My son died of a heroin overdose- here’s what I wish I knew and how you can save your own child

If it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours.

That’s what a New Jersey mother told DailyMail.com she wants other parents to know after her 25-year-old son died of a heroin overdose on Mother’s Day. 

Patricia Roos’ son Alex was found dead on the street in Newark, New Jersey, 20 miles from their house, succumbing to his three-year-long battle with drug addiction that saw him through 12 stints in rehab and four stays in sober living houses. 

Like thousands of other victims of the opioid epidemic, Alex came from a good family. He was born to two sociologists who settled into a pleasant middle-class life in New Jersey. He was athletic and smart, and he received a college degree in biology.

Mrs Roos spoke with DailyMail.com about the signs she wished she’d known to look for that could have saved her only child in the hope of saving other families from a similarly devastating experience.

Alex was a varsity athlete in baseball. He was sensitive, loved music – especially electronic dance music – and was particularly close with his grandma, whose passing Mrs Roos is sure had a major influence on his drug use during the first summer home from college. 

He had plans to go back to school at Rutgers University to complete a masters degree in business, but those crumbled as his drug use continued.  

Just a few days within his return to New Jersey in May 2015, after years spent hopping from rehab to rehab in Florida, Alex was set to go to his 13th recovery center. Instead, he was found dead in a vacant lot frequented by heroin users. 

Over his multi-year battle against heroin addiction, his longest period of sobriety was about five months. But every time he would relapse ‘it became more and more horrific,’ Mrs Roos said. 

‘On his 25th birthday, we had to get the door unlocked and go in and I thought he was brain dead, because he was breathing very heavily and gray stuff oozing out of his mouth, she told this website, adding: ‘He was brought back multiple times [with] Narcan and the final time was what would have been his 13th rehab and he refused entry.’ 

Mrs Roos knows her situation is not unique and she channeled her grief into advocacy and writing, eventually publishing a book about her experience and flaws in the recovery care infrastructure called Surviving Alex: A Mother’s Story of Love, Loss, and Addiction.

She told DailyMail.com: ‘Every day when I sat down to write I thought I’m writing for people like me who are going through this because I want them to know that I hear them. They’re not alone.

‘I want people to know that if it happened to my family, it can happen to any family, right? Because I think that people don’t think it can happen to them. And it can.’

In her book and speaking to this website, she revealed signs other parents can look out for before it’s too late to help their own child.  

Struggling with anxiety or other mental health conditions

Alex was about 12 years old when he was first hospitalized, but it wasn’t for substance use or depression. He spent more than two months in the hospital being treated for anorexia.

Mrs Roos said: ‘And that’s when we began to realize his levels of anxiety. Prior to that time, we were just a normal family. We did all those things that normal families do. 

‘Lots of neighbors hanging out in the backyard, the kids did plays, quintessential summers hanging out with your friends and barbecuing, and so forth.

‘In seventh grade, he talked about having two classes on the obesity epidemic and having read about anorexia… He asked his dad, how do I get a six-pack and his father said you exercise and no more hamburgers. So, he really took that to an extreme.’

Anorexia and anxiety often go hand-in-hand. The process of eating becomes an obsession, and the fear of gaining weight takes over. The disorder manifests as micromanaging all of the food someone takes in as a means to exert control over their own lives and combat the fear of losing control, also known as anxiety.

Alex became increasingly isolated in his years of active addiction and often snuck around and went missing for days on end

About one in three people who have an eating disorder are male. Males account for about 20 percent of anorexia sufferers and 30 percent of bulimia sufferers. 

Similarly, substance use disorder and anxiety often occur side by side. A sweeping study reflecting data from more than 43,000 Americans found generalized anxiety disorder was the anxiety disorder most often associated with using alcohol or drugs to self-medicate.

Mrs Roos said: ‘You think about the psychological kind of factors that are systemic – depression or anxiety – but there’s also socio-economic, systemic factors, poverty, unemployment, incarceration, racism. All of these are the contexts in which people live.

‘So what is the message that I would give to parents who are worried about this? The first thing you have to do is that you have to evaluate the risk. So, what are the psychological factors? 

‘Do you have psychological issues in your family, in your extended family? Do you have alcoholism in your family or extended family? And that enables you to sort of better evaluate the risks that you face.

‘It’s important to understand that young people mostly take drugs to self-medicate, right? And Alex’s case, it’s exactly what was going on, and we saw it back when he had anorexia.’

The recent National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions found nearly 18 percent of people with substance use disorder met the criteria for an anxiety disorder as well. 

A separate study by Yale researchers found anxiety disorders tend to precede the onset of alcohol abuse disorder and they co-exist. In 57 to 80 percent of cases where people had both an anxiety disorder and alcohol use disorder, the anxiety appeared first. 

And in at least 67 percent of cases where people had both anxiety and a drug use disorder, the anxiety disorder came on first. 

The rehab programs that Alex attended were mostly 12-step programs that discourage the use of any mind-altering substances, including anxiety medications. 

While he was not prescribed them consistently during his years of active addiction, Mrs Roos said at one point he was able to secure three months’ worth of Xanax and Ambien from a doctor at an urgent care clinic. 

Sneaking around

Alex’s mom said her son began to exhibit ‘sneaky’ behavior after he was released from the hospital. It started with him secretly drinking while attending his Metuchen, New Jersey high school and it continued through college. 

And like many drug or alcohol abusers, Alex was good at hiding it.

Mrs Roos told DailyMail.com: ‘Soon after he came out of the hospital, he started drinking surreptitiously, and we didn’t know how much he was drinking. But… in high school, it was a little bit more problematic. And in college, it became much more problematic.’

The summer after his 2012 college graduation was marked by a series of deaths in the family, ratcheting up Alex’s anxiety and depression.

His mom added: ‘When Alex graduated from college in 2012… he just really got into drugs. [In] 2013 was the first time that he overdosed, and we had to take the door off its hinge to find him, overdosed with heroin.’

Being sneaky doesn’t have to mean denying using a drug at all. A person who uses drugs compulsively may lie and say drugs are an occasional indulgence.

It’s also not unusual for compulsive drug users to sneak away for days at a time.

Before Alex’s fatal overdose, he hadn’t been in contact with his family for six days, and that wasn’t the first time.

Drug use is often a solitary activity, and that became even more true during the Covid pandemic.

People often turn to restrooms to inject drugs, and Mrs Roos said parents should pay attention to how often and for how long your child is in the bathroom.

She said: ‘It’s important to watch for if kids start isolating themselves, begin to lose friends, if they spend a lot of time in the bathroom because a lot of drug taking happens in bathrooms because that’s one of the few places where I think people find some privacy that they need.’

Patricia Roos (pictured right next to Alex and her husband, left] said Alex was a happy, athletic child with a ‘wicked sense of humor’

Selling belongings

Drugs are not free, and to an addict securing them becomes more important than securing food or a place to live. For drug users without disposable income, that often requires selling valuable belongings.

It can also require stealing from family in order to turn anything from heirlooms to silverware for a profit. 

According to Mrs Roos, Alex begged at a local train station and sold ‘lots of different things’ to fuel his addiction.  

Mrs Roos told this website: ‘We put into a safety deposit box our rings because we didn’t want him to get those and sell those. And he was aware of all of this.

‘I remember having lunch with him and he said, “Oh, you’re not wearing your rings.” And I said, “Yeah, we put them in the safety deposit box.” And he said, “because of me?” and I said “yeah,” and he just felt horrible.’

Part of heroin’s appeal, as well as that of fentanyl and other opioids sold on the street, is that they’re not very expensive. A bag of heroin costs about $5 and prices remain low because of inexpensive and plentiful fentanyl. 

Fentanyl and other illicit opioids are being rapidly massed produced, largely from China through Mexico, as well as in smaller clandestine US labs. 

Efforts to block fentanyl from hitting the streets are taking on a whack-a-mole quality, with drug makers increasingly making ever-more fatal fentanyl analogues. 

And there is little indication the deluge of illicit drugs on US city streets is slowing.