SLIPPERY ROCK TWP — Nearly 250 people packed the auditorium of Slippery Rock High School on Thursday night to hear the stories of recovering addicts and the advice of health care and law enforcement professionals on how they can help fight back against the county's opioid crisis.

The program, the third in a series of public forums working to shed light on the issue and erase the stigma often associated with drug addiction, lasted more than two hours as people aired questions and listened to the stories of recovering addicts and their families.

A recovering addict named Crystal, who said she grew up in Chicora, added her story to the mix, saying she lived a normal childhood until drinking turned to drugs and derailed her life.

“I played sports. I had friends, and life was good,” she said.

But by age 14, Crystal said, she had found herself in rehab for the first time after drinking and smoking pot turned into a predilection for the tranquilizer benzodiazepine and the prescription drug adderall. By 16, Crystal said, she had tried heroin for the first time.

“It took my life in a whole different direction,” she said.

Crystal would spend the next decade in and out of 30 drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers. Ultimately she found herself homeless and strung out on the streets of Erie — a low point that, combined with a 9-month stint in jail, finally pushed her to accept she had a problem.

Crystal told the audience Thursday that she'd been clean since Jan. 4, 2016.

Crystal and recovering addicts like her have spoken at county forums starting late last year, but a new and unexpected addition Thursday night were family members who took the stage to talk about their role in a loved one's battle for sobriety.

Crystal's mom, Gail, told the audience that it took years for her to accept that her daughter wasn't just a wild young person.

“That was the hardest thing. Because, you know, she's your child,” Gail said. “She's the only one I have. I thought it was something you grew out of. I couldn't understand why she didn't.”

Crystal said that ultimately it took her hitting rock bottom for her to start believing she could get well.

“I had to experience complete and utter despair for me to stop,” she said. “I started to believe that I was worth changing and I had potential.”

A recovering addict named Jason said it's difficult to explain that dynamic to people who don't struggle with addiction. Jason said he grew up in Butler County and drank and smoked marijuana as a teenager. But it wasn't until age 19, when he hurt his shoulder playing football in Florida and received a prescription for OxyContin, that his troubles with opioids began.

“This is a disease of the mind,” said Jason, “It attacks me on a level that's hard for me to (describe). In moments of strength, it tells me I'm weak. And in moments of weakness I'm even weaker.”

Dr. Mark Fuller, the CEO of Value Behavioral Health of Pennsylvania, said that's because of the way opioids like OxyContin and opiates like heroin work on a person's brain. They overload the brain's dopamine receptors, which block pain and produce feelings of pleasure. But they also overstimulate the system and ultimately cause the brain to send erratic and unnatural signals.

When Fuller asked people in the crowd to raise their hands if they knew someone who struggles or struggled with opioid addiction, more than half of the 250 raised their hands.

Fuller said he wasn't surprised by that response. Nearly 2 million Americans struggle with an addiction to prescription opioids, he said. America has 2 percent of the world's population and uses 90 percent of the world's OxyContin — the most popular prescription opioid on the market.

Fuller acknowledged that it's a state-of-affairs that health care professionals are still struggling to catch up with. He said that before the opioid crisis exploded into the public consciousness between 1999 and 2009, addiction treatment networks were almost entirely geared toward drugs like alcohol, marijuana and cocaine.

“Nobody saw this coming,” he said. When I was in my training, in the 1980s, I saw one person with heroin addiction. It just wasn't there.”

Now it's nearly everywhere. By 2009 nearly every state had a serious prescription opioid addiction problem, according to the federal government. And the problem hasn't spared Butler County.

In 2016 Butler County had 74 fatal overdose deaths involving opioids, according to data presented by county officials Thursday night. Nearly two-thirds of the victims were male, and the average age of those who died was 36 years old.

Mark Pfeffer of the Butler County Sheriff's office said he hasn't seen the crisis abate through the first two months of this year. Police and emergency responders use the anti-overdose drug Naloxone to revive someone nearly every day, he said.

“It's a routine call here in Butler County,” Pfeffer said. “It happens every day. It happened in the last hour and a half.”

One of those lost last year was Elizabeth Arblaster, 24, who died of an overdose in early September. Arblaster's mother, Sherrie Steifel, spoke unexpectedly at the close of Thursday's program, saying she's been upset, in the wake of her daughter's death, by some people's attitudes toward overdose victims.

Steifel said she's struggled with addiction as well, since getting into a motorcycle accident more than four years ago and being prescribed opioids by a doctor.

“We're not bad people, we're sick people. This is a poison, and these drug dealers are preying on us,” Steifel said. “Nobody deserves to die.”

County officials said the next forum will be held on April 11, at Butler intermediate High School.