By M.K. Guetersloh | mkguetersloh@pantagraph.com pantagraph.com | Posted: Thursday, October 21, 2010 11:16 pm | Loading…
Font Size:Default font sizeLarger font size.PONTIAC — Watching Gail Katz’s slideshow of her son, Daniel, moved Pontiac Township High School senior Morgan Kelly to tears.
Katz spent more than an hour Thursday talking to students at the school about how her son struggled with drug addiction and how it eventually killed him when he was 25 years old.
“I just kept thinking what if that was my mom up there talking about my brother,” said Kelly, 17. “It made me sad.”
Fellow senior Chase Alford, 18, said he thought the program made students think about the consequences of their choices.
“People don’t think taking drugs is a big deal,” Alford said. “But listening to her story and seeing those pictures of her son really show it’s not worth it.”
Katz and her family’s Save a Star Foundation stopped at the school as part of their efforts to educate teenagers about the dangers of abusing drugs, including prescriptions.
“My son was just like you,” Katz told the students. “We never thought we would have a drug addict in our family.”
Katz described how her son started experimenting with alcohol when he was 12. Then he moved on to marijuana and continued drinking while in high school. During his first year away at college, Daniel Katz started taking prescription drugs. Although he tried several times to get sober, he slipped.
“They tell you that you have to let them hit bottom,” she said. “It’s hard to let someone hit bottom, especially if their bottom could be death, like Daniel’s.”
Daniel Katz died in 2007 from an overdose of a prescription painkiller and cocaine.
The Highland Park-based foundation was invited to Pontiac by Paul Ritter, a teacher who helped sponsor a prescription drug disposal program called P2D2.
“The plain and simple fact is, prescription drug abuse is everywhere,” Ritter said. “People actually think it is safer to abuse prescription drugs than street drugs.”
Livingston County Coroner Mike Burke said his office has handled 30 deaths from drug overdoses since 1999. In the last three years the number of cases has gone from one or two a year to six deaths in 2008, nine in 2009 and four so far this year.
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