Heyl: Math Teacher Couldn't Overcome Opioid Addiction

PITTSBURGH, PA - The cliche persists on TV, in movies and in real life. Addicts are strung out, heavy-eyed, content to dwell in the shadows and sleep on filthy mattresses while constantly feeding the ravenous beast destroying them.

The cliche is inaccurate. Paul Renne proved it.

Renne was an avid outdoorsman. He enjoyed hiking, kayaking and camping. Family members say he was passionate about literature, music and art. For many years, he was a math teacher for the Pittsburgh Public Schools. He evidently was well-liked by students, judging from the reaction when his heroin addiction killed him in August at the age of 51.

“Mr. Renne constantly challenged me,” Raven Moore, now a University of Pittsburgh law student, wrote in Renne’s online guestbook. “If I ever got the answer wrong, he would tell me to keep going. Once he even gave me detention just so we could talk about geometry...Mr. Renne was one of a kind.”

One of a kind when it came to teaching perhaps, but Renne is just one of the many faces of the national health emergency President Donald Trump declared to combat the opioid epidemic. That came Thursday, shortly after two large landmines exploded locally to illustrate the vast scope of the problem.

Dr. Andrzej Zielke, who ran the supposedly holistic practice Medical Frontiers in Gibsonia, was indicted on charges he illegally prescribed prescription drugs such as ocycodone, hydrocodone, morphine sulfate and methadone to patients who didn’t need them.

That news broke shortly after the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s office ruled that a 1-year-old McKees Rocks girl died after ingesting carfentanil, a synthetic opioid that is 10,000 times more potent than morphine and often used to tranquilize elephants.

There were 424 fatal overdoses in Allegheny County in 2015; that number jumped to 650 last year. Renne will be counted among the 2017 fatalities, but he remains much more than a statistic to the people who were close to him.

Jennifer Renne, his sister, is an attorney in North Laurel, Maryland. Since he died she’s poured over his journal entries, which takes considerable strength. They are haunting and harrowing, chronicling the ups, downs and desperation of addiction.

Some days, he was optimistic: “There’s no reason why I can’t stay clean from this day on. Why not? This is what makes me feel best.”

Some days, he was realistic: “My recovery is not good. Relapsed thousands of times.”

Some days, he was prescient: “I’m done. I will die.”

Jennifer Renne said those who knew her brother well were able to separate who he really was from his addiction.

“My dream is to take three months off and write a book about him and have people better understand this disease,” she said. “He tried so hard for so many years.”

The cliche is that addicts primarily occupy some dark societal underbelly. It flies in the face of the reality that they often are our friends and family members, capably participating in society even as their struggles consume them. They can be people like Paul Renne.

Until that cliche can be conquered, the opioid epidemic cannot.

Eric Heyl is Patch’s Pittsburgh field editor. Reach him at 412-320-7857 or Eric.Heyl@Patch.com.

Photo of Paul and Jennifer Renne via Jennifer Renne.