(mellow music) - The history of opioids and substance use challenges goes back a long way obviously.

But for our purposes, thinking about the opioid crisis to focus in 1980.

There was a five sentence opinion editorial piece in the "New England Journal of Medicine".

A doctor had noted that he had used narcotics for cancer patients and it did not seem to cause his patients to have substance use disorders or develop addictions that he thought it was safe.

What happened then when other painkillers were coming out on the market and they began using fentanyl, these stronger, much more potent narcotics is that the "New England Journal of Medicine" kept being quoted as saying it was safe.

People forgot to mention, or the big pharmaceutical companies forgot to mention, that was an opinion piece that was not based on research.

It's hard to believe that a lot of what happened has happened.

How many tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of lives lost because of five sentences in the "New England Journal of Medicine" that people disregarded as an opinion and not based on science.

So from that, doctors began prescribing more opioids, believing it wasn't addictive, and then people following their doctor's orders ended up with a substance use disorder dependence.

And so this is how our medical community inadvertently became involved in creating so much of the substance use.

- He had his own demons, but he, like when I met him, like he was just very bubbly and happy and hopeful and he had lots of ambitions and lots of dreams and yeah, he was just, you know, kind of like your average hippie, you know, as people would call it, refer to him as the hippie Jesus in town.

So just very down to earth kind of person.

He loved to garden.

He had the community garden here in town and we were engaged to be married when he passed away.

It was apparent that Ty was not okay.

I'd say probably like the last week that he was alive, but like he just turned 30 the week before he died, just had a birthday and everything just kind of seemed to change, like right around that time for the worst.

Me and him were actually not getting along very well that day.

So we spent like the whole morning arguing and I left and I was like, you know, I'll just check back later and see if he's in a better mood to talk and try to figure out what's going on or, and I got a call from her probably like 45 minutes later that he was dead.

Probably the craziest day I've ever had my life.

You know, cops and everybody coming in and out wouldn't even let me in the house, wouldn't let me see him.

Told me that I didn't wanna see what happened.

- So I got my big glass of eggnog here.

I cut it with 2% milk 'cause I'm trying to wash the figure, but nothing tastes like Christmas more than it.

Nice big glass of eggnog.

And today I've got not one, not two, not even three, but four, count them, $1 holiday scratches called missile dough.

- Keenan is was my only son and he was my baby, even though he was six foot and over 200 pounds, he was, he'll always be my baby.

He was very creative, he was a very unique person and he was smart.

Oh my gosh.

He, through high school, I used to work so hard to get my grades and he would just do his work.

And he wound up getting bright flight to college and he took bright flight and went to Kirksville, Missouri.

And he got a degree in philosophy and a degree in English, I think it was literature.

And so, and he graduated with honors.

So he was a smart kid.

He graduated outstanding philosophy student and came home and we were here where we live now.

And he stayed with us to start saving some money and he was gonna go back and get his master's and his doctorate and he started working at a grocery store and he loved it.

So he took a job at a grocery store.

And he quickly, he was really smart, worked his way up to management.

He moved and bought a home.

So he had his own home, he had a management job and he was taking care of himself.

He'd struggled a little off and on with bipolar, but nothing too serious.

He was my buddy.

We, he liked to do unique things and I do too.

So we would go try different restaurants or go to renaissance fairs or you know, just, he was my buddy.

And so I miss him terribly.

He had messed with fentanyl at the end of 2020, we helped him detox.

He did it all on his own.

He said, I did something stupid.

He even knew it was stupid.

And he said, I did something stupid.

I tried fentanyl and I'm kind of addicted and I gotta get off.

So his father and I sat with him 24 hours a day for almost a whole week.

And he got him off and he said he was terrible.

Oh gosh, if people don't know this, he wanted to die.

He hurt all over.

He was cold and burning up at the same time.

And if we hadn't kept him with milkshakes and milk and he would've died because he couldn't take care of himself.

And he swore to us, I'll never do that again.

And that was in January of 2021.

- My son, his name is Maddox, when he was in seventh grade, we started having some issues with depression and anxiety.

And he came to me and we sought out help for it and started some medication, ended up stop taking his medicine and then he would come to me again and say, I'm starting to get depressed.

And I'm like, you gotta take your medicine.

When 2020 hit, my husband and I were, we had to work and then Maddox had to stay home.

That was really hard for him.

So I think that that's what ultimately started this ball rolling because he was home and he was able to interact, you know, with people on the computer and that maybe I would've been able to watch a little bit better.

He had been going to school here since he was in kindergarten, you know, we live in a small town and his best friend ended up moving away and that was hard on him.

But, so that was, there wasn't a group of friends where he would actually ask to go do things with after that friend left.

And so right around pandemic time, shortly after things started opening again, he started asking, can I go hang out with my friends?

And I'm like, absolutely, please go.

I mean, because you know, it's hard on a mom to see your kid struggle.

When he asked to go hang out with the friends pretty much said yes every time.

He had a, you know, a curfew and he had rules, but I was so excited that he had friends and he did still have some depression and stuff going on.

And going into his sophomore year, he had heard a rumor that a friend of his, a very close friend, one of the friends he had been hanging out with, something had happened with, with him.

I get a confirmation call from a friend saying that one of his very good friends did in fact pass away the night before.

And that they were thinking that it was an overdose.

His name was Carson.

And I've gotten permission to tell some of his story by his mom.

But at his funeral I saw pretty much that whole class there.

It was an open casket and my son didn't necessarily want to go up there, but I wanted him to go up there and I could feel him shaking as we walked up.

And I'd never seen that look in my son's eyes.

And he was, he looked at me and he's like, never again.

And I was hoping that what I saw in his eyes would come through that like he wouldn't try anything that would be dumb.

But that wasn't the case because, because of the pain I saw, and I'm just really giving you my excuses now, because I had to feel guilty.

I let him go out with a friend one night a few weeks later, he was going to stay the night with this friend that he had known since he was little.

And I heard my dog barking around 11:45.

I saw my phone was flashing.

And so I picked that up and I saw that it was the ring doorbell that had alerted.

I see my son and his friend coming around the corner.

But the thing is, is that his friend who happens to be about five, five is carrying my six two son, like a baby around the corner.

- Maddox, wake up.

(hand smacking) Dude, wake the (beeping) up.

- What's going on?

Maddox.

What's he on?

- Uh... - What's he on?

- Uh... (dog barking) (heavy breathing) (sirens blaring) - Come on Maddox, I swear to God.

(radio chatter) (sirens blaring) Come on Maddox.

- Austin lived with his mom for the last 10 years of his life.

And so I was a traveling millwright.

I traveled all around the country.

I seen Austin the holidays or this day or that day.

I can say that I learned so much about Austin on the week during the week after he passed by reading his Facebook posts of all of his friends of people that would talk about how he would walk miles to come if they was struggling and having a hard time.

And I read these kind of things over and over.

And I really can say I learned more about him after he died than I ever knew.

Austin was really a hyper, hyper guy.

And he lived with me for the first 15 years and I spent a lot of time trying to calm him down and keep him still.

And, you know, being aggravated about it.

After I read the stuff, it was interesting how people said that was, that aggravated him at first about him, but it became the very thing that they loved.

I was sad when I realized how much I wanted to suppress that which was him, because it was beautiful.

Crazy ways of getting attention and everything else that I tried to suppress, I'm trying to be more like him.

I'm trying to bring that back out in me.

- I got involved with this through my friend Andy Burris, his son passed away from fentanyl poisoning back in January of 2023.

From a pill he got off of Snapchat.

Andy being my best friend, you know, I wanted to get involved once I saw him taken off with his initiative of making sure no parent had to go through this again.

And being someone who's been in recovery myself, you know, I looked at it as, but for the grace of God go I.

You know, I have the opportunity to push for people to recognize that we do have this issue, that the game has changed.

It's not like it used to be.

You know, yes, people die of other drugs, but not like this.

Going to that funeral and having kids that same age, like it, it really lit a fire in me.

And you know, I don't want anyone else to have to go through that, you know.

I don't want my kids to have to go through that.

I want them to be aware.

I want their friends to be aware.

You know, I want everyone I can possibly pass the message along to be aware of this is not the same game that it used to be.

You know, before you could go out and try something, experiment.

And nowadays that's not the case.

I mean, you'll, you'll die and there's no reason for it.

Nowadays, you never know what's gonna be in the drug you're looking for.

You're playing Russian roulette, you don't know what you're gonna get.

You know, like two small milligrams, like 15 grains of sand is enough to kill an individual or starting to see some slight declines.

But the declines are not very much to really make a difference at this point.

It's a new game where parents don't even understand that their kids are more savvy than us.

In the case of Cruz, he went on Snapchat and found a guy and he delivered it to his house when his parents were asleep.

And by the next morning he was dead.

You can monitor your kids as much as you will, but kids are kids and they're gonna experiment.

And I want to impress upon them, you're playing with your life.

You know, like tomorrow's not promised to you.

And when you step into this arena especially, it's not promised to you at all.

(family laughing) - [Susan] You got a little something in your teeth.

He was happy go-lucky kid.

Loved to sing and dance and laugh.

And especially his sister could always make him laugh.

We actually depended upon her for his entertainment because it never or failed.

So they, he grew up very close to Whitney and Jess, but, and as he grew up, his dad was his best friend as well.

They did everything together, playing basketball, playing in the, you know, straight kickball, all kinds of things and hunting, fishing, trapping, anything outdoors.

His dad was a wildlife research biologist and Kyle was a young wildlife research biologist.

- It was my goal in life to make him laugh and to try to make him happy.

Thankfully I'm really funny and he thought I was really funny.

So yeah.

- No, we had a lot of good times together and I also described him as my second half.

We were really close.

He was also a pain in my ass (both laughing) 90% of the time, as I'm sure all little brothers are.

But I secretly loved almost every minute of it.

- Yeah.

- When he was 13, he was running with our dad and when they got back he collapsed and died of a heart attack.

And that started the spiral of events for Kyle.

We didn't know until years later that he blamed himself for our dad's death and what that had led to for, you know, the change in all of our lives from them.

He did not talk about that, but he was trying to find something to heal that pain or to get away from that pain.

Ended up using opiates after several years, and we don't even know how many times he overdosed or was in the hospital.

- He overdosed many times and was hospitalized and all kinds of things, in all rehabs in various parts of the country.

But the day of his last overdose, he didn't pass at that time.

- I feel like we really lost him, was the day that we got a call that he had overdosed and he had spent a significant amount of time in cardiac arrest and he suffered a severe anoxic brain injury from that.

- He couldn't talk.

He couldn't move himself.

But he could express himself still with eyes and all the expressions he'd yell at us, you know, and laugh.

- Yeah.

- And he lived 26 months.

In that state.

- In my mind it's the worst day of my life was getting that call that he had overdosed and then we knew nothing was ever gonna be the same.

Bring it to your mouth.

(TV chatter) You gotta bring it to your mouth.

Hand open.

There you go.

Good job.

You've got the right moves.

- We got custody of both of the children.

When Jetaya was three and a half months old, my husband and I adopted both of the children.

And so we got fired from being grandparents and we were mom and dad again.

When Jetaya started elementary school, we found out that she had a gift of helping special needs kids.

And one of her best friends at that time had autism and they were best friends until, well, they'd still be best friends.

She had a gift and she wanted to be a special needs teacher.

When she finished school and went to college, Lee had gotten called into work.

He had a funny feeling to turn his phone on.

So he did.

And it just started dinging.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, all these notifications.

And he's like, oh my gosh, there's guys in the house.

He said, call the police, get over there.

So I got to the street and there was like 10, 15 police officers there.

Three guys were in the house.

One was 17, one was 19 and one was 38.

And they brutally raped Jetaya.

She lost all self-esteem, she lost all self-worth and she didn't know how to cope with it.

She ended up in a facility for about 16 months.

We helped get her into a house in Ottawa and she said she had a job and you know, we had gotten her a car so she could get back and forth to her job.

We got a phone call and they said, well they found a trace of fentanyl in her purse and she's on a respirator and her brain is swelling.

Took off for Lawrence, Kansas.

And I was crying, I was praying and I was like, please God, please, let her be okay.

Let her be okay.

And then I had a weight on my right shoulder and I looked right there was a silhouette of Jesus and he said, "Donate her organs."

We got to the hospital, security got us right up to the ICU room and Jetaya is on a respirator.

She's on every tube, everything all around her room, all on her.

And we knew she was, she was not gonna make it.

When we were in her ICU room, we told them that we wanted to donate her organs.

They said, come here, we wanna show you something.

We said, okay.

So they take us to the desk and they turned the computer monitor around.

They said, look at this.

And it was a copy of Jetaya's driver's license.

And she had signed to be an organ donor.

- So when he would have an overdose, we would, however we'd hear about it, we would go to wherever he was.

And usually it was an ER.

And I remember a doctor saying, just quit.

You won't end up back here.

Just quit.

Like you son of a (beeping).

A healthcare professional.

And we left.

I was there with Kyle, we left and we went to another hospital.

They were so caring and loving, we felt no judgment at all.

So I wish healthcare providers would really be educated and made to understand and not be in those kinds of positions of power and influence.

That was complete ignorance.

And I don't know if that would happen today, but if it happened then I guess it would happen now.

Unless they really understand this is the disease, the disease of the brain.

Because when you use these drugs or various drugs, it immediately changes your brain and it just wants that and it can't think about anything else.

So saying just stop, oh, we didn't think of that.

- I feel like all, all yeah, those kind of responses of like, why don't you just quit?

Or what's wrong with you?

Why are you using drugs?

It's just shaming the person and making them even more, make them feel wanting to, wanting to hide it.

Maybe do it in secret and not communicate to other people what they're going through or seek help.

- I'd like to also say that when Kyle, Kyle was hospitalized, he was in ICU for a long, long time and they were so loving and caring.

- We had a nurse that made a point to say, we know this is not Kyle.

Not the real Kyle.

- Yeah.

- Even though that 16-year-old might be taller than you, those brain connections are not fully developed.

If a child drinks alcohol, what difference does that make?

Well, looking at the national monitoring, the future surveys, which is a national survey, sort of to look at what the drug trends are with young people using drugs.

And what we clearly see now is that young person who drinks alcohol before they're old enough, before the age of 18 is almost four times more likely to go on to other illegal drugs when they experiment with that.

A young person who experiments with cannabis, like between the ages of 12 and 18, almost 10 times more likely to go on to use illegal drugs.

Access is the mother of use.

So the more there is, if the drug is legal, it's more commonly found in the community.

Young people are more likely to access it when it's illegal.

There's also the perception that it's safe.

So they're more likely to use it and experiment with it.

Even if it's not legal for them to have it, they may find it.

And part of that is because adults supply it.

I'm bone weary of blaming young people whose brains aren't fully developed, who aren't in the business of forward thinking because that's just not how they're wired.

- I think we glorify the use of chemicals in our culture in general.

You have celebrities that are, you know, they have the tequila companies or gin companies and then you, you don't see much about legal marijuana being broadcast or advertised except for on billboards throughout the state.

But it's just a matter of time.

And what I think that does is for the people who are predisposed to substance use disorder, it normalizes a behavior.

But once you've, like in my own personal experience, once you've tried something and you like it and you become addicted to that, it's so much more difficult to back away from.

But it introduces you to different elements as well.

Especially with our kids.

- We realize the opioid death rates were climbing and climbing steadily and it often, most often involved prescription drugs or prescription drugs sold on the street.

It was then decided it would be a good idea to limit that prescribing and there were more stringent guidelines in place.

Well there were a lot of people who had already developed a tolerance for those drugs and became what we call dope sick.

Really either so sick you wish you'd die or you felt like you were going to, but people can't imagine how ill people get when they're dope sick, withdrawing from opioids.

So they began to seek other ways of getting their needs met, of taking away that pain so they could stay functional just so they could, wouldn't be sick so they could take care of their kids and go to work.

So that developed a demand for heroin.

And then we discovered that, oh, the fentanyl, which at that time we were importing from China was coming in and that that could easily be mixed in with any kind of a drug.

The United States government did put pressure on China to quit shipping fentanyl.

So China then resorted to just shipping the components.

So most of it now comes in, the components are shipped to Mexico, which puts it together and then it's shipped into the United States.

Some of it carried in by United States citizens.

- [Operator] 911 St. Louis County, location of your emergency?

(beeping) What's going on there ma'am?

- [Caller] My best friend is like dead in his bed overdose.

- [Operator] Okay, hold on, let me get an ambulance.

Don't hang up.

(phone ringing) - [Caller 1] What should I do?

- [Operator] Fire and ambulance.

- [Caller 1] I need an ambulance (beeping).

I need an ambulance (beeping).

- [Caller 2] Stop, stop, stop.

He's bleeding through his nose (beeping).

Stop.

- [Caller 1] Hello?

- [Operator] I'm here with you.

What apartment are you in?

- [Caller 1] Apartment (beeping).

- [Caller 2] We need someone.

Our friend's in his bed.

He has drool all over his bed and there's blood coming out of his nose.

He's like, white and he's gray.

- [Caller 1] He's like dead.

- [Operator] Okay, get him on the floor.

- [Caller 1] Get him on the floor?

- [Operator] Do you believe that he's beyond help?

- [Caller 1] I don't know.

I know he needs help.

- My daughter come up and woke me up and said his mother was trying to get ahold of me that he was at the hospital.

I'm generally a calm person.

I really am.

And in the face of panic, I really am.

So I got dressed and I went out to the hospital and when I seen him, I had already known.

I knew he was passed.

They had him on life support.

But I could tell and I could see that he really wasn't there.

I seen a tattoo on his chest and it said, "I'm sorry, Mom."

And I seen that tattoo and all I could think of is how Tracy's gonna feel as she sees this tattoo.

And I just, he loved his mom so much.

And he knew that, you know, always what he did wasn't perfect, but he was her protector.

I stayed in there with him by myself for a little bit.

I rubbed on him.

I held him and I apologized.

I think that tends to be a lot of us.

We apologize that we didn't save them.

You know, that's a parent's responsibility.

They basically told me pretty quickly that he had been out long enough that it would be brain damage if he ever did come back beyond anything.

But that it was a more than likely there would be no coming back.

And that they was just keeping him alive.

He had contacted the donor people four times that year.

I don't know it was Austin.

Very persistent.

He wanted to make sure he was on a donor list.

And so that's why he was keeping him going.

'Cause he was a donor.

He always gave him of himself.

- Bye Austin.

- Love you.

(all crying) - When we got to the hospital, I was informed that he had required two more doses of Narcan in the ambulance.

And they had just given him another dose of Narcan right before we got there.

I finally get to go in and see him and being what I just said, he was still having some of the side effects of being high from opiates.

It to my very core just made me sick.

He had just changed my life forever.

He had no idea what he had just done.

He had no idea.

And he doesn't even remember that I couldn't stand being in there because he was just, but at the same, in the same breath, he's my baby.

And I had just done CPR on him, but he was alive.

He was alive.

He is still having some of his mental health issues, which at this point I think are much more than depression and anxiety.

And I do think that it stems from the drug use.

It's been two and a half years.

And I mean, and he is currently in the hospital.

So although my son made it and is here, we are still struggling.

And I've struggled, the whole family, the whole family, the little kids know something is terribly wrong and they'll remember that when they grow up.

That brother was sick.

And it's been hard on the whole family.

Watching his classmates graduate was really hard because he stopped going to school to try to try to focus on his mental health.

And even though we say we're focusing on it, it's not something I can do for him.

He has to want to do it and he has to continue.

He will have to do some kind of mental health help, like medication or therapy for the rest of his life.

It can happen to you.

My kid was a shy kid up until, you know, high school.

He was never in any trouble.

Just teachers that I've seen since were like, I never would've thought that this would've happened to Maddox.

- 2017, a fight broke out.

Jakob was hit in the head with an unopened beer bottle, completely shattering his entire orbital bone.

He had 11 full frontal craniotomies just to repair and restructure.

That was Jakob's first taste in opiates.

And it went on for years.

You know, doctor prescribed, I mean he, the kid needed it, you know, that was pretty intense.

So we got through that.

He did good.

He finally took some years, got back on his feet, in and outta rehab for that alcohol and opiate.

We actually sent him to California at one point on a rehab stint.

He did good there.

But you know, the 90 days in, okay, you're cured, go home now.

But 90 days does not cure an addiction.

And here comes another girl.

There's another girl.

And she had addictions of her own.

This is when fentanyl came along.

The first time.

On his 28th birthday, he woke up, unable to move the entire left side of his body, extreme pain in his left leg.

He had suffered two strokes while he slept.

Actually it didn't take long for him to start moving again.

But the pain did not go away.

And within that next year, that's all it took so fast, that next year, you know, they went from that casual using with girlfriend to, you know, full on addiction.

Sick without it.

He was regularly asking me for money for pain medicine.

Mom, it hurt so bad.

You know, he'd pull on my heartstrings and percocets.

That's when he thought he was buying.

And I had given him money for this.

You know, like I, you know, I helped him get there.

So, you know, I harbor a lot of guilt.

My guilt runs very deep.

Friday night at 10:53 PM my phone rang.

I had been looking for my son for the last week.

So when a detective called, asked if, you know, if I was the mother of Jakob Asner, I chuckled at first, was thinking, oh, he's been in jail, he's locked up some first something stupid.

You know, that was my initial thought.

And I said, you know, kinda rolled my eyes.

I said, yes, I was his mom.

And she proceeded to tell me that he had been found unresponsive.

I just remember screaming.

I screamed and I screamed.

Jakob had passed away on July 6th.

Now that Friday night that I got that phone call again, that was July 12th.

It took them six days to find next of kin.

'Cause Jakob died in a house with a strangers.

They didn't know his name.

- Here comes the hard part.

So you know, we're going on.

He's doing well.

He's clean, he was still drinking.

He would drink and then he'd go without, he did that too.

But he was doing really well, working his way up in management at his job.

The Thursday before we were getting ready to go on vacation he was having a rough, he had called me on Wednesday and I said, I will come over a Thursday and we'll talk and we'll, and then when I get back from my vacation, I'll help you out with the rest of this stuff.

So I went over to his house and I helped him.

He was really struggling.

He was kind of depressed, but he'd done that before.

I wasn't, this is nothing new because of the bipolar.

And so I went, we went on our trip to Michigan.

We left on a Saturday.

I texted back and forth with him.

I'd send him pictures.

He liked food.

He also took foodie vacations.

That was his thing.

And he was writing back and you could tell he was upset.

He wasn't mad.

He was just bummed.

And so I said, you know, we'll be back and you know, we'll be back and I know we're missing your birthday, but we'll be back right after your birthday and we'll get together.

And we'll, on Monday we were headed up north, way up north in Michigan.

And I got a phone call from his work.

I was his emergency contact.

And they said, Keenan didn't show up for work.

Well this is weird.

Keenan always showed up for work.

He was always early and if he couldn't make it, he always called way ahead of time.

So this is, this is not good.

So I called his roommate.

He had two roommates.

One was in rehab, the other one wasn't there.

So I called him, I said, can you go check on Keenan?

Maybe he overslept, right?

So we had to wait an hour.

I was miserable 'cause we didn't know what was going on 'cause he had been in such a down mood.

We were really concerned.

So an hour later we get a call from this young man and he says he's gone.

And I went, oh, he went to work.

He says, no, he's dead.

I didn't cry.

I didn't know what to do.

I was in shock.

And I said, he's dead?

Call 911, hang up.

So I made the young man hang up.

He called 911.

And then of course you're sitting around waiting, 'cause you don't know what condition, if he's dead dead, or if they're gonna revive him or what.

And you never, you don't expect to do this.

It's indescribable.

I can't even describe the, it's like limbo.

It's like surreal.

It's like your world stops and everybody else keeps going, but you're stopped.

You're done.

I got a police officer call from the police officer.

You know what happened?

I said, well he's died.

Yes ma'am.

We think it was fentanyl.

We found 18 pills.

18 pills on his dresser.

We don't know how many he took, but that's what we think it is.

Now, you never know what it is until months later because he died under, that's another thing that people don't understand.

If they die under circumstances where they don't know, they have to investigate what the circumstances were.

They do the autopsy.

They do the toxicology.

Took months to get that.

We had a rough idea.

Some people never even know till much later.

But we had a rough idea what it was.

And the very thing he said he would never ever touch again.

And this was six months later?

Yep.

Four days before his 31st birthday.

He took out money at 3:30 in the morning at the Quick Trip up the street from his house.

And obviously he met somebody there.

So I'm just assuming there's a lot of things we don't know.

So then you do the miserable thing and you start planning your child's funeral.

This is hard.

And then the service, he's buried at a church down the road here.

And so yeah, this is hard.

This is hard.

But we had his funeral.

I would say the whole first year you don't know what to do.

So I went back to work.

I did, I went back to work.

I was glad I did.

I teach, I taught science.

So the kids were the kids, the kids were healing.

Yeah.

But I was still in shock.

I would say that whole first year we'd have a holiday and I kept saying, something's wrong.

Something's wrong.

Well, yeah, he wasn't there.

So he was buried next to my husband's father.

His Earnest, yeah.

So the first year is rough, but year two really stinks.

Year two is when you come to that holiday and you said, well he didn't make it last year, but he'll come this year.

You know he is not coming.

But I would say if I had to pick a year that was worse.

It was year two, yeah.

'Cause I just, it was like, it was permanent.

- Lonnie came into my life when he was 11.

My husband had four boys, I had two girls.

We all lived together.

He had custody.

So it was six kids living in one house, kind of up and down.

During the early years of his life, being the stepmom, stepparent, there's always gonna be conflict.

Being an adult was a totally different situation.

The last few years of his life, we were very, very close.

It was more like a mom and son relationship.

He came to me with his, his problems, with his concerns.

He did have a temper, but on the other spectrum, he was the kindest, sorry, generous, hardworking person you'd ever wanna meet.

He would do anything for anybody.

But when he was on on his drugs, he was just a totally different person.

First off, he didn't feel like he fit in.

He never really had close really good friends.

So he gravitated to the wrong people he thought were his friends.

We were told that he split a pill with somebody.

That's where it gets kind of, you know, people say different things.

We were told that someone threw a sheet over him.

They robbed him before they even called 911.

They made sure that he was gone before they called.

- [Responders] We just didn't know we were coming to a code.

- [Resident] I wasn't here.

I would have literally called you guys immediately.

They obviously (beeping) waited because somebody could have gotten me from Circle K. - [Responders] What do you need?

Roll him that way... Don't lose that airway.

Pulling on it.

- Having to deal with the judgment that comes at you from people, especially in a small community is hard.

Because this is our home and you put drugs in the middle of it and it changes everything.

Do any of you really ever care to find out why some of us are this way?

And you would think being in a small community that you would feel more love from people.

- You gotta quit looking at other parents and thinking they must be a bad parent.

Because their son died of drugs, that's horrible.

That happens a lot.

That has to stop.

A parent feels bad enough losing the child.

But to make a parent feel like they've done something wrong, wow, that's bad.

Some people don't know what to say.

Just say, I'm sorry.

That's it.

'Cause you don't know how we feel.

You don't understand.

Just say, I'm sorry.

- I am sorry to anyone who has lost someone from this horrible drug, but I will continue to be their voice.

Because no matter whether you lose your kid or your kid makes it and has a long road ahead of them, you know, they all deserve a voice and I wanna be that for 'em.

It just sucks.

Thousands and thousands of kids are dying.

It's the number one killer of 14 to 25.

It's insane.

It told myself, I wouldn't cry, but it is.

It is, it's heartbreaking.

- It doesn't matter if you're a Republican or Democrat or Independent, like this is a human issue.

It's humanitarian issue and people are dying.

And I personally can't sit back on the sidelines and watch it.

- You just want to scream to everybody you see.

Do you know what's happening?

I think our communities think it's not gonna happen here and I have news for them, it is.

I'm tired of going to funerals for these young people.

It's just, we've gotta stop it.

I'm angry that my son died because somebody wanted to make money.

And that really makes me mad.

He was worth so much more.

- If Ty was still here, rather we were together or not, I would still let him know how loved he is as a person and how much of a positive impact he brought people, especially me, because I think he needed to hear that from people.

He needed to hear how much he was loved and how much people cared.

And he didn't get that very often or not enough.

- I would tell him, I would tell him the last thing I got to tell him when he was alive.

I'm proud of you.

That I learned from him.

- Now I would say, you're playing Russian roulette with not one bullet in the gun, with seven.

and you're gonna take your life.

I wish I could tell him how it has affected me as a human being, as his mother.

I wish I could tell him how it's affected his sister.

- I would tell him that, that we love him because I know he felt less than.

He thought his family didn't love him.

But I would tell him that is so far from the truth.

Jetaya and I had a special kiss.

I would kiss her on her forehead, turn my head and she'd kiss my cheek.

But I would make her give me the kiss.

I wouldn't wanna let her go.

- That's what I want more than anything.

I just want him home with me.

I know he's safe, so I'll just stay home.

- I feel like half of me died and I really just feel like I'm only half of myself now.

He took the best part of me with him.

(mellow music) (mellow music continues) (mellow music continues)