Mike Whiteman said addiction kills. He would know. It killed his son.
On Oct. 1, Brett Whiteman, 32, was found dead in a room at a Super 8 Motel. An autopsy showed he had overdosed on heroin laced with painkillers. Xanax and vodka were also in his system.
Mike Whiteman found out the next day from his daughter, who ran into the house screaming, “He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead.”
Whiteman told the story of his son’s death Tuesday during the second Addiction Impact Panel hosted by the Howard County Probation and Community Correction departments.
Around 150 people packed into Grace Fellowship Church for the panel. About 125 of those were people who are currently struggling with or recovering from addiction, said Chuck McCoskey, assistant chief of probation.
The panel was held to show those struggling with addiction how drugs and alcohol destroy lives. But it was also meant to show that there’s a way out.
During the event, five recovering addicts shared their stories about how drugs ravaged their lives and caused them to do things they never would have done sober.
“Addiction took my soul from me,” Rebecca Gross told the crowd. “I stole. I lied. I stole from my mom. I did bad stuff.”
She said what saved her was getting into Howard County’s drug court, which gave her the accountability she needed to get clean.
Howard County Chief Probation Officer Dustin DeLong said stories like that demonstrate how addiction manipulates and distorts people, but shows there’s a path to getting clean and staying sober.
That was the message from the first panel, which was held in December. He said it was such a success that they decided to hold another one on Tuesday. Now, the Addiction Impact Panel will be held every other month as a kind of group therapy for struggling addicts.
McCoskey told the crowd Tuesday that he hoped anyone addicted to drugs or alcohol would take the stories shared by the panel to heart and decide to make a change.
“There’s some of you out there tonight who haven’t decided yet if you want to get on the path to recovery,” he said. “I’m hoping you walk out of here tonight and make the decision to make better choices after your experience here.”
For Whiteman, that’s something he wishes his son would have done before it was too late.
He begged the addicts at Tuesday’s meeting to think about how their addiction affects their families, because he knows what it did to his.
“All I know is I miss my son horribly,” Whiteman said. “I hope to God no one else has to go through what I did. You wake up in the morning, you think about it. You go to bed, you think about it.
“You all know what addiction does to you, but think about what it does to your family,” he said.