Its a sad article but I need reality:
“He wanted to help everybody,” said his mother. “He wanted to save everybody.”
For three years after attending the wake for Brockton’s Shannah Duggan, Pacheco tried to save himself, waging a furious fight to keep the promise to his mother.
Nine times he admitted himself to a treatment facility, often spending days trying to find a bed. Once, he had himself imprisoned in a desperate attempt to break the drug’s hold.
He tried anti-addiction medications, substitutes, therapy, counseling — anything that offered a hint of hope. And he shared his pain, seeking help from family, friends, priests, workmates, strangers, counselors, judges, doctors and God.
But on Aug. 9, 2008, after staying off heroin for two years, Pacheco relapsed, overdosed and died."
Peace, Hope and Love,
Barbara
11 comments:
My stomach just dropped and I think I stopped breathing for just a minute. Reality is a hard pill to swallow. Very sad.
Wow....
I hesitate when I share depressing stories, but for me, I need to hear them to remind me of how serious and evil heroin addiction is. It also motivates me to want to change things - to hopefully stop someone from that first try. And honestly, to face the facts that my hope and prayers didn't stop him from tying it so I can't expect them to stop him from picking it up again :(
What a sad story. Obviously a you man full of love who lost the battle against addiction. But for the grace of God go I. Several of my friends died as a direct result of alcohol and drug addictions.
So sad :(
What a sad thing. Something has to be broken in the mind of those who desperately want to stop but can't.
That is incredibly sad.
Barbara - there's a lot missing from that article. Addiction is not a hopeless disease. This was not an impossible struggle for this addict who died. Like the title of your blog, recovery happens. It's more difficult if the addict is telling everyone how to behave. I wonder what the missing pieces are and am deeply saddened by his outcome.
Death is the thing we are most scared of when it comes to our own addict. This story painfully reminds me that recovery is up to the addict; and I can never love my son out of his addiction. The truth really does hurt some times.
This is a shame. I am still glad that he had two years of sobriety. Those two years were a blessing. Each day of sobriety is a blessing.
He just had a slip but the slip killed him. Each and every time an addict uses he risks death.
This probably would not have happened under the European harm reduction models. They let addicts inject at supervised sites under medical superviosion. Imagine that!
A good friend of mine had a similar struggle for sobriety, eventually checking himself into a mental institution in an attempt to get clean. After 18 months sober, he died, not from an overdose, but just from the toll that addiction had taken on his body. Renal failure was the official cause of death.
It's hard to make sense of these things. Turning to my Higher Power for some comfort is all I can do, and hope that this young man's soul is at peace now.
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