"We have a 28-year-old daughter and a son who is forever going to be 24," Debbie Berry said.
Berry, of Ashland, was among several speakers at the FED UP! rally Friday in Fulton, which addressed the growing opioid crisis. Falling rain around the pavilion couldn't cover up sniffles from the audience as she told the story of how she lost her son to opioid addiction.
Berry and her husband did everything right, as far as she can tell. She was the soccer mom, forever ferrying her kids to activities. Her door was open to them and their friends. After high school, Berry's son headed to college. He struggled with grades due to a learning disorder and the family ultimately decided it would be best for him to head into the workforce.
Berry's son came home and got a job at Dollar General Warehouse. By the time he was 21, he'd saved enough money to put a down-payment on a nice starter house.
"He had the world in his hands," Berry said.
The troubles started when her son started hanging out with the wrong crowd and got hooked on prescription opioids. Before long, he'd discovered that heroin was cheaper. When it wasn't cheap enough, he began selling drugs as well.
"We knew things weren't right, but we didn't know how bad it was," Berry said.
That was until their son came to them in 2016 and told them everything. Following a failed stint in rehab, Berry's son headed to a residential facility in California - St. Louis, Kansas City and Chicago were off-limits because he had drug ties with each city.
"I thought I couldn't live without speaking to him for 30 days," Berry said, voice catching.
He made it through the program and stayed clean for about a year before relapsing. A 90-day stint at the residential facility, followed by time in a clean living facility, seemed like it could form the foundation for a new life. But keeping him in California was proving prohibitively expensive, and he was struggling to find a job. Berry found her son a bed at a different clean living facility in Springfield, which she said turned out to have bedbugs.
Berry's son came home in January 2018 and things were looking up.
On Feb. 26, he was diagnosed with strep throat.
At 3 a.m. that night, Berry felt the impulse to check on him and make sure he'd closed his window. He was sleeping peacefully.
"I covered him up like I did when he was a baby," Berry said.
He was still sleeping when she headed out for work the next morning. At 11 a.m., she called and he didn't pick up the phone. A family friend swung by and knocked on the door, but got no answer. Berry hurried home.
"I found my 24-year-old son in a chair in his bedroom, the only bedroom he'd ever had, and he was gone," she said.
He'd died of an overdose on heroin laced with fentanyl.
It's everywhere
There's a stigma around addictions of all types, including opioid addiction, rally organizer Christa Daro said.
People have a stereotyped image of the typical addict, or consider addiction some kind of moral failing rather than a disease.
But, as she and other speakers emphasized, opioid addiction can strike anyone.
"Jared was a good family provider and a good man," she said. "His (addiction) started after being prescribed opioids for a surgery. Seven days and you're hooked."
Lt. Bill Ladwig of the Fulton Police Department said the crisis has afflicted Fulton.
"It's in every little town; it's in every big city," he said. "Families are torn apart. It (can be) in any household. It doesn't matter if you're rich, poor or middle-class I've seen enough dead bodies in the town."
It's even in his own, he said, though he didn't mention details.
"I've been a victim of the theft and lying and idiocy and the craziness that goes along with someone that's addicted," he said. "I deal with it every day."
There typically aren't enough resources when people with addictions are ready to seek help. Daro encountered that when her ex-husband, now deceased, was was struggling with opioid addiction.
"It was a nightmare, trying to find him help," she said. "I had to Google, I had to do research on my own. There's nothing right here in Fulton for people."
Ladwig agreed.
"There's not enough access for addicts that don't have insurance," he said.
In his opinion, he said, the country should be pouring money into improving mental health care. He added the FPD is trying to do its part on that front.
"Every single officer on the force is going through crisis intervention training," he said.
When an officer is called to a crisis situation, which could include anything from an overdose to a person threatening suicide, they write up a report and pass it along to Arthur Center Community Health in Fulton, a mental health provider that offers crisis intervention and various types of therapy, he said.
"People who've been given Narcan sometimes come up swinging because you've taken away their high," he said. "I always try to get them to go with the medical unit. I do everything in my power to not arrest those people, because it's a disease."
Daro is working on assembling a list of resources in the area. Representatives from New Vision, a withdrawal management service in Jefferson City, and The Crossroads Program, an addiction recovery program for teens in Columbia, were on hand at the event.
Giving help
Daro said one of the best things the community can do to help those with opioid addictions and their families is to end the stigma.
"We need to educate people, and we need to not be the people who judge," Berry said.
Part of the way to do that, according to April Detienne, is sharing stories.
A recovering opioid addict herself, the Fulton resident regularly does exactly that.
"I don't know if I have it in me to bury another friend," she said. "But I want others to know that there is hope for their loved ones. I'm proof of that."
During a recent trip to Alabama, she and her fiancé stayed in the same hotel for five days, and she struck up a friendship with a woman who took smoke breaks at the same time she did.
"On the fourth day, she seemed sad," Detienne sad. "She said her daughter was dying of heroin. That was my opening."
Detienne told her about the resources available and encouraged her to help her daughter get help. Last Detienne heard, the daughter was in recovery.
She encouraged people whose family members and friends have struggled or lost their lives to addiction to share those stories too.
"It's all you think about anyway," she said. "You might as well use that pain to help someone heal."