Woman charged with endangering welfare of child
A Palmerton woman is in jail after passing out from opioid use while in the presence of her young child.
Cheyenne Parr, 21, faces charges on one count each of endangering the welfare of children and recklessly endangering another person.
According to the affidavit of probable cause filed by Sgt. Christopher Ritter of the Palmerton Borough Police Department:
At 2:58 p.m. July 3, Palmerton police units were dispatched along with Emergency Medical Services to a drug overdose at an apartment in the borough.
Upon arrival, officers found Parr sitting on the bathroom floor unresponsive and barely breathing.
Her skin had a pale, waxy tone and her breaths were labored and guttural, signs Ritter recognized from his training and numerous prior incidents to be signs of an opioid overdose.
Ritter also recalled Parr overdosing on at least two other occasions that he had responded to, and he had administered Narcan to her in one instance.
Parr regained consciousness and was soon able to walk out to the ambulance for transport to Palmerton Hospital.
Police then spoke with Parr’s roommates, who explained that Parr has been in a back bedroom for at least an hour, watching television with her 3-year-old daughter.
Parr came out of the bedroom in a panic, unable to catch her breath, and they guided her into the bathroom, where she lost consciousness. They then called 911.
Officers checked the bedroom that Parr had come from, and found the child lying on the floor with a pillow under her head, propped against the bed.
After removing the child from the room, officers found a syringe which contained a small amount of liquid under the pillow.
On the floor within arm’s reach of the child, was an open-top woman’s handbag, which contained three more syringes, three spoons with sooty residue, a glass pipe with sooty residue, and numerous wax baggies with powdery residue, all items commonly used to store, prepare and ingest heroin and other controlled substances.
Parr is currently lodged in the Carbon County Correctional Facility in lieu of $25,000 straight bail.
Parr is scheduled to have a preliminary hearing at 10 a.m. Wednesday before District Judge William Kissner of Palmerton.
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On a side note, this story is sad however we have heard it all before. If we do not focus more on cleaning up the streets, more and more young people will eventually die from all these drugs. Sounds like the police and local government need to sit down and figure out a good course of action to end these small cartels.
Peace Carbon, and God Bless
When you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. I stand with Jesus
Science and psychology have found that people with substance use disorders are literally incapable of not showing the symptoms of their disease: compulsively craving and indulging the drugs and alcohol that led them to this stage of their struggle. As with most people, addicts walk the line between what they want and what it costs to have those things. While the moralistic point of view presents the addict’s needs as pleasure and satisfaction, the disease theory posits the addict’s needs as an escape from a life of anxiety, trauma, and depression – however the psychological void in their lives manifests itself.
There is something wrong with the addict, and between the options of a moralistic view and a disease view, the disease view is the best way to address and treat that problem. There is also well-established research that has identified complex biochemical processes under addiction. Addiction has its basis in neurophysiology, which swings the pendulum in favor of the disease model.
People who have substance use disorders have brains that make it difficult to resist the pull of addictive drugs and alcohol. Two decades’ worth of research has discovered a number of chemical and physical changes that take place in the brain, and its functioning, that render an addict effectively helpless to their compulsions.
The human brain naturally produces dopamine, a neurotransmitter, whenever a person performs an action that is associated with survival or breeding. Such actions, like eating and having sex, also give humans a sense of pleasure, a kind of evolutionary side effect to encourage us to keep doing things that keep us alive and keep the species going.
Healthy activities and indulgences will trigger this response, but so do unhealthy activities, and to a much greater and far more powerful degree. Someone snorting cocaine or injecting heroin into their veins will experience a flood of dopamine that is simply incomparable to anything else. The brain is forced to pump out greater amounts of dopamine than it should, even as it tries to regulate the neurotransmitter’s production. Over time (ranging from a single use to days or weeks, depending on dozens of factors), drugs or alcohol become the only way for the person to get that same rush of dopamine, that same rush of pleasure, that same sense that the only way to survive is by taking more cocaine, more heroin, or more alcohol.
Someone who has entered this stage of addiction will not be satisfied with incremental doses, but is compelled to actively seek out larger doses. Nothing will ever replicate the sensation of the first time, but the brain becomes so warped and hooked on the drugs that the chase continues.
This understanding of neuroscience has opened the door to further insights into how addiction, as a disease, works. It explains why people who have recovered from their addictions can still struggle with temptation or relapse: not because they are inherently bad people, but because the parts of the brain that are responsible for dopamine production have been primed to associate anything resembling past drug use with pleasure. Therapy and treatment can correct that balance, but never entirely. This is why a recovering alcoholic cannot go to a bar – not because of a character defect, but because the smells, sights, sounds, and environment of a bar (or other location where alcohol is easily available) will unwittingly trigger a dopamine response and the motivation to seek out more pleasure sources.
To that point, “addiction is not about willpower.” The abuse of drugs and alcohol causes changes to the brain’s functioning that lead to a person developing one, or more, of the four roots of addiction:
Tolerance: more and more amounts of the substance required to feel the same effect
Dependence: an inability to function without the drug
Dysphoria: excessive negative emotions, which can lead to relapse
Sensitization: greater responsiveness to a drug, which is what makes people more likely to relapse if they have gone for a period of time without using.
Just as MOST, not ALL diseases arise from the basis of personal choice. You make bad dietary choices and fail to exercise...you get slapped with diagnoses of obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and hyperlipidemia. No one bats an eye. But let us just pump you with meds, insulin, statins and give you a gastric sleeve, we treat you not judge. And actually we congratulate people for their weight loss success after that! Ironic isn't it?? People smoke, consume high doses of alcohol or other carcinogenic substances you get diagnosed with the disease of cancer...we treat it with chemo, radiation, surgery. You don't wear sunscreen or if you frequent tanning beds you may get diagnosed with melanoma...we treat you...we don't judge. You want to be promiscuous...you may end up with herpes, HPV, HIV...some of these may lead to cancer...we treat we don't judge. Many of the 'diseases' that we are faced with today are a combination of behavioral, environmental and biological factors. And the people that are affected by the disease of addiction are loved by someone..mother, daughter, sister, brother, aunt. Be kind...you never know what war someone else is fighting. And perhaps less ignorance and more education and empathy.