My son Matthew was born on October 3, 1987 and he died of methadone toxcity on December 7th 2004. He lived in Statesville, North Carolina and was 17 years old. I will tell his story a million times in hopes that it may save someone else. When your children are born you take care of them. You clothe, feed, cuddle and keep them safe. But one day they grow up and they stop needing the things from you that they did when they were small. They become these separate little beings. You hope you have taught them right from wrong and you just stand back and hold your breath hoping they will make the right choices. Sometimes though, they choose the wrong things. My son wanted to try different pills so he told one of his friends. He just wanted to try them. He started out smoking pot when he was around 14 years old. Then sometime down the road he started experimenting with prescription pills. I had no idea he was taking pills. Sometimes your teenagers become so distant from you. No matter how hard you try to talk to them, they for the most part shut you out. They basically only tell you what they know you want to hear. On the evening of December 3rd my son came home. He seemed happy. He helped his sister and I carry the groceries in the house. He and his sister played with Whiskers, one of our cats (who was his favorite) by dressing him up in a yellow hawaiian hat. I can still hear them laughing over the way he looked. He went to his room and watched tv and eventually I thought had gone to bed. The next day, December 4th, I went outside to feed Maggie our golden retriever around 7:00 am and I noticed my son had his window open. He was always opening the window when the heat was on. I yelled at him from outside to close the window. He got up and clumsily reached for the blinds instead. I thought he was clumsy because he was half asleep. He finally put the window down. I could also see his cell phone draped across him when he got up. (never did I think that he was clumsy because of drugs) I looked at him around 9:30 and he looked like he was asleep. I was in the process of moving so I was working between the houses getting things ready. I had left the house and came back around 2:00 and again I peered in at my sleeping son. He appeared to be in a deep sleep and dreaming. He was also snoring. I stood in his doorway for about a minute to a minute and a half then shut the door and went back to working at my new house. The image of him laying there will be forever etched in my memory.I called home around 5:30 and he didn't answer. By that time I figured he had gotten up, showered and gone out riding on his scooter as he usually did. When I came home, I noticed my kitchen was just the way I had left it. Not a dish or a cup or anything was out of place. I went in Matt's room and he was still on his back just as he was at 2:00. I tried to wake him but I couldn't. He was still breathing but his coloring was grey. I called 911 and when EMS got to my house he stopped breathing and they did CPR. They worked on him the whole way to the hospital. They got a pulse. At that point, I thought he would be ok. We stayed in the emergency room at our local hospital for about 3 hours while they used a hand venilator on him. He was unresponsive to anything they did. They told us they could not do anything else for him and would have to transfer him to another hospital in a town about 40 minutes away. We got to that hospital that night and spent the night in the waiting room. We still did not know at this point the magnitude of what was to come. The next day, December 5th he laid in ICU with tubes coming out of him and a tube down his throat. A venilator was breathing for him. His heart was only working at 20 %. My handsome 17 year old boy looked so small and fragile. He stayed that way all of that day. The next day December 6th, they did an EEG on his brain which showed he had no brain activity. He had so much swelling throughout his whole brain and they told us that with the swelling throughout, his brain stem would herniate. They took us in a room and told us our choices. We could either leave him on life support with no hope or we could remove him and let him go. We decided to let him go. The next day, December 7th, they unhooked the venilator and took all the horrible tubes out of him including the one down his throat. He looked so small to me. I laid in the bed beside him and cried. I talked to him and told him how much we all loved him. I told him it was ok if he needed to go and not to worry about us. That was the hardest thing I've ever said because its not what I really wanted to say. I wanted to beg him to please not leave us, but I knew that he was tired and couldn't stay with us. He was so hot with fever. I remembered when he was little and I could put a cool cloth on him and make him feel better. This time I couldn't make him better. It took two hours for him to go after they unhooked him from everything. It seemed like an eternity. If I could have died instead of him, I would have. It was the most agonizing thing I have ever had to go through and I do not think that I will ever be the same because of it. Watching your child take their last breath is a torture that noone should ever have to go through. There has not been one day that has gone by that I have not cried. My heart is so broken for him and for me. My son never thought he would not be up the next day. He was looking forward to our move to a new home and lots of other things in his life. Methadone killed my son as it is killing countless others. If I had one wish it would be that noone else will ever have to lose a child and that noone of any age would ever die from methadone.

Matt's life mattered and I will spend the rest of my life making sure that he is not forgotten.

Matt's mom,

Angela