Joyce Hitt says she does not want to walk around telling her 17-year-old son’s story with a picture of him and a candle. If she’s going to send a message to other teenagers about heroin, she will tell it to them straight.
“If you start using heroin, you are going to die,” Hitt said in a phone interview from her home in unincorporated Willowbrook, a southwest suburb of Chicago.
Hitt’s son, Nolan, a former student at Oak Park and River Forest High School, died in Oak Park after an overdose last month. Though the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office has not confirmed the cause pending toxicology tests, Hitt said he had used heroin.
At Nolan’s wake, she asked some of the other teenagers if they had ever tried heroin. Six of them said they had. Of those, a few said it made them so sick that they stopped. The rest had continued to do it. Hitt said there were three other mothers at the wake who had lost their kids to heroin in the past year. And the funeral home buried five overdose victims in four months.
“The drug kills,” Hitt said. “It’s designed to kill and you’re risking your life when you try it.”
Hitt found out that when Nolan allegedly used heroin the night of April 7 at a party in Villa Park, it wasn’t his first time. She had asked him before, and he repeatedly told her to take him for a drug test. Hitt said she never suspected he was using it.
One of the issues in this situation, she said, is that kids aren’t talking to their parents about their drug use. As a result, adults need to be better educated about drugs and how to notice the signs of use. Drug education programs often focus on alcohol and marijuana, she said.
“Marijuana and alcohol is not what’s killing our kids,” Hitt said.
But Kristine Raino-Ogden, chairwoman of the local parent group IMPACT, said those two substances are affecting more people than harder drugs. IMPACT is trying to prevent their use among middle school kids so the kids won’t move on to substances like heroin or prescription drugs.
Raino-Ogden said prescription drug use is on the rise, and she’s heard stories anecdotally about kids using sleeping pills or giving Adderall to their friends. Heroin is also a reality in the community, but not the main focus of IMPACT’s mission.
In general, Raino-Ogden said it’s important to start talking to kids early about drugs and not just to lecture them. The earlier a dialogue is opened up, she said, “the kids then will know that you don’t judge them and that you can have a conversation without yelling and screaming and judgment.”
Raino-Ogden and Bert Patania, the youth interventionist supervisor at Oak Park Township Youth Services, agreed it’s disturbing that there hasn’t been a huge reaction from the community since Nolan’s death.
Nolan was a wonderful child, his mother said. A talented artist, he created paintings, drawings and rope necklaces. He participated in Cub Scouts and football. He was a great student, Hitt said, and had been on the honor roll. Many of his teachers from kindergarten through high school came to his wake.
During his childhood, Nolan moved around a bit. His mother and father separated when Nolan was 10 and his father eventually took him to live in Darien. Then his father moved to Oak Park, and allowed Nolan’s then17-year-old girlfriend to move in with them. He stopped going to classes at OPRF, his mother said, and was allowed to drink and smoke cigarettes and marijuana. His mother thought a stint in a rehabilitation facility would help.
At the party last month, Nolan told his now 20-year-old girlfriend he felt nauseous after he used the heroin, so a friend drove them back to Oak Park in Nolan’s father’s car. His father thought they appeared intoxicated and told Nolan to lay down while he drove the friend home to Villa Park. By the time he got back, Nolan had died, his mother said.
Patania said some people can get addicted to the substance the first time they use it, but it depends on the person. While heroin is “not what the majority of kids are using,” he said it’s dangerous because it can be mixed with other substances and anyone using it won’t know how strong it is.
With the increase in mental health diagnoses these days, Patania said more kids have access to pills and might mix them with alcohol and marijuana. And parents aren’t necessarily in denial, he said—they’re just not aware because they don’t recognize the symptoms.
One of the biggest concerns of the staff at Youth Services is the fact that there are no treatment centers in town. Programs that did exist were lost because of a lack of funding, but the staff is eager to find the kids who need help.
“We need to know where to go and who they are,” Patania said
Hitt said she’d like kids to talk more often and help each other if one of them seems to be in a crisis. With people busy texting instead of talking, she thinks kids aren’t developing the same social skills these days.
She’s still grieving for her son, but might eventually get involved in HERO HELPS, the Heroin Epidemic Relief Organization in Will County. And she’s urging teenagers like her son to not end up in dangerous situations.
“If something doesn’t feel right, don’t go with it. Be tough, be independent, and know when something’s not right.”
