduced, and from then on out, it was never the same,” Jones said Friday while visiting her family in Terrebonne.

She’s now 22 years old — and six months sober. But she’s been dealing with opioids for the past four years.

“In high school, it was just like, smoking pot and the partying — you know, the normal things that you do at that age,” Jones said. “And then opioids got slowly introduced through that same kind of scene.”

Jones said it was easy to get the pills from friends, and she was looking for what they had to offer.

“I was definitely a kind of happy-go-lucky, like, always trying to have fun kind of girl,” she said. “So I think that’s what I thought it was for a long time, until I realized I couldn’t quit.”

She stopped while pregnant with her daughter, Oakleigh, but started up again after the birth.

Then, Jones finally decided it was time to quit, so she went to a treatment center in Eugene.

“After doing some work on myself, I realized I wanted a good life — and I deserved one,” she said.
“Just because i was an addict, that didn’t have to be a defining factor of who I was going to be.”

Jones said what she wants people to take away from her story is that this is an issue that should be acknowledged, and not hidden in the dark.

“There shouldn’t be shame in saying that. People have all kind of issues, and this one happens to be the reason a lot of people are dying, so there shouldn’t be shame in getting help,” she said.

And she can say that from experience.

“I just think anything is possible for me in my life at this point, and that definitely wasn’t something I thought was a possibility,” Jones said.