Ricky Necessary Jr. knows what it’s like to overdose on fentanyl.
On two separate occasions the synthetic opioid hospitalized him twice within a day. He overdosed, got released from the emergency room, used more fentanyl, overdosed again and went right back to the emergency room.
People close to him weren’t as fortunate, which is why Necessary feels it’s a miracle and blessing that he’s still around to talk about his journey in recovery.
“It’s a big part of why I do what I’m doing now,” he said during an interview at The Free Press. “We talk in the recovery world about if one person listens to what you have to say and it helps them then there’s hope out there.”
The 37-year-old Mankato resident is originally from Ohio, described as “ground zero” of the opioid epidemic by Ohio State University. Necessary grew up in the thick of it in the northeastern part of the state.
In 2015, the year Necessary first remembers encountering fentanyl, Ohio had 1,234 synthetic opioid fatalities, according to a Washington Post analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. No other state had more than 949 such fatalities.
During this time illicit fentanyl started replacing heroin on the drug market in part because it was cheaper to produce. Previously heroin was the cheaper and easier to access alternative to prescription pills.
For many people accustomed to a certain dose of heroin, the same amount of more potent fentanyl equaled a fatal outcome.
A user of heroin for many years, Necessary said he overdosed once on that narcotic. During six to seven years using fentanyl he estimates he overdosed more than 20 times.
“Heroin is very dangerous, but (fentanyl) is a lot more dangerous,” he said.
Supply lines
A user’s tolerance and a supplier’s lack of quality control are among the factors influencing whether fentanyl use turns into a fatality. Mankato has had cases of fatal overdoses where the victim wasn’t aware they were given fentanyl.
On quality control, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent used a baking analogy to illustrate how one pill can be more deadly than another.
“If you’ve ever baked a chocolate chip cookie, you mix the batter up and you throw the chocolate chips in and you put them in the oven,” said Rafael Mattei, assistant special agent in charge at the DEA’s Minneapolis-St. Paul division.
“When you get them out you hand out cookies, but how many chips does each cookie have? It varies, so the thing is you don’t know if you’re going to get that hot pill.”
Necessary lost a father, step-mother and friends to fentanyl overdoses in Ohio. If not for Narcan, the overdose reversal drug generically known as naloxone, he and other people he knows could’ve had the same fate.
One of the best 10 minutes he ever spent was learning how to use Narcan. Since moving to Minnesota, he estimates, he has used it on 35 to 40 people.
“If you’re sitting in a group with four, five people and you’re all using, especially if you’re using IV, chances are somebody’s gonna do too much,” he said. “It became, ‘Hey, you wait until I’m done in case this happens.’”
Necessary and Mattei spoke at an opioid and fentanyl awareness event in Mankato in August, organized annually by the family of fentanyl poisoning victim Travis Gustavson. The family distributed Narcan at the August event and at an educational panel discussion on fentanyl Tuesday.
While Necessary is finding his voice on the fentanyl awareness front, Gustavson’s family is in year four of their outspoken campaign about the drug’s dangers. Gustavson, 21, of Mankato, died in 2021, leading to lengthy court cases against the people who supplied him with the fatal substance.
They recently founded the Travis James Gustavson Foundation to further their efforts. A family from Hastings helped them establish the foundation, and both are pushing lawmakers to do more about the fentanyl epidemic.
Devin J. Norring, 19, of Hastings, died from fentanyl poisoning in 2020. Just as his family attended Gustavson’s family’s event, Gustavson’s family attended a memorial ride in Norring’s honor in Hastings one day earlier.
The families first connected with each other online.
“This is a strong, tight-knit community and we’re all here to try to help each other,” said Thomas Norring, Devin’s father.
Thomas and Bridgette Norring, Devin’s mother, worked with Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Angie Craig, both Democrats, on congressional proposals meant to protect young people from online drug sales. They said one proposal, the Cooper Davis and Devin Norring Act, would require social media companies to alert law enforcement when fentanyl is being distributed on their platforms. Craig and Iowa Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks co-sponsored the bill in July.
It would be similar to how companies need to report sexual trafficking activity online, Bridgette said. Social media companies oppose the efforts, Thomas added, on First Amendment grounds.
Amy Neville of Arizona, also in attendance at the August event in Mankato, lost her son, Alexander in 2020 to fentanyl poisoning. He was only 14 years old.
She found out her teen obtained the drug through a dealer on Snapchat. The Alexander Neville Foundation, started in his memory, aims to educate youth about the dangers of both fentanyl, social media and the intersection between the two.
Gone are the days when young people go down a dark alley on the other side of town to score drugs, Mattei said. Dealers and buyers use the technology at hand, using code words to get messages across.
As for how fentanyl gets to places like Mankato, Mattei detailed trans-national distribution networks.
Precursor chemicals, used to manufacture controlled substances, come from China to Mexico, where cartels use them to make fentanyl pills. Smuggling routes bring the pills to the U.S. through the southwest border.
Trafficking routes take the drugs from places like Arizona and Texas to the Twin Cities. Mankato isn’t far off the route.
“We’re on the end of the line for the drugs,” Mattei said. “The drugs that come here are for here.”
The Minnesota River Valley Drug Task Force at a more local level and the DEA at a cross-state level partner up to disrupt distribution channels. Charges and convictions regularly come forward against fentanyl sellers in Blue Earth County District Court, while a DEA investigation led to recent federal charges against an alleged large-scale distributor.
The early August charges against a Minneapolis man alleged he had a role in trafficking 1,600 pounds of methamphetamine, two kilograms of fentanyl and 30,000 counterfeit fentanyl pills into Minnesota and the surrounding region. A release from U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger stated Clinton James Ward, age 45, and 14 others were linked to the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel in Mexico.
Mexican authorities took Ward into custody in March before returning him to the U.S. for prosecution, according to the release. Luger noted the deadly role that trafficked drugs play in overdoses in Minnesota in the release.
“Today’s indictment disrupts one of the most sophisticated and significant drug trafficking organizations we have prosecuted in my tenure as U.S. Attorney, and I am grateful to the DEA and FBI for their hard work bringing this operation to justice,” Luger stated. “The Department of Justice would also like to recognize the Mexican authorities for their assistance on this case.”
Ward’s alleged operation spanned from at least January 2019 until his arrest in March 2024. The start time aligns with when authorities saw fentanyl rear its head in Minnesota, coming a few years after the same happened in Ohio.
A DEA release from 2020 reported agents recovered 46,000 counterfeit pills in the first seven months of that year, nearly four times the amount seized during the entire previous year. The Minnesota River Valley Drug Task Force’s fentanyl pill seizures ramped up in the following years, said Blue Earth County Sheriff Jeff Wersal at Tuesday’s event, spiking from three in 2019 to 7,934 in 2024.
National and state data suggested overdoses are at least starting to level off or decline, although they’re still leaps and bounds above figures from the early 2010s.
Data from the local region’s drug task force showed it was aware of 94 total overdose incidents in its region in 2023. Of the 94, 13 were fatal and 41 involved fentanyl, according to Beth Bock, analyst with the task force. That’s up from total overdoses of 86 in 2020 and 89 in 2022, but down from 102 in 2021.
Through Thursday, the task force knew of 43 known overdoses, 14 involving fentanyl and three being fatal, in its region in 2024.
As Neville put it in August, it’s far too early to say we’ve made headway on the crisis.
“We need to get back to 2012 numbers if we’re really going to consider it progress,” she said.
Brighter days in recovery
For Necessary, who moved to Minnesota in 2019, the trajectory of fentanyl in the state was like a replay of what he saw in Ohio. He was coming off of incarceration back in his home state when he moved here for work.
At the time his stints of complete sobriety hadn’t lasted long since he started experimenting with drugs in fifth grade. There were times when not using heroin and fentanyl or not injecting felt like a fine compromise with himself, even though he was still using other substances or methods.
Heroin use in Minnesota started for him in 2020. Just like in Ohio, heroin availability faded away once fentanyl flooded the market.
A bender ensued. Necessary’s troubles mounted in multiple counties, ranging from credit card fraud to check fraud to drug possession.
Blue Earth County Drug Court gave him a chance. Coming into it thinking he’d outsmart them without changing his ways. In time he took it more seriously and strung together seven months completely sober.
One night he relapsed. It started out with drinks and ended with methamphetamine.
Drug court stuck with him, eventually allowing him to enter a long-term treatment facility. Although he didn’t fare as well in previous treatment facilities, this time was different.
Necessary stayed in the Adult and Teen Challenge program in Rochester for 13 months. He’d attained his goal of reaching one year sober before entering society again.
Among the many good programs out there, Necessary said the program’s faith-based approach worked for him. A Christian, he enjoys going to church and is buying into feeling emotions again after avoiding them for so long.
“I still have everyday things,” he said. “I just don’t numb myself to them. I’m learning to feel them, to deal with my emotions, to feel my feelings, because I didn’t for 15-20 years.”
Recovery meetings are part of his weekly routine, as are calls to see if he needs a random screening as part of his drug court programming and probation. He’s thankful to have an understanding employer in North Mankato who he says gives him and others like him second chances.
Saying yes to sharing his story is another part of his recovery process. It’s why he spoke at the August event and came forward for interviews with The Free Press.
Friday marked two years of sobriety for Necessary. Next he looks forward to graduating drug court in October.
If he kept using fentanyl he doesn’t know where he’d be right now, or if he’d be here at all.
“I thought the world was dark and gray and nothing good was in it until I started getting some more stints of sobriety,” he said.
Follow Brian Arola @BrianArola