The last thing she remembered was walking into circuit court. To numb the dread, Lisa had smoked fentanyl and swallowed a couple more pills before the hearing.
How do you explain turning to the very thing that’s killing you? For her, it was her daughter’s face: The look in her eyes as she realized, even before the judge spoke, that her mother wasn’t coming home.
That look broke something nothing could repair for Lisa, a woman in her 30s from southeastern Wyoming who asked to remain anonymous.
“It’s insane,” Lisa said four years later. “The thing that was wrecking me was the only thing I trusted to make the pain stop.”
Her memory of that day broke into pieces: Shaking in front of the bench, the van ride to jail, then strangers leaning over her, pounding her chest. She woke in a hospital with a naloxone drip in her arm.
They told her later about the Narcan shots and the deputy who’d refused to give up on her.
That was what finally scared her sober. That, and the silence from her daughter, her family — the relationships she’s spent years trying to mend.
“Fentanyl isn’t a high. It’s a terrible way to live,” Lisa said. “Worse than anything else.”
She started because people around her said it was cheaper and didn’t show up on probation drug tests. But once you’re hooked, the sickness that follows keeps you coming back — even if it wrecks your life.
Even if it kills you.
Wyomingites Dying From It
For years, fentanyl has dominated America's overdose crisis. The powerful synthetic opioid has largely replaced heroin in many illegal drug markets and has been found disguised as prescription painkillers, hidden in counterfeit Xanax tablets and mixed into cocaine and methamphetamine.
It’s also costing a lot of lives in Wyoming and elsewhere.
Between 2020 and 2024, according to the latest statistics provided by the Wyoming Department of Health, around 350 Wyoming residents died of an opioid-related overdose. Of these, more than 90% were unintentional.
The demographic hardest hit during this five-year period was men and women ages 35 to 39, which accounted for about 60 of those deaths, followed by those between the ages of 25 and 29 equaling about 42 overdose deaths.
The bulk of these overdoses occurred in Sweetwater County at about 29.4 deaths per 100,000 residents, or an estimated 61 lives lost due to opioid overdoses. This was followed by Fremont County at 18.2 deaths per 100,000 residents.
That number appears to be growing in 2026, with the Cheyenne Police Department issuing a warning in April of an uptick in overdoses, including five in less than a week.
Two were fatal.
New Danger Hitting Rockies
Now, federal investigators say they've encountered another unusual combination.
The DEA's Rocky Mountain Laboratory recently identified pills containing both fentanyl and heroin during drug seizures in Colorado and Utah.
The pills have not been found in Wyoming, but officials say that's no reason for Wyomingites to let down their guard.
When Ryan Cox, Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation commander, heard the DEA had identified pills containing both fentanyl and heroin in neighboring states, he wanted to know which drug was being added to which.
"The fentanyl is more potent than the heroin," Cox said. "Heroin laced with fentanyl is more dangerous."
That distinction matters, Cox said, because someone who believes they're buying heroin but unknowingly consumes fentanyl faces a dramatically greater overdose risk.
Someone intentionally seeking fentanyl who unknowingly ingests heroin is still in danger, he said, but the heroin doesn't substantially increase the threat posed by fentanyl.
"The fact that they're adding a lesser substance into a more dangerous substance doesn't cause me as much concern as vice versa," he said.
Cox stressed that either combination can be deadly.
An Unusual Discovery
Another reason the discovery caught investigators' attention: Heroin rarely comes in pill form.
Steffan Tubbs, a DEA Rocky Mountain Division spokesman, said the DEA routinely sends seized drugs to its laboratory for analysis, but this time chemists identified tablets containing both heroin and fentanyl.
In some cases, they also detected carfentanil — an extremely powerful synthetic opioid originally developed for large animals that is about 100 times more potent than fentanyl.
"It's highly unusual to see heroin mixed in pill form, and then you combo that with fentanyl," Tubbs said. "It is definitely concerning."
The DEA declined to discuss the specific investigations or how many pills were recovered.
Wyoming Drug Hubs
Investigators say geography makes Wyoming vulnerable if the trend spreads.
According to Cox, Wyoming's illicit drug market is heavily supplied through larger distribution hubs in neighboring states.
"Most of our state, our drug traffickers, either travel from Denver or it's locals that travel down to the Denver region ... to obtain drugs that are brought back into Wyoming," Cox said.
Meanwhile, traffickers serving southwest Wyoming frequently obtain drugs from the Salt Lake City area before redistributing them around the state.
In other words, when a new drug trend appears in Denver or Salt Lake City, Wyoming law enforcement pays attention.
The state might be sparsely populated, but its highways are not.
Interstates 80 and 25 remain major transportation corridors connecting drug markets across the West.
"If it's not something that is getting locally done," Cox said, adding as his voice trailed off: "If this is a trend that's coming right from the major distributors ..."
Given Wyoming's close ties to the Denver and Salt Lake City drug markets, Cox said it's exactly the kind of trend investigators will be watching closely.
"Don't think you're immune just because you're in the state of Wyoming," Tubbs said. "The cartels do not care what state you're in. If they can make money and they kill someone, that's the cost of doing business."
Impervious To Danger
Lisa isn’t aware of heroin pills laced with fentanyl in Wyoming but said fentanyl is now being sold in Wyoming in a powder form, which is different.
“I never had any experience with that, but I hear it’s worse,” she said.
She also said each fentanyl pill – which can cost about $30 on the street in Wyoming versus a fraction of that cost in larger cities in Colorado and elsewhere – wildly varies from one pill to the next.
In a batch, she said you might get one that is super potent while an another can seem to contain little drug at all because they are pressed at random with no consistency.
And despite the dangers, Lisa said in her experience the drug is so addictive it’s like it takes over the body and makes you want to do anything you can to get the next dose.
“It’s one of those things that you have to have it in order not to be sick,” she said.
The withdrawal side effects feel worse than death, she said, including nausea, stomach cramps, fading in and out of vision and severe body temperature fluctuations, to name a few.
It’s worse than any other drug she’s experienced, including methamphetamine and heroin.
“When you’re coming off of it, you know it’s not going to kill you, but it’s hard to think that way when you’re going through it,” she said.
If she could say one thing to anyone thinking about trying it, it's: Don’t do it.
It will ruin your life.
“Once you go down that road, it’s quick,” she said.
She’s working hard now to stay sober and attempt to repair all the damaged relationships in her life, which is a slow, uphill climb.
“It can impact anyone,” she said. “It doesn’t discriminate.”
Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com and Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
