The National Addiction Memorial honors the loved ones we’ve lost.

Georgie began smoking pot and drinking at the "gateway age" of 13. As I stated previously, he escalated to heavy cocaine use by age 15. By 16 he was arrested for stealing a car radio, and was sentenced to probation with sealed records. Later that year, not being able to endure sleepless nights, crying, searching the neighborhood for my teenage son, and almost losing my job, he finally entered rehab. He spent 20 months out of a 24-month program. He was clean for two years, having graduated from high school at the rehab facility in full cap and gown ceremony. It was my proudest moment! Six months after rehab, Georgie relapsed. He was in rehab several more times over the years, but nothing seemed to help. Georgie was dealing drugs, using drugs, and escalated to heroin. He also began freebasing. There were several suicide attempts, perhaps to cry out for help. He had several run-ins with the law, and once served 30 days in jail, swearing he would never go to jail again. Every time he got too deep, over his head with drug dealers, he turned to me for help. I always helped my son, except when I discovered drugs in my home. At that point I made him leave. Georgie told me that he found it difficult to control the urges to use drugs. During his early years, he claimed that he really liked getting high. However, when he reached his thirties, he reflected on his entire life and told me that he threw his entire life away on drugs, and really wanted to stop. He died two months later.

His struggle began at the age of 17 when a bandmate gave him a line of cocaine for his 17th birthday. He was instantly addicted. He once told me that drugs made him feel like what he thought normal people felt like. For some reason he had low self-esteem although he had everything going for him including a family who loved and appreciated him dearly. He was in and out of 5 rehabs, lasting anywhere from 7 days to 28 days and he seemed to emerge from them worse than when he went iin. He told me he'd wake up every morning wishing he were dead because of how he'd ruined his life. He told everyone though how lucky he was because he had parents who loved him.

"She began experimenting with alcohol (which I don't like not only because it has always tasted nasty to me but was the cause of all the physical, verbal & emotional abuse I endured throughout the 11 years with my ex-husband & father of my daughters), but also with Marijuana which I believe has benefits medically for people suffering from cancer, anxiety, chronic pain & other conditions & illnesses. I DO NOT believe children under the age of 21 should smoke it however. I have personally seen the relief it can provide for people with chronic pain or nausea or other disorders. I always spoke to my children very openly about anything that they had questions about or wanted to know about & it was something I felt was important to have in a parent/child relationship. I, along with my husband both had to combat addiction to prescription pain medications which became very bad after I lost my mom in 2008. So when Tia told me she was using OxyContin which was not prescribed to her I became very concerned & scared. When I discovered she was smoking it I confronted her & said I would help her in any way I could to get through her Opiate addiction & she seemed so sincere that I thought for sure that with a support plan & medical help she could beat her addiction. She was truthful with her employer & was able to enroll in a Suboxone treatment as she had good insurance at the time. She soon began using Opiates again & then admitted she had switched to smoking Heroin once the OxyContin became too expensive. I was so scared then & when I then found out thru a friend of hers that she was injecting it I feared for her life. She, at that point had lost her job & moved to Portland, OR & began dancing to support her habit. When she finally agreed to move home to get clean I was relieved thinking once she was home I could keep her safe. The next few months were hard but she finally completed treatment & I had hope. Then on Sept. 2nd she relapsed & I found her dead in her room. "

Matthew's struggle with addiction began years ago. My awareness of it as an issue started when he was 16 but I know it began probably a year or so before that. It all started with alcohol. Unfortunately there is a lot of alcoholism in my family so it's not terribly surprising that this became something we had to cope with. Matthew was arrested for the first time about 12 years ago for pushing a grocery cart through the glass door of a local pharmacy because they would not sell him cigarettes. He was 16 and he was drunk. He was arrested that night. That was the first time but not the last. Several arrests between 16 and 18 followed while he was, going to an addiction counselor and making a hash of his high school record. Finally in 2004, his attorney told me that Matt would likely go to jail if I didn't offer the court a residential alternative. That's when I sent Matt to a small program for at risk youth in the mountains of western NC, called Cove Creek Farm. I am convinced that this decision gave me several more years with Matt. I believe that I would have lost him much earlier either to death or to state prison had I not done so. Matt stayed there for 2 years over a 3 year period. He did great while he was there and relapsed when he was out. In 2011 Matt moved to Greensboro, NC to do EMT training. It was then that the addiction really began to take over. More and more kinds of drugs, overdoses, bad choices, more arrests, treatment, relapse and ultimately his death on May 19, 2013.

In Junior year of high school, Bryan started taking pills he bought from "dirty doctors." We had no idea. His friends were doing it too. Bryan came to us in his senior year of high school begging for our help. At that time he was smoking heroin. He wanted to be healed of his addiction. We were by his side for over two years in and out of rehabs and doctor's offices trying to help him. He just couldn't beat it. We found him on his bedroom floor early in the morning on February 11, 2011. He had overdosed sometime around 4 a.m. that morning. Bryan's autopsy report showed he had alcohol, pot and heroin in his system. He was only 21 years old.

"Our sweet, tender, easily hurt boy, often so concerned for others that he had nothing left for himself, had an underlying mood disorder which he stopped treating with proper medication at 18. An adopted child with the genetic pre-disposition for addiction, at first the alcohol soothed…but then quickly overwhelmed him. He'd been in treatment for alcoholism many times - ten to be exact - in Minnesota, Colorado and Utah - and that after wilderness at age 14 followed by three years of therapeutic boarding school - dealing with his pot use. In December 2011, he went up to Boise, ID where he took a position as a mentor in a young adult internship program. From the get-go it was up and down…in part because that mood disorder mentioned earlier was ever-present. He tried and tried to connect with a psychiatrist in Boise…I think he was ready to try medication again…but it never happened. He finally saw a nurse practitioner who treated him for anxiety…but there was more to it. And, we suspected that he’d started drinking again….but he denied it. He was supposed to come to visit his dad and me in Milwaukee in April to see the psychiatrist here who had known him since he was in 3rd grade but missed the plane because he was loaded in the airport lounge. It was clear he was seriously binge drinking again...and his father and I feared the worst. A few days later, Charlie impulsively quit his job. With all of the structure gone and feeling oh-so-lonely, the drinking escalated. Realizing he was quickly spinning out of control...and believing the demon would always win…that he couldn't stay sober...and that he couldn't stand disappointing us -- or himself -- one more time...he took his life. Charlie died on 5/28/12 of a single, self-inflicted gunshot wound. We'll never know if he pulled the trigger intentionally or whether it was an accident. "

This is my beautiful daughter. She was truly an inspiration to so many people fighting addiction. She got clean and sober at age 20 and stayed that way for 6 years. In that 6 years she did whatever she could to support others through the struggle to stay clean and helped countless numbers of people. But, the demons came to call and before she could control them they took her into a world of hell.

Justin's addiction took us by surprise. It seemed as though one day he was different. I knew he drank and smoked pot; but I didn't realize he had gotten into pills. Those pills and pot, led to heroin. He went down fast and hard. The things he did are so sad to recall; but they did happen. Lying, stealing, and disrupting; as well as trouble with the law. We tried to get him help, but he wanted nothing to do with it most of the time. He did try very hard with NA, and he was so proud when he had an achievement. But, that devil always dragged him back in. Justin hated that he couldn't control his life. I fully believe there is no social or economic boundary to this killer called Heroin; or any drug for that matter!

Chris's troubles seem to have began in High School around his sophmore year. We found that he was smoking pot and he wasn't wanting to work real hard at school. We made it through high school thank god! He found a beautiful girl to spend time with that was going to college, Chris chose to work instead, but soon after was introduced to Heroin. The relationship fell apart and his life began to spiral out of control. I had no idea what was happening to my smart, charming beautiful boy. I believe it was 2003 when it was the worst, he started stealing from us, pawning things to buy what he needed so desperately to survive this addiction. in 2005 he overdosed for the first time, we were scared to death and still didn't know how to help him. 2 months later, his Dad took his own life. Of course this only made things much worse! He knew he needed help, but still thinking he could get clean on his own. We moved him closer to a Methadone Clinic so he could get his monitored dosage daily. Couldn't keep any job longer than a couple of months. That lasted a year. We knew he didn't want to be on that either. So he moved home again and tryed on his own now replacing with Xanax and of course whatever else he could find to help thru the withdrawals. He had overdosed at least 4 times of which I found him 3 of those 4. Finally sent him to a Rehab in Florida then to a safe house after. He said Mom, they told us here that you could relapse many, many times and then there are those that end up in prison or dead. I couldn't bare to think that this could happen to my son. Well it did, in 2010 he was sent away to prison for non-violent offense of running from the police and pills in his pocket for an entire yr! He was let out in June of 2011 and I lost him to an accidental overdose of methodone and xanax on July 5th. I always knew that time of year was extremely hard for him, since his Dad took his life on July 3rd, 2005. My life and the world I now live in, has changed forever. God, I MISS HIM SO VERY MUCH!

I knew he smoked pot. AJ was brutally honest..well about most things anyway. He told me about pot, he talked to me about girlfriends, sometimes things I really didn't want to know! I could tell he was high sometimes and I asked him repeatedly if he was using anything stronger and he swore, " no, no...that's not for me." The girlfriend was on prescription drugs for depression so she always seemed spacey...it worried us, she had a "dark side." They returned to Florida within the year because she wasn't happy in NY. It wasn't till a year later, when we got a phone call saying AJ had ben arrested, that we found out about HIS prescription pill problem. Addiction, I should say, He had gotten into a car accident and had found a Dr. that gave him pain medication and he took it for a long time, both he and his girlfriend were addicted. He had a good job as a pharmacy technician and had just gotten his pharmacy technician's license. But it was like a kid in the proverbial candy store. He had gotten caught stealing pills, a lot of them. We bailed him out, I flew down to get him a lawyer and see about bringing him back to NY...to 'save him.' The girlfriend chose not to come. He started a drug program here and was doing really well for a couple of months. Then he dropped that program, he didn't like it for some reason and was trying to get into another. He was on probation, no jail time, mandated drug program so getting into one was imperative. Another girlfriend. Family wedding in Jamaica on 7/20/13, he couldn't go because of probation. Girlfriend's dad bought them a weekend at the Marriott to celebrate their birthdays for the weekend we were away. They went into the city on Friday morning, he overdosed that night. After his death, reading his text messages, we found out he started using heroin about 2 months earlier, supposedly occasionally the girlfriend said. We never knew. I had suspected he was high at times but thought he was getting tested at probation.

Jarrod's drug of choice was marijuna, He wasn't getting the high as he did at the begining. He tried a opiate called, "Opana" and got hooked! Jarrod passed away from an overdose on Opana ( a quarter of a pill, which he inhaled the fumes) as well as the drugs the doctor prescribed to get him off the opiates and weed. He had Klonopin, Seroquel and Cymbalta in his system, as well.

Ashlee lost her life last year due to an accidental heroin overdose. During her college years, she had turned to drugs to relieve her anxiety and depression. Ashlee had fought hard to overcome her addiction and had remained clean for two years. She was so very proud of that fact. Then on September 11th, 2013 in a weak, desperate moment she made the fatal decision to use one more time. It would be her last. Her story is important to tell because people need to understand that heroin doesn't discriminate against race, social status or age. Many people aren't aware of that fact that heroin can be snorted and smoked as well as injected, all with potentially fatal results. Most importantly, even if you or someone you love uses heroin just once...you or they can die. Because of this horrible, deadly drug we will never see Ashlee's infectious smile or hear her laugh again. She is missed by many family and friends every single day.

In Jeff's early adolescence, when life started to get more complicated and the burdens of this world were placed on him, they began to weigh him down. This is when he started using alcohol and pain medication to help him deal with these burdens of life. He fell into the trap of addiction as a coping mechanism. As he became an adult, he was full blown into the disease of drug and alcohol addiction. He did things I never thought he would do. Jeff would tell me he paid his bills with the money he took from me and that the money didn't go for the drugs or alcohol. Think about that! The diseased brain working at its best! He struggled with getting clean in many venues. He never wanted me to hug him or tell him that I loved him, he thought of himself as a failure to his family. It was so wonderful to have the REAL Jeff back during the times he was clean and on the correct medications.

We struggled together with a meth addiction, but he got bored and decided to start mixing heroin. I followed for a short while, but was too scared so I just stayed in my own misery with my own drug of choice. He struggled with addiction all of his life. His mother was addicted to pills and sent him to hustle at a young age. He was clean for a couple years and then his mother died of a drug overdose. His addiction became a heroin only thing and he met the love of his life who was also a heroin addict. On January 29th 2010 his partner died of complications due to drugs and MS. 2 days later Matt was found dead of a drug overdose. Addiction is a powerful powerful thing. :-(

He was such a loving person and coping with the struggles of life and all it's challenges was always difficult for him. He was sometimes too sensitive to deal with the ugliness this human journey can bring.

Its hard to imagine that a person so full of life with the whole world ahead of him could end in such darkness, loneliness and despair. Such is the evil of a disease called addiction. Bobby was impulsive. He always wanted to try something new and he rarely thought of consequences. He started smoking marijuana at a fairly young age. Of course, this generation has been known for its prescription drug use. Bobby was no exception, and with such an adventurous personality he was highly susceptiple to it. It started with benzodiazepines and escalated to anything he could get his hands on. Oxycontin was next. He liked to hide his addiction from our family, maybe to try to save himself from the consequences at times and also saving us from the harsh reality of where his life was heading. It got worse in college and he had to come back home to live with my parents, which started the slippery slope that eventually led to his death. We tried everything. I would come home from college in the middle of the night after desperate phone calls from my mom. I would follow him into dangerous parts of Youngstown, OH just to make sure he was safe. He was getting out of control and never wanted to admit it. He started injecting things like heroin and xanax. He refused to go to rehab. I even called the police on him once to make sure he hadn't overdosed. They treated him like a criminal and failed to realized that this is a disease. It was an absolutely gut wrenching year of court hearings and drug induced outbursts. He had no more friends, no hope and nothing to live for. On September 26th, 2012 the light in Bobby's eyes was no longer there. The demons took over and he was no longer the lively, loving bright soul from his childhood. He committed suicide, I believe, to save us all from the inevitable and daily anguish he felt he caused us. Each day, I look at the tattoo of him on my side as a silhouette in a tree, hoping he has found peace and ask myself "why?"

"Ian struggled with a heroin addiction and thought that he could overcome it on his own, mostly because of the cost of treatment. I know how bad he felt about himself. He felt that he was weak and a disappointment to the people who love him. He felt that he was being judged by others, but in reality, he was his own most critical judge. On the last Mother's Day before he passed, Ian wrote a sweet letter to me, telling me that he would make me proud. I already was and will always be proud of him. When a person has an addiction, it in no way means that they are bad people. From what I had been told, Ian had been able to stay away from the heroin for about three weeks when the dealer came to where he was living. He was not strong enough to resist and ""one last time"", he bought what he thought was heroin. It turned out that the heroin had been substituted with Fentanyl, which caused my son to die from ""positional asphyxia"". My heart aches for Ian and everyone else who suffers from addiction. I think they always feel alone, even in the company others. How I wish that it was enough to just hold our addicted loved ones and surround them with love and compassion until the addiction has lost it's grip and they love themselves enough to want and allow healing. Someday I hope to be able to help others get the help they need to heal themselves in body and mind."

THE BEAST: Cody struggled with his addiction for almost ten years, from the time he was 16 until he passed away from a heroin overdose at age 26, on September 25, 2013. He was working that morning at his wholesale produce business, making his normal deliveries in his van, and stopped to get high in a parking lot. He wasn't found until the next day, when the police found him after I reported him missing. No one had heard from him for over 24 hours, which was unusual. He had just completed treatment at one of the best treatment centers in the country nine months prior to his death. He was struggling more than ever, and he told me "Mom, the beast is back". I knew he was in deep, deep trouble, and I felt absolutely helpless. What more could I do? Nobody seemed to have the answers to treating his addiction effectively. Cody was a healthy young man until addiction ravaged him physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. He played sports in high school; basketball, baseball, and all four years on the golf team, He played competitive soccer until he was 14, and was an avid snowboarder. How he went from these normal, healthy activities to hospital stays, detox clinics, treatment centers, and emergency room visits, was incomprehensible to me. The only explanation that makes any sense is this; he was sick with the disease of addiction. His family has alcoholism on both sides, and he grew up around alcohol. Cody started with alcohol and pot in high school, and progressed into the hard drugs from there. He was in and out of treatment centers and sober living houses for five years. When he started abusing Oxycotin, his addiction became much worse. He moved from pain pills, which were expensive, to heroin. It is the same epidemic story we parents keep telling over and over; prescription pain pills lead to heroin, which leads to overdose and death. I want it to stop and for society to look at addiction with compassion, instead of judgment.