It is so painful for every mother to see her child suffering. But it is so much more painful to see your child destroying his life because of drugs. This is not a rare scenario as more moms today are speaking and telling truth about their children’s drug addiction problem and how it has affected them and their family as a whole. For some, they were able to get through it together. But for the unfortunate ones, they just totally lost their loved one. In Norwalk, a mom has decided to speak about her son’s deadly drug addiction.
At 4 a.m. on Sept. 10, 1996, Ginger Katz’s dog climbed four flights of stairs and jumped onto her bed. Sunny woke her up from the best night of sleep she’d had in five months. The night before, Katz’ son said, “Mom, I want to see a doctor in the morning. I need to take care of my problem.” Ian Eaccarino, 20, struggled with drug addiction for about seven years, and Katz said his desire to seek treatment is what helped her sleep that night. When Sunny woke her up, Katz thought nothing of it — and she went back to bed until her morning run at 6 a.m.
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Right before she was about to leave, she heard Ian’s TV was louder than normal. She went into his room to check on him and realized why Sunny woke her.
After they talked the night before, Ian went back to his room and did heroin and Valium, the name brand for the prescription drug diazepam.
“At the wake, we were telling people we were waiting for the toxicology report, but we knew,” Katz said.
People didn’t ask, but Katz is convinced others thought he died by suicide.
“I knew the night before the funeral I’d be addressing it and speaking out,” she said. “He was a good kid and I wasn’t ashamed of him — and I refused to bury him with a lie.”
That’s how she ends her Courage to Speak presentations to students in Connecticut and around the country.
