Michelle D'Orlando was the mother who believed her kids could never get involved with drugs.
“I was the parent who said not my kid, not my kid,” D’Orlando said. “Until it was so in my face, then I had to accept that it was my kid.”
Part of that was because her father, a Vietnam veteran, was a drug addict. It was something the family was open about.
"It was his whole life's struggle," the Denton woman said. "This was dinner table conversation."
Now, she wonders if addiction is genetic. Her son, 26, her oldest child, is addicted to heroin.
Over the past eight years, he has relapsed 11 times. He’s currently in a halfway house on the Eastern Shore.
"He went from zero to heroin," D'Orlando said.
Community in Crisis: Chasing the High, an in-depth look at the heroin problem in Maryland, airs Thursday at 7 p.m. on ABC2 News.
The addiction actually began with Percocet. Her son fell and hurt his arm, and because he was the star pitcher for his high school's baseball team, he wanted to get back to the sport as soon as possible.
Looking back, there were signs of addiction early on—things lying around the house like straws cut into thirds, ink pens pulled apart, all potential indicators of drug use. Some personal items went missing around the D'Orlando house.
Then, one day, D'Orlando found a needle in her son's lunchbox.
"The next day, I had him in rehab," she said.
Her friend from Kent Island United Methodist Church, Cathy Timms, the leader of Celebrate Recovery support group, preaches tough love. D’Orlando says she’s tried that.
“I am not even joking. He has lived in the park,” D’Orlando said. “I have enabled. I have disabled.”
The addict, she has learned, controls the entire family’s actions.
“If you let it,” Timms interjected.
But you love your child so much, D’Orlando said, that you’ll do anything to fix the problem.
She hopes for more access to a drug designed to help addicts—one without opiates. D’Orlando is critical of drugs such as methadone and suboxone, because they contain opiates.
Vivitrol—a shot administered to addicts every 30 days—contains a blocker that can’t get you high. The problem is, it’s $1,500 per shot.
D’Orlando wants to see this drug become more widely available—and at a price that’s affordable.
She says she still has faith in her son, even if he doesn’t always have it in himself.
“I’m praying that something will click with him like it did with Anna,” she says of her friend Anna Fox, a recovering addict whom she met through Celebrate Recovery. "Being able to go in there and hear Anna talk about how hard she worked and how recovery is possible, gives me hope again."
Download the ABC2 News app for the iPhone, Kindleand Android.
