[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 12]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 16744-16747]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




     RECOGNIZING FAMILIES AFFECTED BY THE NATIONAL OPIOID EPIDEMIC

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. ANN M. KUSTER

                            of new hampshire

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, December 8, 2016

  Ms. KUSTER. Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to include in the Record 
today the personal stories of families from across the country that 
have been affected by the opioid and heroin epidemic. In the U.S. we 
lose 129 lives per day to opioid and heroin overdose. In my home state 
of New Hampshire I have learned so many heartbreaking stories of great 
people and families who have suffered from the effects of substance use 
disorder.
  Earlier this year, my colleagues and I were joined by many of these 
courageous families who came to Washington to share their stories with 
Members of Congress and push for action that will prevent overdoses and 
save lives. Since then, we passed both the Comprehensive Addiction and 
Recovery Act and the 21st Century Cures Act to provide much needed 
funding and critical policy changes to fight this epidemic.
  The advocacy of these families truly is so important to leading to 
change in Washington, and I am proud to preserve their stories.


                  JONATHAN SPARKS--LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY

       Jonathan was a sweet young man who started off on a rocky 
     note when he was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma cancer at the 
     age of four. He battled this for a year and a half, which 
     involved invasive treatments such as a stem cell transplant. 
     His prognosis was very grim, but thanks be to God he made it 
     and entered Kindergarten right before his 6th birthday.
       It took a long time for Jonathan's stamina to improve after 
     undergoing such intensive treatment and as a result, he was 
     bullied as a child. He just couldn't keep up with the other 
     kids during activities. This made him compassionate towards 
     others who were less fortunate than he was, and he would take 
     up for these people or help them in any way he could. 
     Jonathan was always a people person. He would and could 
     strike up a conversation with anyone; he felt just as 
     comfortable talking to a politician as he did a homeless man.
       During his teenage years Jonathan felt left out and like he 
     didn't fit in with his peers. He struggled with academics due 
     to what he had been exposed to during the cancer treatments. 
     He was forced out of private school because of this learning 
     disability. He went to public school his junior year, and in 
     trying to fit in he fell in with a crowd he should have 
     stayed away from. As soon as he turned 18, he dropped out of 
     school during his senior year.
       Jonathan was passionate about basketball and cooking. He 
     never excelled at basketball because, again, he just couldn't 
     keep up. He suffered from severe back pain due to radiation. 
     But he knew stats about basketball that you wouldn't believe. 
     He loved a lot of NBA teams, but his favorite was Miami Heat. 
     Jonathan could cook anything; he was an avid food network 
     watcher and could have given some of those people a run for 
     their money. He watched ``Diners, Drive-ins and Dives,'' and 
     loved to eat at the places where Guy, the host, did his 
     shows. His dream was to become a chef.
       Sometime between the ages of 18 and 20, Jonathan was 
     introduced to Xanax. His mother assumes it was in order to 
     ease his back pain. From there he got into heroin. She does 
     not know when he started using because he was good at keeping 
     it a secret from our family. He came home in April of 2015 
     and stayed home all summer. He never went anywhere; he just 
     hung out at home watching cooking shows and basketball games.
       In August he started working at Pizza Hut. Around the 
     middle of the month he was called by some friends who didn't 
     have a car and needed a ride to the hospital--they were about 
     to have a baby. Two weeks later he spent the Saturday of 
     Labor Day weekend with these two women and their newborn. 
     They went to the local skate park that evening to buy heroin. 
     According to his friends, Jonathan went into the restroom to 
     use and when he emerged he was unable to walk. The women 
     helped him into his own car and then drove him around for 2 
     or 3 hours thinking that he would sleep it off. Finally, they 
     drove him to the ER and dumped him in front of the door. By 
     this time, Jonathan's body tissue was dying and his organs 
     were shutting down. Jonathan was in a coma for 20 days and 
     died 6 days after his 21st birthday, on September 26, 2015.


       NICHOLAS ``NICKY'' DANIEL TOTH V--PAGOSA SPRINGS, COLORADO

       Nicholas Daniel Toth V was born on December 27, 1995 in 
     Pagosa Springs, Colorado. He was a miracle as far as his 
     parents were concerned--they literally smothered the poor 
     kid. Nicky was his parents shining star. Never in their life 
     did they ever think they would only have 19 years with him.
       Nicky was the oldest of his two brothers. The Toth family 
     was blessed with two more sons, Jackson and Harrison. Life 
     was perfect. They were all raised in a beautiful mountain 
     town. We volunteered tirelessly in our community. As parents, 
     the Toths didn't just go to every sporting event their boys 
     had, they coached them. You name it and they did it for their 
     boys. They ate organic foods and

[[Page 16745]]

     planted their own gardens. Life was effortless and 
     delightful.
       All of this changed one awful night when Nicky was in 6th 
     grade and sexually violated by one of his peers. After that 
     he was never the same. That same boy went on to bully Nicky 
     and the school district did nothing. The Toth family received 
     no community or school support. They felt abandoned but Nicky 
     felt it the most. Following that year, the Toths decided as a 
     family to move back east to New Jersey in order to be closer 
     to friends and family where they felt they could get the most 
     support, and more importantly, save their Nicholas.
       Unfortunately, that one awful night shaped Nicky's teenage 
     path. He didn't talk about it; he wouldn't and couldn't. 
     Instead, Nicky started self-medicating--beginning with 
     alcohol and marijuana. From there he moved to Xanax that he 
     got from other parents' medicine cabinets. Then, Nicky 
     discovered the love of his life, heroin. The Toth family was 
     in turmoil. Nicky was in and out of treatment centers and 
     jail. He missed multiple holidays. He wanted nothing more 
     than to be happy and healthy.
       During his active addiction, Nicky was in jail from January 
     2014 to June 2014 and again from July 2014 to February 2015. 
     He finally came home March 20, 2015. The entire Toth family 
     was so hopeful but also scared. Nicky was at least safe while 
     in jail. He participated in outpatient programs and got a 
     job. His family had no idea he started using again.
       In April 2015, Nicky overdosed in his family's home and 
     lived to see another day. Following that night, Nicky went to 
     inpatient treatment in South New Jersey. His family were so 
     hopeful because Nicky completed his 30 day program and 
     organized himself into a sober living home. The person in 
     charge said he had never had such a tenacious applicant. 
     Nicky was ready to start his life. He lived in the house for 
     two weeks.
       On Friday, June 12, 2015, Nicky's mother went to see him 
     after work and took him to dinner. She kissed his face, 
     hugged his big shoulders and laughed together for the last 
     time. On the morning of June 14th, the local police came to 
     the Toth family's home to inform them that they lost their 
     son. He was found in Newark. He was all alone.


                 Aidan Vanderheof--Minot, North Dakota

       Aidan Vanderheof grew up surrounded by love and attention. 
     His life had bumps along the way, most of which were created 
     by his family. Aidan's parents divorced when he was about two 
     years old. He lived with mother but had a lot of visitation 
     time with his dad. When he was about twelve, Aidan went to 
     live with his dad in Bismarck and started playing JV 
     football. He had loads of friends and got along easily with 
     everyone. Aidan went back to live with his mother when he was 
     sixteen.
       Like any teenager, Aidan pushed the boundaries. He bought a 
     pick-up truck the second he got his driver's license and 
     would haul around as many of his friends as could fit in it. 
     Around that time many family arguments started to emerge and 
     Aidan began having trouble in school. Many nights he wouldn't 
     come home, but he always had an excuse--he fell asleep on a 
     friend's couch, for example. Over time, his absences 
     increased at home and at school. Aidan's mother had to report 
     him as a runaway to the police too many times to count. 
     Meanwhile, some of his friends, parents would hide him and 
     cover for him.
       Aidan came under the supervision of the juvenile criminal 
     justice system when he was caught using a stolen credit card. 
     For a period of time he wore an ankle monitor and seemed able 
     to comply with the rules until he had the opportunity to 
     break them. During this time, Aidan was referred to the Child 
     and Adolescent Partial Hospitalization (CAPH) program through 
     our local hospital. The program was set up during school 
     hours and included group counseling, individual therapy, and 
     schoolwork. His mother also worked with Aidan in family 
     therapy and in-home counseling. He adhered to the schedule 
     and completed the program.
       Aidan was a fantastic liar. Principals, counselors, and 
     many others got caught in his web. While under court 
     supervision, he took random drug tests and would frequently 
     test positive for benzodiazepines, amphetamines, and 
     marijuana. At the time, his mother believed that his 
     substance use wasn't all that serious because they were all 
     prescriptions and she knew a lot of kids experimented with 
     them.
       Aidan was caught in the act of yet another crime. Prior to 
     that, he had done things his mother could not prove: stolen 
     all of her valuable jewelry, taken a bottle of amphetamines 
     prescribed to her by her doctor, broken the window out of her 
     vehicle the night before Mother's Day to steal change and 
     cigarettes, stolen his grandparent's car when they were on 
     vacation and busted a door to get alcohol.
       When Aidan was finally placed in juvenile detention, his 
     mother was scared to death for him and visited him once a 
     week. Later, Aidan was placed in a Youth Correction Center in 
     Mandan, North Dakota. His mother went to see him a number of 
     times. Eventually, Aidan was placed at Prairie Learning 
     Center in Raleigh, North Dakota where he spent about six 
     months. All reports from his primary counselor were positive. 
     Like everywhere else Aidan had been, he got along with 
     everybody. Soon after, Aidan graduated from the program.
       In the middle of June 2015, Aidan was caught on a 
     surveillance camera using a stolen credit card in Bismarck. 
     His dad saw it on the Police Department's Facebook page and 
     contacted Aidan and his mother. Aidan and his father made an 
     appointment to visit with a detective about the situation but 
     right before the appointment, Aidan disappeared.
       On July 4, 2015, Aidan's mother was awakened by a pounding 
     on the door. A police officer stood by the door and informed 
     the family that Aidan was found dead. He was only 19. 
     Initially the police thought that Aidan had died of an 
     accidental OxyContin overdose. There was a shoelace around 
     his arm and a spoon near his body. He was found in the 
     basement of a home. The people who were with him admitted 
     they had been using and would test positive for OxyContin.
       In the end, it was determined that Aidan died of a heroin 
     overdose with methamphetamine in his system. The state has 
     struggled to prosecute those with him when he died. His death 
     was not quick, and no one called
     9-1-1 until after he was dead.


               T.J. Wadsworth--Collegeville, Pennsylvania

       T.J. Wadsworth grew up to be curious, friendly, smart, had 
     many friends, and was a good student. In middle school, T.J. 
     was one of the kids that came home after the drug 
     presentation and talked about how bad drugs are, and that he 
     would never do them. Less than one year later, in 8th or 9th 
     grade, T.J. started smoking marijuana and it is believed he 
     started drinking alcohol at the age of 16 or 17, at parties 
     with his high school friends. Until his senior year, T.J. was 
     doing what some teenagers do; go to school every day, 
     complete schoolwork, work a part-time job, and then smoke/
     drink with friends on the weekends.
       During his senior year of high school T.J. was high and/or 
     drunk and offered a pill. It was that one pill, that one 
     decision that sealed T.J.'s fate. Things for T.J. quickly 
     escalated and later spiraled out of control when he went off 
     to college. When T.J. would come home for vacation he was out 
     every night.
       T.J.'s grades for the first two years of college had been 
     acceptable. He later joined a fraternity and he was having 
     more fun than he should, and not studying the way he should 
     have been. His mother later found out that T.J. stopped 
     attending his classes the fall semester of his junior year 
     and his friends were concerned.
       When he came home for Christmas break his junior year, 
     T.J.'s mother was so worried about him that she set up an 
     intervention and offered to take him to a treatment facility. 
     She did not know at that time how serious T.J.'s addiction 
     was. T.J. stayed out every night and always appeared to be 
     drunk or high. The many times she tried to talk to him about 
     drugs he always denied that he had a problem, saying he was 
     home from college and just having fun with his friends.
       Instead of returning to school the spring semester of his 
     junior year, T.J. was admitted to an inpatient treatment 
     facility for 30 days. His mother came to find out that what 
     started in his senior year of high school, with trying that 
     pill, turned into a heroin addiction two years later.
       After completing treatment, T.J. stayed clean for about six 
     weeks and turned to drugs after several stressful events. His 
     mother will never forget walking into the basement and 
     finding him on the couch in the dark crying. T.J. hated what 
     drugs had done to his life. After two months of taking drug 
     tests on a regular basis, which he would periodically failed, 
     T.J. went back into treatment. This time T.J. only stayed for 
     two weeks.
       When talking with T.J.'s drug counselor about why he 
     released earlier than expected, she said that T.J. seemed to 
     know what he had to do and had told her that he did not want 
     to end up dead or in jail. Four days after he was released 
     from the second treatment facility, his mother came home from 
     work early after not being able to get in touch with T.J. She 
     went to his bedroom, but the door was locked. She banged and 
     screamed his name. Finally she called 9-1-1, so they could 
     break into his room. The police told her a few minutes after 
     breaking into his room that T.J. died from a heroin overdose. 
     That was May 28, 2014.


                   Mark Walsh--Boston, Massachusetts

       Mark loved spending time with his family and cared for his 
     siblings like they were his own. Whenever he found the time, 
     he worked on his cars and motorcycles. He went above and 
     beyond for anyone who needed help, whether that meant getting 
     them a meal or helping them find a place to stay for the 
     night. One might say he was generous to a fault.
       At any given time in his life, Mark was fighting for or 
     against something. At an early age, he was in a house fire 
     and was later deemed a hero for running back into the burning 
     building to alert others to the exit. The incident left Mark 
     so badly burned that he had to stay in Shriner's Hospital for 
     several months. The physical scars from this event influenced 
     how people treated him.

[[Page 16746]]

     Growing up, Mark was teased about his appearance by kids who 
     didn't know better. Even though these interactions 
     emotionally hurt him, Mark would never let you know it. Mark 
     was private about his pain throughout his life.
       Mark was the second oldest in a family of five. Raised in a 
     single parent home, he tried taking on the role of a father 
     figure when he hit his teen years. Mark wanted to give his 
     siblings everything they didn't have and make their lives 
     better. Academics weren't interesting to him, so Mark dropped 
     out of school and began selling marijuana, which got him into 
     trouble with the law. Mark's license was suspended but he 
     never paid the fines or stopped driving. He was sent to jail 
     several times for driving without a license.
       Once Mark had a criminal record, finding a job was 
     difficult. Fortunately, his extended family had a few 
     businesses where he was able to get work but Mark couldn't 
     hold down a job for any extended period of time. Between 
     stints in and out of jail, he dabbled in using prescription 
     medication. In 2005 at the age of 22 and in-between relapses, 
     Mark had a beautiful son named Travis. Unfortunately, Mark 
     wasn't ready to be a father and his family watched as he 
     struggled with substance abuse.
       In 2007, Mark met and married his wife, Sarah. She had a 
     son named Patrick who was the same age as Travis. Mark and 
     Sarah were both in recovery and worked beautifully together. 
     Their early years were some of his best. Mark went to work 
     every day, supported his family, and made time to indulge in 
     his passion for fixing cars and motorcycles. In 2008, Mark 
     and Sarah gave birth to a gorgeous daughter, Emma Grace.
       Some blissful years later, a hand injury put Mark out of 
     work. He underwent surgery, which came with a prescription 
     for pain medication. The downward spiral began again. Mark 
     checked into treatment various times and kept getting into 
     trouble with the law. His drinking got out of control, along 
     with his substance use. Mark and Sarah moved to Cape Cod 
     where her parents were living for some extra support, but 
     that only lasted for so long. They weren't able to overcome 
     their addictions there together. Mark and Sarah separated and 
     the years that followed were tumultuous ones filled with 
     stints in more treatment and attempts at recovery.
       In January 2016, Mark went to a program and loved the month 
     he spent there, doing the hard work of dealing with all of 
     the emotional baggage that comes with the disease of 
     addiction. Mark was grateful to have a support system of 
     friends and doctors who were there to walk him through the 
     difficult process of recovery. However, within days of coming 
     back home, he felt himself slipping and made a call to Malibu 
     to arrange a return. The day before his flight, Mark 
     overdosed at home alone.
       We need reform in our country so that those struggling with 
     addiction can have their needs met. If insurance had covered 
     treatment for Mark closer to home, perhaps he would not have 
     had to travel all the way to California in order to receive 
     the services he so desperately needed. Maybe Mark would still 
     be with us today.


                Corey Watson--Greenfield, Massachusetts

       Growing up, Corey had dyslexia and other learning 
     challenges. He was shy, quiet, and very sensitive. He loved 
     animals and was always sympathetic to others. All of that 
     changed on his 13th birthday on September 13, when he got hit 
     by a car while riding his bike. He landed on his head and was 
     taken to the ER but they didn't find anything wrong with him.
       Over the next two weeks, however, he changed drastically. 
     His personality went from painfully shy to aggressive and he 
     became a risk taker--it was frightening. His mother took him 
     to many neurologists but nobody could help. It seemed like 
     there was no way to fix his injured brain. Corey then became 
     depressed and got into drugs. He went in and out of the 
     Brattleboro retreat in Vermont, including a period during 
     which he went to school there until he started committing 
     crimes and got caught up in the legal system, which never 
     seems to help. This cycle was hard to watch because there was 
     nothing his mother could do to help him, even though she 
     tried everything: different therapists, medications, 
     specialists, etc. In September, he started using heroin and 
     fell in love with a girl. Some time after that, they decided 
     to get clean together and admitted themselves into rehab in 
     Boston. His mother picked Corey up on Christmas Eve so he 
     could come and spend the holidays in Massachusetts with his 
     family. His mother had never seen him so happy.
       One day, Corey called his mother around 5 o'clock and asked 
     her to wire him some money for laundry and snacks. He had 
     only been in the step-down unit for a few days after spending 
     three weeks in a secure treatment facility. He had more 
     freedom in the sober house--he was getting himself to and 
     from meetings and appointments. He took the money his mother 
     sent him and used it to buy drugs. Corey's roommate found him 
     unresponsive. They did manage to revive him a couple of hours 
     later but he never regained consciousness. Corey was brain-
     dead for three days before he was removed from life-support 
     on February 1, 2014. Corey died of an unintentional overdose.


           William ``Will'' Head Williams--New York, New York

       William Head Williams died of an accidental overdose 
     shortly before his 24th birthday. Two years before his death, 
     his parents first became aware that their son was using 
     heroin. At the time William was already seeing a 
     psychotherapist and over the next two years his family added 
     various additional support systems to help William's 
     struggle. These included an addiction psychiatrist, 
     outpatient treatment, treatment with Suboxone, inpatient 
     detox, inpatient treatment, outpatient treatment, outpatient 
     detox, treatment with Vivitrol, more outpatient treatment, 
     another inpatient treatment, more outpatient treatment, well 
     over a dozen trips to and from the emergency rooms of at 
     least four different hospitals, an attempt to work with 
     another addiction psychiatrist, Alcoholics Anonymous, and 
     Narcotics Anonymous. A home life fraught with tension, 
     despair, sometimes hopeful during intermittent periods of 
     sobriety, and always filled with the apprehension of 
     misfortune. That apprehension became fact when William 
     accidentally overdosed. Six weeks of comatose and/or heavily 
     medicated hospitalization followed before the ultimate 
     realization that William was consigned to a persistent 
     vegetative state.
       As a family, William's parents struggled from the beginning 
     to find both their own support system and ways to engage and 
     encourage William in recovery. In the beginning, they kept 
     William's and their battle to themselves, in the interest of 
     protecting his privacy and their own. William still had 
     career goals and ambitions that could be thwarted with heroin 
     use on his ``resume.'' While it's harder for them to admit, 
     William's parents also kept quiet out of some sense of 
     embarrassment or shame.
       Over the course of time, with the help of addiction 
     counselors, and sharing their circumstance at Al-Anon in 
     particular, William's parents came to understand that they 
     were not alone. There were, in fact, many families like them, 
     negotiating their response to addiction: discovering what 
     they were powerless over, battling for the courage to 
     confront what they could control, and, at least in their 
     case, fighting desperately to distinguish between the two. 
     There was and is relief in knowing that others suffer the 
     same struggle, zigzagging along a tortuous path, enduring 
     dead ends in hope of a solution, bravely putting in the work 
     to realize a more promising and serene future. Yet, their 
     story and others remained anonymous, pit stops at an 
     emotional leper colony, quite separate from a world racing 
     on.
       Out of choice and necessity, when William's parents chose 
     to remove him from life support, they offered William's story 
     to virtually everyone they knew in the days just prior to his 
     death and in the interim before his memorial service. In 
     return, more and more people surrendered their personal 
     horrors to the family. From even the most reserved and 
     private came narratives of heroin overdoses, cocaine abuse, 
     weeks and months in rehab, alcohol relapse, addiction to 
     pills. Addiction is, as the Williams family has learned, a 
     family disease. The number of stories they have heard of 
     wives, daughters, fathers, sons, nieces, nephews, brothers 
     and sisters--not in counseling or therapy scenarios, but from 
     people who recognize their pain and somehow want to comfort 
     them, or to comfort themselves through them, is staggering.


                   Dalton Womack--Lexington, Kentucky

       Dalton was born September 20, 1991. Anyone who was lucky 
     enough to meet Dalton will never forget him. He had a smile 
     that was absolutely contagious--you couldn't help but feel 
     good when he was around and in good spirits. Dalton's love 
     for children was always present. He could relate to children 
     like no one else; he cared about how they felt and also he 
     cared for them in a way that they knew Dalton was a friend.
       The respect Dalton gave to the elderly was admirable. He 
     would go out of his way to open a door, walk someone to their 
     car, or carry their groceries. It was his nature to help 
     others. Dalton did whatever was needed without even blinking 
     an eye.
       Dalton was a friend to anyone he would meet--in other 
     words, he never met a stranger. Music was in his soul and he 
     loved it more than anything (other than being with his 
     friends and family). Dalton was a caring person and gave 
     everything he could; on many occasions right down to his last 
     dollar--he would go without it just to make sure someone else 
     had what they needed. He lived his life unselfish and had a 
     huge heart.
       Before his family knew it, Dalton was struggling with 
     addiction. His addiction started off small and became more 
     powerful; bigger than they could ever imagine. His family had 
     countless conversations but nothing seemed to help; 
     therefore, they turned to treatment.
       Dalton's family's worst fear came on July 8, 2016; the 
     dreaded phone call that every parent hates buts knows at some 
     point might come. Dalton was gone. Not just out of town, not 
     just going to the store and be back later but gone. He died 
     at the hands of a steering wheel, with addiction gripping 
     him. He was by himself, all alone.
       His family received the news from the emergency room doctor 
     and chaplain--the

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     conversation still plays over and over in their head. The 
     pain today still hurts as if it were yesterday and probably 
     will forever. But one thing they know to be true, if Dalton 
     and the many others could have the opportunity to look ahead 
     and see how tragic life could end with addiction, maybe just 
     maybe things would be different. Hell isn't six feet under; 
     Hell is loving and missing a son who had addiction.

                          ____________________