In Enid, a fatal overdose highlights a lack of drug treatment options

Written By: Kevin Eagleson

(OKLAHOMA) Three people overdosed on fentanyl one night this spring in a quiet residential neighborhood in Enid. 

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Carrie Simpson, 54, expected to get high with friends that night in April on the first floor of a white turn-of-the-century house with asbestos siding that had been converted into apartments.

But things didn’t go as planned. 

But things didn’t go as planned. 

Sandy Hupert, a worker from the homelessness support group Enid Street Outreach Services, came to the home and administered Narcan to three people that night, including Simpson.

The group sometimes responds to calls of drug overdoses for people who are afraid to call 911 for fear of alerting police. Hupert told the Frontier that when she left the apartment after arriving at around 7 p.m., everyone was alive.

By the next morning, emergency responders were called to the home. Simpson and one man were transported to a local hospital. Nathan Ritchey, 38, was pronounced dead at the scene. 

“He wasn’t supposed to die,” Simpson later said through tears in the clothing and supply-filled second floor of Enid Street Outreach Services’ building, a little more than half a mile from the apartment. 

“Sometimes I have to remind myself that I’m really awake, because that shouldn’t have happened on my watch,” Simpson said.

Nathan Ritchey’s father, John Ritchey said his son “was a good kid that fell into the abyss of the drug world in Enid.” 

John Ritchey said his son told him he was staying sober when he last saw him about a week before his death. 

From 2019 to 2023, 578 people died from drug overdoses in Western Oklahoma, according to data from the Oklahoma State Department of Health.

There’s a shortage of treatment providers in this mostly rural part of the state.

Data from the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services shows some of the counties with the highest unmet need for drug treatment are in Western Oklahoma. 

Only three Oklahoma Department of Mental Health-certified facilities in Western Oklahoma offer inpatient treatment for adults. 

Northwest Substance Abuse Treatment Center in Waynoka offers residential treatment to women and women with children. Catalyst Behavioral Services, with facilities in Enid and Lawton, treats men and women.

The long distances between the region’s few treatment centers and lack of transportation are barriers that keep people from accessing treatment.

“The rural location is a hindrance,” said Susan Bradford, interim director of Northwest Substance Abuse Treatment Center. “You could say lack of transportation, because we don’t have a bus service or anything like that where people could get here on their own.”

Bradford said her facility treats individuals from around Oklahoma, including Tulsa and southeastern Oklahoma. But beds are not always full.

A 2018 study of Oklahoma’s personal mobility needs by the Small Urban and Rural Center on Mobility at North Dakota State University found that seven western Oklahoma counties have the highest rate of workers without access to a personal vehicle in the state. 

With limited public transportation options such as buses and rideshare services, transportation has become one of the biggest barriers to getting people to treatment in Western Oklahoma, according to Jason Cornelius, chief operating officer of Red Rock Behavioral Health Services.

“Getting people to us or getting them to treatment or to resources is very difficult,” Cornelius said.

Lack of transportation can become a barrier in post-residential care as well, where medications for opioid use disorder, such as suboxone, are considered the gold standard. 

“That initial phase of medication use often will require frequent office visits,” Jessica Hawkins, Director of Community Initiatives at Healthy Minds Policy Initiative, said. “If you live a long distance from your closest provider who is offering those services, that can really be a burden.”

“If we go back to the example of you sort of have lost everything, you no longer have transportation,” Julie Croff, a rural health professor at Oklahoma State University Center for Health Services, said. “How are you going to get yourself to the treatment provider? These are very real challenges for folks and for families and communities.”

In Enid, the lack of access to treatment is taking a toll. 

James Michael McCauley Jr. was charged on July 21 with first-degree murder for allegedly supplying the drugs that killed Nathan Ritchey, according to court documents.

Rhonda Stevison, chief outreach officer for Enid Street Outreach Services, routinely encounters people struggling with addiction in Enid. Homelessness has increased in north-central Oklahoma by 20% since 2020, according to federal data.

Workers from the group drive around town in a work van dubbed the “SOS Express,” periodically stopping to hand out food and supplies.

Stevison said there has been a psychological shift since the April overdoses. 

“After it happened, they were all in here needing to talk; they watched a friend die,” Stevison said. “They’re scared.”

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