DeKALB – Ashley Land has died.

She’s put anything she could find into a needle and injected it into her arm. She’s lived in what she called a crack house in Aurora, with all her belongings stuffed into a garbage bag – a shirt, a couple of pairs of pants and a solitary shoe.

As of Sunday, she will have gone a year and a month clean – assuming she stays true to her 12-step program and takes it one day at a time.

“I don’t know I’m going to stay clean for the rest of my life; I know how I’m going to stay clean today,” she said Friday.

Land's is a success story, but DeKalb law enforcement and first responders say the heroin culture has grown here. They're investigating more cases, making more arrests and dealers are cutting drugs with much more potent fillers.

DeKalb Police Cmdr. Bob Redel said his department would typically investigate about a dozen heroin cases each year over the past few years, they’ve already taken 22 cases this year – a far cry from when he joined the force in 1993.

“As recently as 1999, we didn’t see heroin,” Redel said. “It was not around, as far as our investigations. It was mostly cannabis, cocaine, crack.”

Addicts who used to have to drive to the city to get a fix can now find the drug close to home, Redel said.

“They used to have to get together, pool their money and drive to Chicago,” Redel said. “They’re buying it here in DeKalb County, and again, that is something that is changing over the years.”

'I'd put anything in a needle'

Land, 27, of Sandwich, spent half of her life addicted. Growing up in a home where drinking was condoned, she started when she was 13.

“I was smoking weed and drinking then, and it kind of moved on to pills and stuff,” she said. “I started with methadone, I was smoking fentanyl and snorting oxycontin,” she said, using a slang term for oxycontin, a prescription opioid pain reliever,

Her search for a more intense high led her to try injecting heroin at age 19.

“When I started heroin, I’d put anything in a needle," she said, "just to try a new high."

Until she got clean in July 2016, she'd drive to Chicago to score heroin. The drug is cheaper there than in DeKalb, where dealers sell at marked-up prices, she said.

"Every day, we'd drive to the West Side of Chicago, and we got a lot," Land said. "We had a $100, $200 a day habit. Once it gets to DeKalb, people take risks, and the prices go up, and people only buy a couple of bags here an there."

In 2011, 21 and fresh out of DeKalb County jail and detox, she landed a job in St. Louis and caught a ride with her friends, drinking all the way. She brought a bag of heroin to celebrate. One last time.

The shot of heroin she took that night caused her to stop breathing; her heart stopped. Paramedics arrived and restarted her heart with the anti-opiate Narcan.

“I woke up with paramedics around me,” she said.

The near-death experience wasn't enough to put her off of heroin. The second one was.

It was July 2016. Land was at the hospital were her longtime boyfriend, now her husband, Bill Land, was in the intensive care unit at Kishwaukee Hospital.

She found a stash in the car, and shortly thereafter, hospital staff found her unconscious in a hospital bathroom around 1 a.m. on July 18, 2016, a needle in her arm.

"Waking up from an overdose is probably one of the worst things I've experienced,” she said. “You wish you'd never woken up. There's a bunch of people around you, and you realize what you've done."

Finally, she’d reached rock bottom, she said.

“A lot of people in active addiction are afraid of getting clean because they think they’re not as bad as somebody else, that they haven’t done things as bad as they have yet,” Land said. “Those 'yets' are what kill people.”

She doesn’tavert her eyes as she talks about her past. Her seven arrests for charges ranging from retail theft to possession of a controlled substance. Her previous penchant for holing herself up in her house, sticking a needle in her arms as many as 20 times in a day, and only coming out once a day to eat or get more drugs.

“Active addiction is living in hell,” she said. “I’ve stolen from almost anyone I could. When I was cleaning houses, I would go through people’s pills. I’d steal their money. I’d drive to the West Side of Chicago by myself, go to a bad neighborhood and shoot up in a car, and nod out for hours at a time. I put myself in really bad situations.

"The only thing on my mind was 'how am I getting more, when am I getting more, and how do I keep from being sick today?' ”

The first step

Andrew Brown, who will celebrate two years of sobriety Aug. 27, waited until Land had a month of sobriety under her belt before he took her under his wing.

"It's hard to get close to people in 12-step fellowships, because a lot of people go out, continue to use and die," Brown said. "You get your emotions tied up, and then they're gone. That's difficult."

Brown said it’s hard to explain why the program works to someone who hasn't battled addiction. It’s complicated.

"There's so many levels to it," Brown said. "It's being in contact with other people who have sustained periods of recovery, who have done the same things you have. It's accountability and structure."

He and Land gave similar reasons for becoming addicted: anxiety, fear of not fitting in and, ultimately, trying to escape reality.

Land said recovery has brought her back to reality, and that it feels good.

She and Bill Land married June 16, about 11 months after her clean date of July 20, 2016. She’s working part-time at Michaels in DeKalb, as well as Fox Valley Older Adult Services, but is hoping an interview with either 3M or Kishwaukee Hospital leads to a full-time job. She’d likely keep some clients from Fox Valley, while going to school to get her CNA license.

“I’m interested in getting into drug counseling, too, or just getting people into treatment,” she said.

She smiles. It’s kind of a big deal.

"Before, I couldn't just sit there and smile like I am right now," she said. "Today, I have friends. I'm out in the world doing things. It's simple things like that, but it's a lot."

‘Do you know what just happened to my sister?’

DeKalb Fire Lt. Luke Howieson, 38, has seen the heroin epidemic's effect's first-hand.

He's served 16 years with the DeKalb deparment, where paramedics respond to heroin overdose calls about once a month. But Howieson also lost his younger sister to an overdose. She was 30 at the time and living in St. Charles.

Carly Howieson started experimenting with drugs in her early teens, and fought drug addiction for years, her brother said. Like Land, she tried multiple times to kick the habit.

By May of 2012, she had been clean for a couple of years, her brother said. She was employed. Happy.

“Then this so-called friend came around,” Howieson said.

The friend wanted a ride to get a fix, and invited Carly to join in, Luke said. That night, she overdosed. She was found dead at her parents' St. Charles home, he said.

Carly and Luke are two of four Howieson siblings. They had supportive parents and grew up in a safe community, he said.

“This epidemic, this problem doesn’t know any social or economic boundaries," Howieson said. ""St. Charles is a very affluent area.”

Howieson said she had a caring spirit, and that she was a talented musician, which didn't change a lot when she was on drugs.

"But you could tell she was sick," he said.

He said he knows about 20 of Carly’s friends who have died from overdoses.

“It’s not a battle you can just take care of in a year and say, ‘I’m free of it,’ ” he said. “It’s something that can come back around and get you.”

About a week after his sister died, Howieson's crew was called to the west side of DeKalb, where they revived a man in his 20s who had overdosed on heroin.

“It’s not my place, but I wish I could have told this kid, ‘Hey, do you know what just happened to my sister?’ ” he said. “That’s not my role. That’s not my job.

"But I want to tell people you need to get help, or you can end up like that.”

'They’re buying it here'

Land and her husband are both working a program, although they have to work them separately, she said.

Theirs are success stories. They’re rare.

“I don’t think there are a lot of people who try [heroin] and are able to ever walk away from it,” Howieson said.

He said that although the heroin epidemic is far worse in other parts of the country, there are red flags in DeKalb. He said paramedics responded to four overdose calls just this week, and went to another the week before. First responders around the country are concerned about the drugs being added to heroin, with the latest scare being the so-called "gray death" heroin that contained a mixture of fentanyl, more potent carfentanyl, and a synthetic opioid compound.

First responders also see the real-life toll that drug addiction takes on families, DeKalb Deputy Fire Chief Jeff McMaster said.

“Where you hear a lot of the chatter is when you go to an overdose and there’s children in the home, or elderly people who are supposed to be cared for by these people who are afflicted,” McMaster said. “Or when the addict is angry at them for taking away their high.

"... Firefighters are family people. They’re human. When you see children who may be living in squalor, or the parent is addicted. Then you see it take an emotional toll on a firefighter.”

Land admits she used to resent law enforcement for locking her up. Taking away her fix. Those days are gone, she said.

As for the days ahead? One at a time.

“If I get too far ahead of myself, I’ll get overwhelmed, and the disease will start talking to me,” she said. “I know how I’m going to stay clean today. Just for today, I’m going to take it one step at a time and work the program.”