Happy Valley Page #7

'cause I think he was still

having a seizure,

and I remember thinking

as I was prying his mouth open

that he was gonna

bite my finger off,

but you don't care, you know.

And I got his mouth open

and started doing CPR on him.

It was probably

the hardest thing

I've ever had to do

in my life...

to sit there and look at my son,

who had a gazillion tubes

going into him.

You know, at that point,

he wasn't a person.

He was just somebody

that they were trying to save.

And I remember thinking

that it's almost okay,

that he'll be better off,

that he's been through so much

hell in the last two years

that maybe this is

a better thing for him.

The physician told us

at that point that he would die,

that we would be taking him

off the ventilator

later on that afternoon,

so to get our family together

and to get everybody there

to say their last...

you know, say their goodbyes

to Blake.

And it was horrible.

I mean, I remember standing

against the wall,

sliding down it, sobbing,

and my daughter was sobbing

and my other daughter was

and my husband,

and grandmas and grandpas

and friends.

I mean, all the friends

from Bonneville High.

They had to call security

to clear the halls

because there were so many kids

that were standing there crying.

I woke up in the hospital

about five days later,

four or five days later,

and I was in the hospital

altogether for about nine days.

They told my parents

that I would...

prepare to take me

off life support,

and I just decided that's...

that's not my life.

You only get one life,

and that's not the life

I wanted to live.

You know,

everything's good again.

It's hard.

Like Blake said, he takes it

a day at a time, and so do we.

You know, every morning I get

up, I go in and look at him,

make sure he's still breathing.

And I probably will do that

until he, you know,

moves out, anyway.

But it's... You know, it

consumes your life even after.

Even now that he's clean,

it still consumes my life.

The drug problem has gone

through the Terrace in Ogden

like a disease,

wiping friends out,

my buddies out one by one.

I mean, it's...

it's overwhelming.

My perspective on it was,

I mean, it's only a pill.

I mean, it's only one pill,

you know, once a day, if that.

The teenagers would get

their drugs by...

I mean, there was people

on the streets...

old ladies that would get

prescribed it.

There was people

that had back pains.

I mean, the one day of the month

where they got

their prescription filled,

there'd be four or five people

at her front door.

My whole sophomore year,

I don't think I experimented

with anything more

than Lortab or Percocet,

and my junior year

is when I started to bump it up

a little bit.

I would start, I mean, doing

OxyContin, morphine suckers,

and my senior year

just got out of control.

I mean, I was all over

the place looking for it,

doing two or three, four,

five pills a day.

I mean, spending hundreds

of dollars a day doing it.

Well, when I was in high school,

I would look at heroin

as in a whole different game

than OxyContin.

I mean,

I've never even seen heroin

for the fact

that just the name "heroin."

But it's in the same ballpark.

It kills people

just the same way heroin does.

OxyContin is actually

a synthetic-based heroin.

It's heroin into a pill.

While working undercover,

I found myself almost

in a sociological project,

trying to figure out "What

is making this so enjoyable?

Why are they just jumping

to get in to try this stuff?"

And we got into conversation

of...

One Sunday evening,

we were at a party.

I was surrounded

by a bunch of teenagers.

We got on the conversation

of religion.

Come to find out,

the overwhelming majority

of the kids around me were LDS.

And so I asked them,

"Well, don't you feel guilty

about going to church tomorrow?"

And they said,

"Well, yeah, but you know what?

It's really not

against the Word of Wisdom."

And I said, "Oh, yeah?

Well, how so?"

"Well, it's a pill.

It's not that big of a deal.

It makes me feel good.

So what?

It's not alcohol.

I'm not smoking anything.

I'm not sticking anything

in my arm.

I'm just taking a pill

and drinking some water.

Big deal."

There are a lot of parents

that just have no idea what's

going on with their children,

and it's not because they're

not paying attention maybe,

but sometimes it's just that

you got to dig a little deeper.

We had no clue.

Really very good at hiding it.

I mean, it's not like we're

not a pretty close family.

A young lady, recently married,

had forged a prescription.

She was involved

in a car accident,

and she was legally prescribed

Lortab and hydrocodone.

She found herself addicted

within a short period of time

to the Lortab and hydrocodone.

So, she was altering...

She was going to different

doctors and doctor shopping,

receiving a prescription,

but then she was altering

the prescription

to get her more pills.

The pharmacist caught on

to this, turned her in.

I conducted my investigation

and called the house.

I spoke to her husband.

Come to find out,

she was a very key member

of the Relief Society,

and he was afraid

at how this was gonna be viewed

within his religious culture.

But I could give you a list

of so many people

that shop doctors,

that are at the pharmacy

late at night

or even at emergency rooms

coming up with something

because they ran out of drugs.

And you would look

at some of these people,

go, "Are you kidding me?

This guys takes them, but isn't

he so-and-so in the community?"

It's ridiculous.

That's why so many people

are hiding it.

That's why everybody goes

through this denial

and hiding it every day

because they don't

want it to affect

what happens in their church

or their standing

in their church

or their standing

in the community or whatever.

We can't let it affect that,

so we hide in this gray area

in the middle here of denial

and, you know.

"Well, you know,

but he's got a bad back,

and that's why he takes it,"

or "He's sick because..."

And you know what?

And it's just because nobody

wants to take responsibility

for where they're at.

Nobody wants to really fess up

and say that I got a problem,

that I am sick,

and it's not just a bad back

or a bad shoulder,

and that I need help.

The reality of it is,

is that people

do not want to acknowledge

that which is uncomfortable

for them to see.

During my childhood, we were

a very, very LDS family,

and we'd always go to church.

We'd always go to

my grandma's house on Sundays

and have Sunday dinner,

and we just had a happy family.

I thought that Macall,

when she was in gymnastics,

that she was gonna go

all the way.

She was going to become

an Olympian.

She was going to just

blow us all away.

I was on floor

and I was doing a tumbling pass

and I landed short

and I hyperextended my knee

and tore my ACL

and I had to have surgery.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes