Christopher Walsh is proof you should never give up on someone addicted to drugs.
"It spirals out of control so quickly," Walsh said, noting that his addiction started after surgery when he was prescribed Lortabs.
He eventually turned to heroin and overdoses 7 different times.
"[Now] you realize the insanity of it all," he said. On his 40th birthday, Walsh made the decision to seek treatment, and he's been in recovery ever since.
"Now looking at it, being through it, it's hard that I didn't make the choice sooner, but you're only ready when you're ready," Walsh said.
He knows he was on his way to being part of a horrifying statistic: 1,031 people died in opioid overdoses in Erie County alone over the 5 year period from 2013 to 2017.
"It took seven times for me to wake up," Walsh said.