As a 15-year-old high school student, DeAnna Duran thought the little blue pills that quickly ensnarled her into addiction’s unrelenting grip were “percs” — the street name for the prescription opioid Percocet.
“At first, I didn’t want to do it, and I think it got to the point where (my friends) were doing it, so why can’t I?” DeAnna, who is now 21, recounted in a recent interview. “After a while, I was doing it more and more and more.”
She tried to convince herself that she wasn’t an addict. But she couldn’t stop, and definitely didn’t want to experience the pain of opioid withdrawal. She started skipping school, failing classes and getting in trouble with teachers. Eventually, she dropped out of high school altogether.
But the pills that DeAnna believed to be “percs” were counterfeits. She had unknowingly become addicted to fentanyl — a powerful synthetic opioid that accounts for more than half of all overdose deaths in the United States. In Santa Clara County, 807 people died from a fentanyl overdose between Jan. 1, 2018, and Oct. 25, 2025, which makes up nearly 75% of all opioid overdose deaths in that same time period. The average age of those who died is 38.
“I didn’t know what fentanyl was, period,” she said, explaining that the revelation came after she looked up the fake pills online. “I had no idea what I was taking.”
DeAnna tried to escape from fentanyl’s grasp several times, with each attempt ending in relapse. Then last December, as withdrawal symptoms started to set in once again, her mother, Jennifer Duran, showed her a video of Dr. Lee Trope talking about Santa Clara Valley Medical Center’s youth inpatient opioid treatment program.
In 2021, the Santa Clara County-run hospital launched a first-in-the-nation program that caters to teens and young adults under the age of 21 who are struggling with opioid addiction. Valley Med already had been treating patients who came into the emergency department for substance use disorders, often starting them on medications like Suboxone that counteract the effects of opioids.
But to start a patient on the prescription drug — a combination of buprenorphine and naloxone that works by binding to opioid receptors and reducing cravings — the individual must be in withdrawal. Trope, a pediatric hospitalist and director of the youth inpatient program, said the ER setting wasn’t always the best option for young patients who might need a little extra “TLC.”
Instead, the program admits patients under 21 into Valley Med’s pediatric wing, where Trope said they provide medical support — including medications that can help with sleep and anxiety. The program has seen 80 patients and 115 admissions since it launched nearly five years ago.
“Our goal with our program is we want to have a menu of options that different people with different life situations … could choose different ways of starting their treatment,” Trope said. “We found that most adolescents and young adults in our community have wanted a lot of support, knowing they’re in the hospital, knowing they’re being monitored, knowing they have medications available for that hardest beginning part of getting off of the fentanyl.”
DeAnna was just days shy of her 21st birthday — the cutoff age for the program due to hospital licensing restrictions — when her mother showed her the video. She knew it was time to get help.
“I wanted a better life for myself,” she said of why she made the decision. “I wanted to stop hurting. I wanted to stop hurting my family.”
DeAnna was admitted to Valley Med’s pediatric floor, where doctors asked her how long it had been since she last used — “10 or 11 hours,” she said. They waited for her to go into mild withdrawal before administering Suboxone. She described the symptoms that came with withdrawal as “hell.” Doctors would eventually prescribe her other medications to make her more comfortable. With her mother by her bedside, DeAnna slept for two days.
Jennifer took time off work to be with her daughter while she detoxed. The mother-of-four also didn’t know about fentanyl until well after her child was already addicted. In a recent interview, Jennifer recalled often waking up five or six times a night to check on DeAnna, frightened she was going to walk into her daughter’s room and find her dead.
“I told her it’s only a matter of time — it’s not if you OD, it’s when,” Jennifer said through tears. “I don’t want my daughter to die. I won’t make it without her. For a parent to lose a child, I don’t think it’s something you ever come back from.”
It’s been almost a year now since DeAnna walked through Valley Med’s doors. She has almost a year of sobriety under her belt — the longest stretch of time since she first started using at age 15. Each month, she visits the county’s Re-entry Resource Center in downtown San Jose to receive a monthly shot of buprenorphine called Sublocade that reduces her drug cravings. The program also offers other services like counseling.
DeAnna’s physician, Dr. Annie Chang, said that medications like Sublocade provide patients with “stability” as they navigate sobriety. She points out the “great discrepancy” when it comes to the treatment of substance use disorder for adolescents compared to adults — many of the FDA-approved medications have only been studied in adults. That’s why Santa Clara County’s pioneering program is considered a model for other hospitals across the nation.
From a public health perspective, Chang said it’s critical that young people have the same access to treatment as adults do for opioid addiction before they get caught up in the system.
“When we see the trajectory of substance use and these behaviors that the substance use drives, and then they’re involved in the criminal justice system. Then they’re incarcerated, usually in local jails, because their first offenses were minor, and it gets more severe and deeper if that substance use disorder isn’t treated,” Chang said.
As a mother, Jennifer is proud of what her daughter has accomplished. She said they’re still earning trust back with everyone in the family, but she’s proud of DeAnna’s change.
“I want her to go out in life and become something that makes her happy and gives her joy,” she said. “This drug took everything away from her. … If it wasn’t for the support that this program gave her, I wouldn’t have my daughter.”
For DeAnna, that support has made all the difference in her ability to get sober and stay sober. She has spent the last year “trying to heal” to ensure she doesn’t “slip up” in the future. She hopes to go back to school and complete her GED, as well.
“I think overall I’m just proud of myself from where I started to where I am now,” she said. “From six years ago to now, that’s just a big difference of where I came from, especially from having an addiction.”
Individuals under the age of 21 can contact Valley Med’s youth opioid inpatient program by calling (408) 885-5255 and asking for the pediatric hospitalist on call.