Comment on Heroin's harrowing addiction, heartbreaking death of 22-year-old West Sand Lake man

Heroin's harrowing addiction, heartbreaking death of 22-year-old West Sand Lake man There had been many sleepless nights for him and his wife, Kim, during the hellish months that their 21-year-old son, Sean, had spiraled down into heroin addiction. Something didn't seem right about the sound of the car in the darkness, so the father crept down the staircase and peered out a front window. A father's nagging fear was now a horrible truth: his son had relapsed. A primal anger at the drug dealer surged through his body, catapulting him down the walkway toward the mailbox outside their West Sand Lake home. There were raised voices now, the muffled keen of a young man who was sick with withdrawal symptoms, craving the warm, numbing rush of heroin through a needle into a vein. The sound of a toilet flushing and Sean's guttural, wounded weeping echoed in the narrow hallway. The scene crystallized in one horrible moment the scourge of heroin that plagues the Capital Region: a young man in the grip of addiction, an overwhelmed detox and treatment network that turned him away, failed attempts at rehab and the desperation of parents who didn't know where to turn. After being rebuffed or washing out at a half-dozen hospital detox units and treatment centers stretching from Albany to Rhinebeck to Vermont, Sean was accepted at The Treatment Center in Lake Worth, Fla. After a week of the rigorous regimen — which did not include a maintenance drug such as methadone or Suboxone — he felt his recovery was solid once more. A video surveillance camera in the apartment recorded Sean as he walked into the bathroom and disappeared from view. Losing a patient to the disease is very heartbreaking, said Bill Russell, CEO of The Treatment Center. Several hundred mourners packed the church, including many of Sean's fellow alumni from the Class of 2011 at Averill Park High and former teammates. Why had heroin addiction claimed the life of this golden boy, the gentle giant who seemed to be everybody's friend in their small town, the son his dad called "a big goof?" [...] why had heroin killed more than a dozen other young people over the past three years in the town of Sand Lake, population 10,000, which includes Averill Park and West Sand Lake? "Sean did not die in vain," his father said, choking back tears. Sean suffered from migraine headaches as a preschooler, caused by sinus problems treated with medication. After graduating from high school, Sean took classes at Morrisville State College and Hudson Valley Community College. Sean tried to detox at home over the course of days of sweating, shaking, vomiting and diarrhea. [...] his parents are angry and frustrated at the system of heroin treatment in New York. If he had diabetes or heart disease, they would not have turned him away and treated him like a criminal.