Mother Hopes to Change Stigma Surrounding Addiction With Daughter's Heartbreaking Obit
Kelsey Endicott died from an accidental overdose earlier this month.
— -- A Massachusetts woman said she hoped to "reach one addict" by telling the story of her daughter's overdose in her obituary.
Kathleen Errico, of North Andover, Massachusetts, wrote about her 23-year-old daughter's drug addiction in the hopes she could reduce the stigma of addiction. Errico said her daughter, Kelsey Endicott, died of an accidental overdose after spending years battling her addiction.
"She had been sober for almost 10 months, but her disease still had a powerful hold on her," Errico wrote. "We wish she had recognized the beauty and strength everyone else saw in her."
Errico said she was surprised that the obituary went viral.
"I did it because I had suffered for so long and I had suffered in silence," Errico told ABC News. "No one wants to shout from the rooftop that 'hey, my daughter is a heroin addict.'"
Errico said Kelsey's addiction issues started at age 13 or 14, and that she had been seeking help for years.
"I truly feel that she just grappled with something, something inside of her was broken at some point," Errico said. "These people who are using…something triggers it."
Heroin and opioid abuse have been a growing problem nationwide. In Massachusetts alone there has been an 18.8 percent increase in overdose deaths from 2013 to 2014. Nationwide heroin overdose deaths have tripled from an average of 1 per 100,000 to 3.4 per 100,000 in 2014. In February, President Barack Obama proposed devoting $1.1 billion to fight heroin and opioid abuse.
Kelsey's addiction was so overwhelming that she lost custody of her toddler son after Errico called child protective services about her drug use.
"She wanted to get her son back and wanted to raise her son," Errico noted. She said that Kelsey had looked for a rehab program for many months before she turned herself over to the court in an effort to get into a 28-day, court-ordered rehab program in 2014.
"It was very difficult for her to get the help for two reasons: the non-availability of the beds and [her] insurance,” Errico said.
Errico said Kelsey was really trying to beat her addiction.
"For 2 [sic] years she had not lived at home and literally transferred from program to program in order to get her life and son back," Errico wrote in the obit. "She worked hard and fought the good fight eventually regaining custody of her beautiful baby boy Camden and finding that sobriety was a much better way to live, but the demon was still there."
Errico said she hopes other families will be able to share their own struggles with addiction. And she wants strangers to think of her daughter as more than just an addict.
"She was a wonderful mother, she loved her son more than anything on the face of this earth," said Errico. "She was funny, she was witty…but she grappled with addiction."
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