welcome my name is natasha sherman and i am your host my guest today is stephanie oswald she lost her twenty three year old son andrew january twenty seventh of two thousand and seventeen due to an overdose of fentanyl laced heroin she's here to talk about her son about what happened because she is committed that nobody else has this experience and she's committed to change welcome i so you know it's hard for most of us to even imagine what it must be like for you  i'm sure it's even hard for you to imagine there must be days where it's like this can't be real every day yeah yeah but tell us what happened kind of sequentially because i think people need to  hear you know in all my research about drug addiction and first of all we know now it's a national epidemic it's not any particular part of society there's not any particular one reason there's not any one treatment that works but we have to explore it and we have to hear other people's stories so we can take a look at what might need to happen so your son was had a job oh he always worked my son always worked  he was everybody loved him he was this he was also all loved music research music he he was really smart and what is what i find is through my grief counseling groups every single child that has same characteristics all the same personality traits  he i used to say i don't know what i'd do if my son died my husband i would talk i saw what i do so at twenty three he died but when he when did you know that he was using drugs and you when we were talking before you said it started with a car accident and oxycodone yes so tell me about why i'm not going i mean he did smoke pot you know he said what the right but he never he wasn't a cocaine person he wasn't a speed person he was a pill person his very artistic hero and like i was ok with the i was ok with that because it couldn't kill him you know and everybody makes their own decision right about the exactly but this is something different so so he was in a car accident and it was near fatal he was thrown out of the back of his his back window the it flipped and turned in near sloane avenue on ninety five and just went all over the place and he had some serious injuries he recovered from them and he was going to need knee hundred twenty and ninety two milligrams an x now he was twenty two years old at the time long past when mom went in the office well you know  so i didn't know he had a job he could take care of his stuff yeah the pills were quite different from when he started to the heroin because when he started doing the heroin i w start to notice right his all his good friends that you know referred to me as mom two point zero zero it was important for me to know all of them and their parents and i loved i love them to pieces but then less and less they're you know i'm not seeing them and this other person was coming around like i told you i unlike him and i want a demonic in my house anymore and he was just for grassing nodding so on so my husband and i ate my husband and i just said enough so i got on the phone and i made arrangements i was going to send him to florida the florida you saw something was wrong oh i know you've been front him because ok so he starts with the oxycontin and then typically that's what happens they you know oxycontin is hard to get it's expensive and then they progressed to heroin and so initially he's using the pills to alleviate pain but as we know there's an addiction that happens and then he moves on to heroin at what point did you see like a major shift and i have to say that a couple of time oh it was the porch he would go out on the porch which is a normal thing for him and listen to music and i was his thing and i would go out there and he usually go out there how a cigarette and i go out there and this would be him ok fishy and more of that started happening he'd be sitting in the living room he would just start so i asked him one night to wash the dishes so he's at the sink and i was filming it and he's nodding over the sink when did research found his rehab set it up he came home one night i said here's your choice i had a suitcase packed i said you can go to rehab at this moment or go live under a bridge either way your bag packed and that's the chose rehab so we drove in and at this point was he did nine it or was there any point that he came out and said oh he had no choice because i found some in his room right ok you know  did he see it as a problem he of course not yeah that you know to the issue because what and when they do see it as a problem from what i read when they do see it as a problem it's very momentary but then they're so craving their next fix that it's no longer the problem like the idea of it being a problem just get me to the drugs right it is a terrible terrible demonic thing i was i don't know so but his friends the people he was in rehab with these guys are wonderful they take time to talk to me and explain it to me from their point of view and explain to me what it does to them and you know as best they can and how it grabs you and it doesn't like oh it just it just seeps into you and then you know you could go a couple of days but then there's just that feeling that you have to have but it's never going to be the same as first time you know and it's like that that's why they say chasing the dragon and my son knew you know he's not stupid and i used to have conversations with him and he would say that you know he thought people who did heroin or idiots he'd have conversations with his friends he just couldn't understand it his friends didn't even know why he went have well they didn't know he went to rehab when he died i had to tell his friends that he overdosed on heroin and they were shocked they're still  shocked they didn't now so they didn't know the extent they didn't know he was doing heroin not at all you know one of the things that came up over and over again is one of the things that kills this population is the stigma so that the stigma is part of the killer because if there wasn't such a stigma people would feel freer to say to their friends hey you know i think i might have a problem or just come out openly and so again they're not only dealing with the addiction but they're dealing with hiding it right and i think i think the the secret part comes more from the family than it does the child because well like i said my son kind of secluded himself slowly from his friends that would know that say something because his friends what it said something and that's why the first one of his a bitter wary we said on january twenty i said if we don't start putting that out there and saying this is what happened my child instead of saying passed away quietly at home you know at that age unless they had an illness  the government's got is to really get involved and start worrying about that a little more so i have a question so he went into rehab and then he came out of rehab and where did he go i he went to he went to rehab and then he went to a sober living house ok and he was there for three months and then they the owner sold it so he was with us to roommates just and dan and they got an apartment together and oddly enough they all worked in the same place and it was a place for children that have had a hard time learning oddly enough kids a lot of them so he's living in this apartment with these two other people out there heroin addicts and they were doing fine and then one day account someone from the place that he went to rehab calls me that i had had a relationship with she calls me and she said i just want to let you know that i was told that someone saw andrew shooting heroin when i remembered to breathe again i asked her specific questions like did someone actually see him with a needle putting in his arm because he had never shot heroin before that was confirmed i hung up with her called my husband and we drove up there it's three hours away we had a big confrontation i had already set it up for him to go back to rehab of course he wasn't going to go i couldn't make him right he said you know i mean it's just sometimes some of these rehabs are just kind of like revolving doors sure you know now my son is smart enough to kind of see these things but he refused and i said to him you die i die i know that and i would repeat that and you know i helped them get all the furniture for the parmalee his two buddies were great so he didn't go to rehab that time what did he say he was going to do instead not going to do it anymore i got it right so you know we have this job and you have really happy with it and you know i guess justin how's he doing it great great i would visit him a lot and he called me he said i had a little fender bender with my car i said well can you duct tape it till you get here and we'll have fixed he was like you comes home he looks better than he had looked in a long long time  just my mother my said everybody was you know and was here all week at my house all week his car wasn't on yet so we drove him back on a saturday and work i said so we said we'll bring you what his son that was that the next wednesday drove up to him still look great cars all fixed life was good kiss hug kiss again reminded him you die he when he died in his room and the police called in they said to my husband are you aware of your son's problem and my husband said yes and he said well your son is gone now my husband's on the road driving he said don't call any other number because that would have not been good for me so he raced home he came in read my shoulders he was crying  his mother was in the hospital with cancer and he said our son is gone i separating and then the word no came out of my mouth i don't even know how many times the crying the there were no words there were just i couldn't stop crying i couldn't think my husband the child he was a miracle baby i wasn't supposed to get pregnant i had surgery when i was nineteen and the doctor said you know you're not going to have children and at thirty four you know because my husband is definitely meisel me we have a wonderful marriage and one of the first things we discussed was we're not going to let this put us up because that happens often scott make a stronger and we're we're going to fight together and it's been i have pretty much cried ever sent and i can't stop it i can't help it it just does sometimes just a word somebody says is true all the music every  music he downloaded on my phone arthur the things he taught we what's a concert every concert together we bought shirts and now i have all his concert shirt and my sister is going to make a quilt out of the shirts  his best friend sean mazing kid amazing kid he got all like that the turntable and the guitar and that of that he always comes are his friends still come over they text me the moms call me they invite me for dinner and it's a very blessed with that my best friends are also my sisters my rock my brother was his godfather and he's also a funeral director so he jumped through hoops my son died on a friday saturday morning he went up there and got my son so i could say goodbye to him you know yeah there are no words i think what is it is there anything along the way that you think could have happened should have happened the way society looks at it what is it that you would have wanted to happen along the way i would have a life the whole opioid thing to have been made bigger a long time ago because this this was somebody didn't just notice this you know i had five surgeries the year before on my shoulder you know like  and i think maybe in the in the one year and the five surgeries i might have taken ninety of them you know i'm serious urges it's been out there for ever  just like you know with disability any more they fight it but you see these people what is your to say why are you disabled kind of thing but it could have been started a long time ago and then i could've gotten to the crux what i like to say the crux of the a glow what the true problem is ok so they're getting the opiate all under control that's great i think that's great they put life i'm sorry elephants down with most people die before they even get high you know it's it's bizarre but you know that for awhile there was the methadone way of treating addiction and i read it was very interesting because they said that what happened was that a methadone i could carry you for twenty four hours whereas you really want to fix with heroin every few hours and that doctors initially could prescribe it to people so they could manage their addiction right and that there was some law passed that made it impossible for doctors to give you a prescription to manage it yourself you had to show up at a clinic every twenty four hours as they which was insane because hey you're standing in line you might have a job and you're standing in line with you know hundreds of other people who are addicted who you know again it's not a supportive environment so i think one of the things is you're talking is it's you know there's this specialist in vancouver who talks about how they have addicts come in and give them clean syringes and you know teach them a how to do the drugs and it may sound bizarre but we're not saving anybody by criminalizing it and by putting people in jail at least this i agree and you know again if  problem is the problem and it's not going anywhere quickly but we're not managing it at all i believe in rehab through medication because they talk about totally agree with that and it's got it i mean i've actually seen these places where the people stand in line not because i want to just now because now i probably know as much as a junkie about heroin in fact it's just insane because i'm going to make a difference i mean i can i have a really loud voice and i could get  alternately i'd like to do a march on washington and have everyone that lost someone take a rebel rock and paint it and put a person's name that they lost to a heroin overdose and when we get to our destination could make a pile now picture that if people are a little taken aback by you know marching bout heroin they're going to be able to talk about the  cleanup they're just i want to do that and i want is your real bad so i'm looking at all kinds of ways yeah it's a lot of red tape as always where did you get support i just just when i think about everything that he did i don't know how i could've done that but he did and he wouldn't have it any other way and an goofs on me all the time and i always believe that white fathers or shiny pennies mean that he's there every time i find a penny and last week on my hood there was a ton of white feathers wow now no bird parts but the fathers you know i just know he's with me i know he is and what would you say we've got like two minutes what would you say to other parents going through this new you've got to know everyone they hang around with you have got one juror because come home with his friends i would make sure that we had at least a five minute conversation so i could get no what sissy would write what they had been doing or not doing know the parents said you have to go to dinner with them you know the familiarize yourself with what happens when you do this or that i think that's really important very important because it's very easy it's wishful thinking to burry our heads in the sand and think it's not going to happen to me but really to educate ourselves and then i think the other thing for me is educate your children about not just taking a doctor's prescription and you know even if they're adults and they don't have to consult you anymore like really manage your well being because just taking a medication without doing the research can kill you the knowledge that the teaching has to start now elementary school yes i want to take one minute to read this you brought this to me it's called take me in your arms and it's a combination of i gather authors but it's miss heroin so now little man you've grown tired of grass l s d goofballs cocaine and a hash and someone pretending to be a true friend said i'll introduce you to miss heroin well honey before you start fooling with me just let me inform you of how it will be for i will sit deuce you and make you my slave i've sent men much stronger than you to their graves you think you could never become a disgrace and end up addicted to poppyseed waste so you'll start inhaling me one afternoon and you'll take me into your arms very soon and once i've entered deep into your veins the craving will nearly drive you insane you'll swindle your mother and just for a buck you'll turn into something violent corrupt you'll  you'll steal from my narcotic charm and feel contentment when i'm in your arms the day when you realize the monster you've grown will solemnly swear to leave me alone if you think you've got that mystical knack then sweetie just try getting me off your back there are a couple of other verses about i will go to the last one you will return just as i foretold i know that you'll give me your body and soul you'll give up your morals your conscience your heart and you will mine until death do us part and that's the power of heroin and addiction so stephanie thank you for coming on the show thank you for having me and you know i just wish you some peace in this process and thank you for taking this on as a mission i'm not stopping good my name is natasha sherman thank you for joining us