Family, friends mourn Falmouth teen who overdosed

Aug. 03--EAST FALMOUTH -- They came to Alchemy Farm to mourn.

But there were no formal eulogies. The microphone was used only by the musicians. It was an extreme case of no one knew what to say.

The young people -- most of them still in high school -- could only try to support each other in their grief.

They had gathered last week for a memorial service for Sean Stigberg-Mellman, a resident of Falmouth since he was 4 years old. Dead at the age of 19 from a heroin overdose.

If anything, the many adults in attendance could only ask questions, especially, "What can we do to protect other children?"

That was a difficult one because Kathleen Stigberg, one of Sean's mothers, worked at Gosnold on Cape Cod, the Cape's largest addiction treatment organization, for five years in admissions and as a case manager. She's also been in recovery for 30 years from alcoholism.

She knew the warning signs and what to do about them.

Also, Sean was a responsible young man, who excelled in athletics, and wasn't a big risk-taker. Polite, helpful, is how adults described him. He did well at Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical School until senior year when his life began to unravel.

"You ask him to do something, and he always did it," said Patricia Mellman, his other mother.

"You could give him a long leash because he was so responsible," Stigberg said.

So when Sean started trying drugs, it didn't seem like a big deal.

He started smoking marijuana at about 12, said his childhood friend, Silas Larkin, 18, of Falmouth. They both did, Larkin added.

"I didn't think what we did together would lead to shooting up," Larkin said.

Sean's mothers knew about the pot. Stigberg knew how serious drug use is at that age.

If he wanted to get a driver's license, she told him, he couldn't be smoking pot. She started to drug test him, she said.

That's why she's pretty sure when he got his license at 17, he wasn't smoking pot, much less shooting heroin, she said.

When he was 18, however, Mellman, who lives just minutes from Stigberg in East Falmouth, made a shocking discovery.

Sean had moved in with Mellman for his senior year, after living much of his life at Stigberg's house. The women had broken up after adopting Sean and Zachary, who is younger by just a few months, as infants. Sean's biological parents battled addiction, Mellman said. Although the women separated years ago, they always lived near each other to raise the children.

One morning in February 2013, Mellman was driving Sean to school and he could barely keep his eyes open. He leaned out of the car and vomited. And then Mellman noticed his arm.

There was a single needle mark.

"I drove him to school saying 'Dope is for dopes. Dope is for dopes,'" Mellman recalled.

At home, it didn't take her long to find a burnt spoon by his bedside.

The next night Stigberg confronted Sean.

"'I know you're doing something more serious, and I don't even need to know what it is,'" Stigberg told him. "'But you need help.'"

"He just broke down and cried and said he was trying to stop on his own," Stigberg recalled.

CLOSELY GUARDED SECRET

At the memorial last week, parents asked if the death of another teenager would save others from what some are calling the largest drug epidemic in American history.

Drug overdose deaths have more than doubled between 1999 and 2010, according to a 2013 analysis by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It stated that 38,329 people died from drug overdoses in the United States in 2010 compared with 16,849 deaths in 1999. The rise in drug deaths is mainly attributed to the use and abuse of opiate-based prescription painkillers such as OxyContin, which hit the market in the late 1990s. Addiction to pills created a huge market for heroin, which hit the suburbs by storm.

During the same time period, Massachusetts has seen annual increases in drug overdose deaths.

According to the most recent Massachusetts statistics in 2011, poisonings -- which are mostly drug overdoses -- increased 16 percent in a single year. There were 972 poisoning deaths in 2011 compared with 839 in 2010.

In Falmouth in 2014, firefighters administered 60 doses of Narcan, an overdose reversal medicine, said Fire Chief Mark Sullivan. Four of the overdoses were fatal, said police Lt. Sean Doyle. Only 45 Narcan doses were given out during the entire fiscal year 2010. .

And these aren't stereotypical junkies, Sullivan said: "Now we're getting the kid next door."

Sean's friends have grown up with this.

"Falmouth is a heroin den," said Sean's girlfriend, Mackenzie Phillips, also 19 and in recovery for alcoholism.

"Just because it's not blatantly obvious doesn't mean it's not here."

"I walked into a Falmouth High School bathroom when I was a freshman (two years ago) and saw someone doing a line on the toilet," said Cady Duff-Still, 17, of Falmouth.

"If you're at a party, you will be offered everything, even heroin," she continued.

"It's not even surprising anymore," said another 17-year-old who asked not to be identified. "I just found out my best friend is doing heroin. And I'm not shocked."

It's only surprising to the general public because so often it's a closely guarded secret, said Marie Phillips, Mackenzie's mother.

"It's unacknowledged and that's why I'm so proud of Kathy for the way she wrote the obituary," Marie Phillips added. Sean's obituary named his cause of death as "an accidental drug overdose."

"I feel that Sean has passed his spirit, and I feel like how can you not tell kids that if you do drugs this is what happens. You end up dead at 19," said Mellman, who helped write the obituary. "I felt it honored him. He did heroin, but he was a good kid who loved everyone and had a lot of friends and I think it's important people know -- these aren't rotten kids."

'SEAN KNEW ALL THIS'

If only knowledge could keep you clean, said Deborah Heavilin, a drug abuse prevention educator who counseled Sean.

Sean had been to treatment for six weeks in March, after what Stigberg described as a terrible episode of depression, anxiety and heroin abuse. It was actually his second treatment, but it's hard to count the first, a six-day admission to a detox hospital at Gosnold after his parents discovered his habit in 2013. Detox admissions help with the physical withdrawal symptoms, but it's not nearly enough, and yet it's often all that insurance covers. Many experts say it takes months or a year of intense recovery treatment to pull someone out of active addiction.

Like most in recent recovery, Sean was struggling upon his return from detox, Stigberg said.

The second treatment, nearly a year after the first, began at Gosnold. After two weeks, he went to the Ambulatory Treatment Program at Naukeag, a residential program in Ashburnham for substance abuse and psychiatric disorders. Stigberg said she had suspected for years that Sean suffered from depression. She said she even tried counseling when he was a preteen. But the shy and quiet young man loathed talk therapy.

At Naukeag, a psychiatrist prescribed antidepressants, and they began to help almost immediately, Stigberg said.

And for awhile afterward, Sean embraced his new lifestyle. He went to 12-step meetings, and drove other young people to meetings. That's how he met Mackenzie.

Mackenzie said she had just 30 days sober when they first started driving together. She had 119 at his memorial service, she said.

Sean had almost 60 days, after one brief relapse with alcohol, she said.

"He was beating himself up about that first relapse," she said.

"You do drugs to get out of your own skin," she said. "First you want to do it, then you have to do it. Sean knew all this, and he wanted to be clean."

But knowledge isn't all it takes, said Heavilin, now the facilitator for a weekly Mothers Helping Mothers group, to assist addicted mothers coping with perhaps the worst guilt of all.

In her years in addiction treatment, Heavilin has seen how the disease trumps all sense and logic. She knew a man who was so terrified of overdosing that he'd drive to a hospital parking lot to shoot heroin, hoping at least someone would find him before he died.

"That's what this disease is like," she said.

SMALL DECISIONS

In the final days of Sean's life, small decisions and circumstances created the worst-case scenario.

Living back with Stigberg, Sean came home on the afternoon of July 10 excited and grabbing burgers and sodas from the refrigerator.

He said he and Mackenzie were going to a cookout at a friend's house. He dropped her back home at about 10 p.m. after the barbecue.

Mackenzie said she was worried about him.

She said he had not refilled his prescription for antidepressants and he was in a lot of pain that night, Mackenzie said. Stigberg had meant to pick up the medicine herself but forgot.

And this part was hard for her to talk about.

"I feel it was my fault," she said.

She had to go out of town for two days to help her stepmother. She left $30 for him and asked him to pick up the prescription himself.

"He never did and he didn't tell his mom because he was embarrassed," Mackenzie said.

Mackenzie kept calling on the morning of July 11. Stigberg didn't pick up figuring it was for Sean. Finally Zachary brought the persistently ringing phone to Stigberg.

Mackenzie wanted to know if Sean had gone to work. He had a job putting up party tents for outdoor functions.

Stigberg saw his car outside and walked down to his basement bedroom. She found him on his knees, with his upper body bent forward.

Mellman insisted on going to see him.

"Now I wish I never did because the image keeps going through my mind," she said.

More than two weeks later, Sean's laundry still sat folded on his couch and desk, along with a bathing suit Stigberg just brought him.

Stigberg kept the sticky notes he left her in the morning. Usually they said, "Fed Gertie (their dog) and let her out. Working 8 a.m. -- 5 p.m.Love Sean."

He had apparently kept her notes, too. Hers, much more emotional, were meant to help him through his time at Gosnold.

And now his mother has those, too.

"Sean, I love you to the moon and back," she wrote. "I am so proud to have you as my son."

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