I’m sure this photo makes a lot of people uncomfortable it may even piss a few people off but the main reason I took it was to show the reality of addiction. If you don’t choose recovery every single day this will be your only way out. No parent should have to bury their child and no child as young as ours should have to bury their parent. This was preventable it didn’t have to happen but one wrong choice destroyed his family. I know a lot of people may be upset I’m putting it out in the open like This but hiding the facts is only going to keep this epidemic going. The cold hard truth is heroin kills. You may think it will never happen to you but guess what that’s what Mike thought too. We were together 11 years. I was there before it all started. I knew what he wanted out of this life, all his hopes and dreams. He never would’ve imagined his life would turn out this way. He was once so happy and full of life. He was a great son, brother, friend but most importantly he was a great dad. He loved those kids more than anything. But as we all know sometimes life gets tough and we make some wrong choices. His addiction started off with pain pills then inevitably heroin. He loved us all so much he decided enough was enough and went to rehab at the end of last year. He got out right before Christmas as a brand new man. He had found His purpose for living again, he found his gorgeous smile again, he became the man, the son, the brother, the dad that we all needed him to be again. He did so good for so long but then a couple months ago It started with a single pill for a “tooth ache” which inevitably lead him back down the road of addiction instead of staying the coarse of recovery. He said he could handle it, that he could stop on his own and didn’t need to get help again. Well he was wrong, last Wednesday he took his last breath. My kids father, the man I loved since I was a kid, a great son and a great person lost his battle. I just needed to share his story in case it can help anyone else.
Mom’s shocking viral photo shows “reality of addiction”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/moms-shocking-facebook-instagram-photo-reality-of-addiction/
An Ohio mom is raising awareness on social media of the tragic toll being taken by America’s heroin epidemic.
“I’m sure this photo makes a lot of people uncomfortable it may even piss a few people off but the main reason I took it was to show the reality of addiction,” Eva Holland wrote. The photo, posted on Facebook and Instagram, shows Holland and her two young children posing by the open casket of their father, who died after struggling with heroin and prescription pain pills.
“The cold hard truth is heroin kills. You may think it will never happen to you but guess what that’s what Mike thought too,” she wrote.
Holland said she and Mike had been together 11 years. His addiction problem began, like so many others, with prescription pain pills, and later progressed to heroin. She said he went to rehab late last year and came out “a brand new man.” But after a few months of healthier living, he relapsed over the summer.
“It started with a single pill for a ‘tooth ache’ which inevitably lead him back down the road of addiction,” Holland wrote. “He said he could handle it, that he could stop on his own and didn’t need to get help again. Well he was wrong.”
Mike died on September 2, CBS affiliate WTRF reports. Although the coroner has not yet released his official cause of death, Holland is certain it’s connected to his struggle with drugs.
Now, she wrote in another Facebook post, “Lucas will grow up without his dad there cheering him on during his games and Ava will never have her dad walk her down the [aisle].”
Such tragedies are becoming increasingly common. Between 2001 and 2013 there was a five-fold increase in the total number of heroin deaths in the U.S., according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Over the past decade, heroin use more than doubled among people ages 18 to 25, and the CDC finds those who are addicted to prescription opioid painkillers are 40 times more likely to become addicted to heroin.
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“If you don’t choose recovery every single day this will be your only way out,” Holland wrote. “I just needed to share his story in case it can help anyone else.”
Filed under: General Problems
Why is it that all chronic pain sufferers who need to use opiate pain medications are automatically labeled as addicts?
Why is it that we still have our county’s hero’s returning home from active duty as addicts?
Society isn’t creating these problems, our governmental structure is.
Our county’s work force is the most overworked in the world and there are way too many industrial accidents are happening. I recently moved to Louisiana and every other commercial on TV is that of a personal injury lawyer wanting to help sue companies for work related injuries.
The young people of our military are programmed to kill but not taught how to deal with the guilt that follows. They mass train (program) them in boot camp and when their tours are up, they release them without showing them how to cope.
So yes, everyone should be pissed off about this picture and article. Heroin is the problem and that’s what should be stopped.
Anyway, my condolences do go out to this family but I still do have 1 question.
What idiot gave a pain pill to a man who had addiction problems and had already been through rehab?