John Green stands outside a building in Wasilla. Green lost his daughter Kellsie Green in 2016 due to complications of withdrawal from opioids in jail. He is committed to honoring her memory in part by creating a curriculum that teaches kids accurate information about addiction and withdrawal–something Kellsie didn’t have. A curriculum dedicated to Kellsie will be taught this year in as many as 20 middle and high schools in the Anchorage School District.
Kellsie continued to struggle with her addiction, but she dreamed of a life beyond it. She told Green she wanted to write a book and visit schools to tell her story after her recovery. She wanted to explain what addiction and withdrawal really felt like. She hoped she could stop even one person from going down a path of addiction. But a couple months after that conversation, in 2016, when she was 24 years old, Kellsie was arrested.
Kellsie died from dehydration, a common but treatable complication from withdrawing from opioids. Green said she lost 20 pounds of fluids during the short time she was in jail. GreenKellsie isn’t around to convince kids to stay away from opioids. But in 2018 Green met someone who wanted to help him tell Kellsie’s story. Michael Carson is a former teacher and chair of the Mat-Su Borough opioid task force.
So, with Kellsie as inspiration, Carson developed a curriculum. He’s already taught it in four schools in the Mat-Su Borough and to a group of school nurses. It could be taught in as many as twenty more Anchorage middle and high schools this year. This comes at a crucial time for the district; last spring, the district10 non-fatal drug overdoses at five different schools, several of them resulting from kids taking fentanyl. Eventually, Carson hopes to teach the lesson statewide.
“I’ve heard stories from people that have gone through detox, where they said that, you know, they felt like they were possessed by aliens,” said Carson. “They felt like they were going to die.” “Students are using it for experimenting,” said Bell. “And they think they’re taking maybe pain medication like Percocet. But the Percocet now is laced with fentanyl. And they’re not aware of that at all. And…it’s a very tiny amount of fentanyl that can cause death, because it causes respiratory depression.”