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Author: Matthew Reisen/Journal Staff Writer Published: Saturday, December 11, 2021 at 5:21 PM Update: Saturday, December 11, 2021 at 10:36 PM

Esperanza Cordova is not afraid of blues.

Again, the 43-year-old is not afraid.

She has been using heroin since she was 15 years old, and-once fentanyl appeared-mixed the two "many times". In the past year, she has witnessed the death of more than a dozen people taking overdose. Not a stranger, but someone she cares about. There are too many to count.

"I lost a lot of people, a lot of friends, a lot of family-including myself-but they brought me back," she said. "They mix it with heroin, but they won't tell you... When you go for a regular injection, it is not your regular injection."

After sucking up heroin five months ago, Cordoba switched to fentanyl full-time. On the corner of Charleston and Chico, Cordova, who has no car, said that it would take her 5 minutes to get the $10 pill. If you know someone, it's 3 dollars.

"You can find it here, you can find it in the city center, you can find it in the West End-you just have to ask someone,'Uh, do you have any depression?'" she said.

When those who call the streets of Central and East their homes see fentanyl taking over before their eyes—the drug has already set off a perfect storm across the state. Federal authorities are seizing record amounts of fentanyl as it replaces other drugs, and local law enforcement agencies are fighting the ensuing surge in violent crime and property crime. At the same time, as the drug occupies a central position in the opioid crisis, health officials and doctors are calculating the death toll due to a record number of overdose.

This drug changed the streets of Albuquerque.

Fentanyl is almost everywhere along the alleys, corners and open spaces in the east and middle. The syringe has been replaced, or at least is connected by a pen tube and crumpled tin foil with a long black line-a tool for taking pills.

In an enclave near Chico was a box filled with black-lined foil, clothes and a syringe corpse inside. When rush hour traffic flew by, a man on the corner of Wisconsin and the central southeast drove the smoke from the foil. When a woman walked over with a puppy, he took a break, took a roll of foil from his shopping cart, and handed her a square-this kind of communication is as casual as a neighbor borrowing candy.

People squeezed under their jackets on roadsides and bus station benches to smoke, and the chemical smell permeated the air. Users, some as young as 12, turn to sex work and crime to get it. People are killing, and others are being killed because of it.

Those living on the streets say that people are "willing to sell their souls" in exchange for the little blue pills. Those who provide outreach services to drug users say they cannot get enough Narcan, an overdose reversal drug. What fentanyl users need: aluminum foil, tubes, and fentanyl test strips—used to determine whether the substance is mixed with other drugs—distribution and possession are illegal.

Angela, a homeless woman who asked not to be named, said that you don't have to be a drug addict to get access to this drug. She, her husband and two children are among hundreds of families who live in a motel near the east center.

Angela said that ambulances passed the hotel at least four times a week due to an overdose of fentanyl. On the way to the grocery store, she said she was asked a few times if she had depression.

Angela said that in the east and middle, people blatantly used the drug on buses or on the side of the road, and everyone carried Narcan with them as a precaution. She said that her little boys had already begun to know what fentanyl looked like and recognized the tin foil used to smoke it.

Angela said that when they saw the blue pill, the user told her children, "You can't eat that, this is candy." She said she corrected them: "No, this is medicine."

Angela did not use the drug, but she was under the methadone program after she became obsessed with prescription drugs after undergoing brain surgery five years ago.

She said that fentanyl is "a different kind of beast."

"It's nothing to mess with," Angela said.

Cindy Jaramillo, a former heroin user and founder of the New Mexico Street Safety Organization, said many of the organization's customers have switched to fentanyl. Some of her own family members did the same.

"It scares me because I don't know if one day I will receive a call from them that they are dead," Jaramillo said. "I just saw how it took over our community."

She said that those who use fentanyl have become more desperate and dangerous in order to obtain the drug-calling the situation in the central and eastern regions a "survival game."

Jaramillo said that those who are addicted are rapidly declining. She sees it every day in clients, such as Cordoba, and they try to help them.

"It's horrible to see this change, and my heart hurts," Jaramillo said. "Their attitude and the way they take care of themselves, everything is going downhill."

She said that this kind of drug, which brings a stronger but not long-lasting drug to users, fills the space left by heroin. Many fentanyl users think they are doing themselves a favor because they take fentanyl and do not need a syringe. Others turned to it because they had no veins left from the use of needles.

Jaramillo said that compared to heroin, fentanyl is particularly deadly because Narcan does not save someone very well.

"You hit heroin once, and they came back. You have to hit fentanyl two or three times. This is crazy," she said.

Once Jaramillo gave a man in a motel five doses of Narcan before he returned.

"I was horrified, it was too much... we finally got him back, he is already purple, he is gone," she said, only shocked by the memory.

In the past year, he was just one of a dozen people she recovered from an overdose of fentanyl. At least a few failed.

For Cordoba, known as "Mitchell" on the street, the road here is very long.

She said she grew up in a family where alcoholism and intravenous drug use were commonplace, and that she started taking drugs at the age of 8.

"I'm really naive," Cordoba said. "It was my first injection (heroin) when I was 15 years old. I like that feeling."

Since then, her life has followed familiar patterns on the street.

For nearly three decades, Cordoba has been wandering between prison cells, treatment centers and the streets on prostitution and drug-related charges.

According to court records, by 2012, Cordoba was suspended for possession and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and epilepsy. She lost custody of her five children.

There is hope in the retreat.

A probation official wrote that Cordoba may “change her life” but “sometimes succumb to moments of weakness and confusion.” A year later, the official wrote that Cordoba has been raised. She became a habit of methamphetamine, and her decline was "rapid and extreme."

"She is now in a situation where she is abusing drugs, which has a very dangerous and negative impact on her personal health and safety and the safety of those around her... If (Cordoba’s probation) recovers, she will either take heroin overdose or continue to use A Methamphetamine."

Eight years later, another vice.

Córdoba seemed helpless in a dirty pink hoodie and checkered corset. Her long hair is a strand of faded gray and red hair, which sets off a face that has been set off with the passage of time and the nights spent in the street. Her eyes are dark brown, almost black.

She said that she knew her tolerance to fentanyl did not exceed her limit.

"This is just another habit of mine," she said. "I have been doing this for so long and I know my tolerance. Unless I really want to go somewhere, I will not over tolerance."

However, Cordoba said she was worried that she would see young people using it on the street. They reminded her of the young, innocent girl she used to be.

Cordova said she thinks the drug will disappear sooner or later, just like the cracks in the 90s-this is another habit she has developed.

"Eventually it will disappear," she said. But it will still take away all lives.

Just a week ago, 19-year-old Joseph Morales was shot dead in a car in Dallas and Copper. Cordoba said he had been looking for fentanyl earlier.

Cordoba said: "You only have each other here, you will know some people-you approach them-and then something drastic happens, you really can't do anything, you just keep them in your memory." It has a great impact on me, it really affects everyone, the family—their children, mothers, fathers—it affects us because we have lost another close friend, because we can’t save them, because we can’t save them. Erkan did not take them away."

When Cordova packed her belongings and headed to the East Center for another night full of uncertainty, Jaramillo and Street Safe co-founder Christine Barber were looking for a client named "JJ".

The couple said between them that they had rescued her from a fentanyl overdose on 10 different occasions. More than anyone.

"We told her that she can no longer use fentanyl," Barber said. "...As long as we didn't see her, we would think she was dyingly ill."

The barber scanned the parking lot-there were tents and wandering shadows everywhere-looking for JJ.

But she was nowhere to be seen.

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