Hundreds of people packed the Kirkland Performance Center auditorium May 31 to listen to a panel discussion about heroin following multiple overdoses during the past year.

The panel included Kirkland residents Michael Roberts and Kristin Bretthauer who were the parents of Amber Roberts. Amber died last June at the age of 19 from heroin after trying it for the first time in February 2015.

Sophie and Zac Styant-Browne, 16 and 13 years old respectively, were the younger siblings of Georgia Styant-Browne, who died at the age of 21 from an overdose in April.

Michael Weiss is an addiction specialist who runs New Life Recovery Solutions in Bellevue and was joined by Dr. John Patz, an addiction physician from EvergreenHealt Monroe, as well as Kirkland police officers Audra Weber and resource officer Robert King.

The panel was preceded by a showing of the documentary 20/20 Breaking Point: Heroin in America which documents the rise and effect of heroin use nationwide.

While the Kirkland police representatives couldn’t provide statistics on heroin use in the city, Weber said officers run into heroin or methamphetamine on a nearly daily basis.

“The demand is here, and so the supply is coming here,” King said.

Both Roberts and Bretthauer said they had struggled with addiction, but had been clean for years by the time their daughter picked up heroin.

Even in an affluent city like Kirkland, Roberts said heroin can be a problem.

“It happens quickly, and your brain changes so much at such a young age,” he said. “If your children are experimenting, it can lead to this, where we sit.”

Both said the stigma around opiate addiction, which encompasses drugs like heroin, oxycodone and fentynal among others, is one of the biggest obstacles to confronting the epidemic.

Roberts said he hopes that by sharing their story they can help break down that barrier to getting people treatment.

“After Amber died, I lost my only child and I could go through and move on, fight for her, or end my life,” he said. “It’s now my goal and mission in life to bring awareness, that heroin is everywhere.”

For Sophie and Zac Styant-Browne’s older sister, Georgia, heroin addiction was a longer struggle. They had rarely seen her for a year before her overdose.

But on April 25 this year, the night before Georgia died, Sophie Styant-Browne said they went to see Georgia, where she promised to teach her younger sister guitar.

Sophie Styant-Browne said her older sister ran with a crowd who was into the drug after initially trying to help them, Georgia got sucked in.

“It takes one friend and one opportunity,” she said.

Weiss and Patz spoke to the mental and physical aspects of opiate addiction.

For Weiss, who has been recovering from drug and alcohol addiction for 34 years, this epidemic is nothing new.

“The fact of the matter is this thing’s been an epidemic for more than a decade,” he said. “…There comes a breaking point along the way somewhere where I can’t stick my head in the sand anymore.”

Both experts agreed addiction is a life-long disease, and that it can’t be cured but can be effectively managed.

Patz said there are two main long-term drugs which are utilized to keep opiate users clean: methadone and suboxone. The widely publicized naloxone, which immediately reverses overdoses, is also used in emergencies.

Opiate addiction can permanently change brain chemistry, Patz said, affecting both the dopamine and endorphin systems.

“If this were any other disease, we wouldn’t argue whether people should be on medication or not,” Patz said. “Opiate dependency requires long-term treatment.”

Weiss said ten years ago the majority of people who came into his clinic were seeking treatment for alcohol addiction. Now, that number has reversed to mainly opiate users. Upwards of 60 percent of these patients have a co-morbid methamphetamine addiction, he said.

While there are no statistics available on how many opiate-involved arrests or overdoses there are in Kirkland, county-wide statistics paint a bleak picture.

Opiate-related deaths have tripled since 2009, according to King County statistics, with 156 people dying county-wide in 2014, the highest number in 20 years.

Over-prescription of pain killers a decade ago, and extremely high-dosage pills like Oxycotin 80, which contained 80 milligrams of instant-release oxycodone, are often cited as a major factor in the heroin epidemic.

As illicit prescription pills became more scarce and expensive, many people who were hooked on pain pills moved to the cheaper and more accessible heroin.