METHUEN, Mass. — Harmony King was eight months pregnant, in need of a shower and high on drugs when the police banged on her door. For hours, her sister and mother had been looking for her, but she wasn’t returning texts or phone calls. 

“My biggest fear was that she was in that apartment and overdosed,” says Harmony’s mother, Joanne Dillon of Methuen. She called her younger daughter, Ashley King, who convinced her mom they should call the police first and ask them to drop in on her sister.

That wellness check by police would serve as a pivotal moment for Harmony, 30. Six weeks short of the due date for her daughter, Harmony was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where she saw a doctor for the first time since she was 18 weeks pregnant.

“I was still very detached from the baby growing inside me. But I thought, ‘This baby has me and I have to get my (expletive) together,” she says. “I had an out. I had a way to be saved.”

Today, after more than a decade of drug abuse and failed attempts at rehab, she has been clean and sober for 22 months.

Getting hooked

Her tale is just one of many in the growing heroin and opiate epidemic that’s becoming rampant in areas all over the country. In Massachusetts’ Essex County, where Harmony lives, the opiate death toll rose from 23 in 2010 to 145 in 2014; between the two states of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, there were more than 1,300 opiate deaths last year alone. A surge in overdoses, drug-related deaths, and associated crime has prompted local officials to declare an official health crisis.

As a student at Methuen High School, Harmony was awkward and unsure of herself. She gained acceptance from other students who used drugs. She smoked pot, experimented with hallucinogenic mushrooms, acid, and the designer drug, ecstasy. At her 16th birthday party, she tried cocaine for the first time. In time, she dropped out of Methuen High and aced the GED exam, though she says she never studied.

“The thing is, I’m really smart,” Harmony says. “I just made really bad choices.”

As a single mom raising Harmony and Ashley, Joanne Dillon worked two jobs most of the time. She didn’t recognize the signs of Harmony’s drug use.

When she was 18 years old, Harmony landed a job as a waitress, which was her ticket to “a huge party scene” — more drugs, alcohol and house parties, as well as her introduction to crack. She was 23 when she met a 41-year-old man who became her boyfriend and introduced her to heroin one night when she was coming down off crack. 

“I felt so much better,” afterward, she says. Very soon, the need for heroin was insatiable.

Getting help

Harmony’s first of many attempts at detoxification and rehabilitation was when she was in her mid-20s. Watching her bounce in and out of rehab programs was an unpredictable and very stressful time for her loved ones.

“Nobody can tell you what this is like from a mother’s perspective unless you’ve lived through it,” Dillon adds. “Nobody can teach you or tell you what to do. Because you love your kid.”

Her sister Ashley, however, says she was disgusted and “done.” She stopped talking to Harmony for years.

“She was love,” Ashley says, pointing to her mother. “And I was tough love,” says Ashley.

She was back in rehab at the Salvation Army program in Worcester, Massachusetts when she began a relationship with a 27-year-old man she met there. Two months later, she learned that she was pregnant. 

After police took Harmony to the hospital in July 2013, her mother and sister drove to Worcester to try to get her into treatment again.

“I knew the baby was going to be taken away from me if I didn’t do something,” she says.

At Hart House in Tewksbury, a residential substance abuse treatment facility, Harmony joined other mothers and their children in an intensive program requiring participants to attend three recovery groups daily, along with parenting, self-esteem and other classes.

“I was blessed to get into that program,” says Harmony, beginning to cry. “I spent one night there and went into labor the next day.”

Her daughter, Melody, now 21 months, was born on Sept. 6, 2013. She was 6 pounds, 15 ounces and 21-1/2 inches long.

Harmony and Melody spent 10 months at Hart House. They now live on their own in an apartment, where Harmony’s mother and sister are frequent visitors. She has a waitressing job and has been clean for 22 months. 

“I stay sober for me, number one, because I deserve it,” she says, holding Melody a bit more tightly. “I have the motivation to stay clean and sober because of her.”

Read more about Harmony’s story and the ongoing heroin epidemic in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Staff reporter Jill Harmacinski of The Eagle-Tribune reported this story. Follow her on Twitter @EagleTribJill.