Mikey came up to me and he said, "Dad, I'm in really deep.
I need some help."
Mikey's our second-oldest child.
He was the kind that would walk in a room
and he would just light the room up.
At six-foot-two, you'd think he'd
be the bully in the room, when in fact he
was the one that found the kid that felt picked on,
and he became his buddy.
Mikey was very athletic.
He loved football and baseball and basketball.
He loved outdoor sports, and--just a great guy.
I think when things started changing
for Mikey was in high school.
We started noticing just the perky,
outgoing guy he always had been--just all of a sudden was
losing interest in wanting to finish schoolwork and finish
his Scouting.
A lot of it had to do with the friends Mikey was choosing
and starting to hang around.
He'd go to these parties after the football games.
He allowed himself to kind of try some things.
Some of the friends would actually get pain pills
from their parents.
And I really think that Mikey thought that he was invincible.
We confronted him, of course, and tried
the "You're grounded," the whole discipline thing.
And it just didn't work.
Mikey was starting to quit on himself.
He quit football that he was so passionate about.
He quit Scouting that he loved.
And before we knew it, he quit high school in his senior year.
You just don't want to believe it.
It's your child, and your child's
never going to do something like this.
But by the time that you're picking up on it,
it's already too late, and it's a lot deeper than you realize.
I started thinking, "What did I do wrong?
Where did I go wrong?
Was I not a good enough dad?
What could I have done different?"
As parents, we thought we could fix this problem.
And so the first thing we did was pack up our things and then
our family, and we moved out of state.
Mikey went to work, and some of the coworkers that he had met
were using drugs as well.
One of the drugs of choice was heroin,
and Mikey started using heroin.
He found out that it was less expensive to do
that than to use prescription drugs.
There was a day that Mikey and I were driving together
in the truck, and he said to me, "Dad, I'm in really deep.
I'm addicted to heroin, and I want to get help."
When he first told us about how bad this was, immediately,
as a mom, my instincts kicked in of "How are we
going to fix this for him?"
It was "Where do we take him?
What do we do?
Where do we go?"
Took him to multiple rehabs, spent thousands of dollars,
trying to get him the help we thought he needed.
But unfortunately, I think we wanted
it more than he could physically handle at the time.
Even though he wanted it so badly,
he just didn't have the strength to physically overcome it
on his own.
At this point, nothing we were doing was working.
We prayed about it, and we decided
that we had to make a tough decision,
so we kicked Mikey out of our home.
Three months he had been on the street.
Worst Mother's Day of my life.
He overdosed out there while he was on the street.
Left on the doorstep of a hospital ER room.
That's when I think he hit his low.
I got a phone call.
He sounded really weak.
He says, "Mom, I'm done.
I can't do this anymore."
He said, "I can't fight anymore."
So his dad and I dropped everything,
and we went and picked him up.
And when we saw him, it was such a big shock.
After three months, he was 75 pounds lighter.
We got him into an inpatient treatment program
where he lived for about nine months,
and he stayed clean for well over a year.
I was the last person to see Mikey that night,
Sunday night, and I was the person
to find him in our home overdosed.
Mike had what you call a bad day.
He just simply did it one time to try and just numb things
a little bit, but because he was so clean at that time,
his system couldn't handle that one time.
Mikey wasn't unique in having a struggle.
We all struggle with things.
Whether it's addictions, habits we develop in our lives,
we all have something to overcome.
The pain never goes away.
You walk around feeling like you have a hole kind of right
through you that never closes up;
it just continues to be there.
But there's always this softening
that as soon as you think about the hole that's there,
there's also this feeling that you're being comforted as well.
We're here in this life to overcome our challenges
and become stronger.
And through our faith in our Savior Jesus Christ and knowing
the price that He's paid for us and for everybody on this
earth--and Mikey--that's helped us kind of get through some
of the tough times.