“I just miss him”

The spiral began when her son went to college.

Within a few years, Ginger Moore went from knowing her son smoked marijuana at times to finding him overdosing in her shower.

And then a few years later, he was gone.

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Shea Walton was 27 when he overdosed on fentanyl. Before that, he had been clean for at least six months, had gotten a job and a promotion and was spending time with his daughter.

Moore will always wonder what led him to pick up the needle again, even after everything they had been through as a family. But she has also seen first-hand what addiction does to a person and to a family. She compares it to being possessed.

“I was up against something I couldn’t beat,” Moore said.

“It is a choice the first time they use. But after that, it’s not. No one would choose to live that way.”

Moore really doesn’t know when her son began using heroin.

Walton had been a good student, a wrestler and football player at Whiteland Community High School. His parents had been involved in his life and school. Their house was where students went after dances to hang out. They took Walton’s friends with them on vacation. Their family owned a construction company, and Walton and many of his friends worked there part-time.

He graduated and went to Indiana State University to study business, but he began struggling immediately. His first semester, he only passed one class and was put on academic probation. His second semester, he didn’t earn any credits.

“When they go off to school, you don’t know. You can’t call their teachers,” Moore said.

Moore made him come back home to New Whiteland, where he began working at a restaurant. He had gotten into trouble, and was arrested in Shelby County, but Moore didn’t know how bad the situation really was until the first time he overdosed.

Walton was taking a shower, and Moore heard a gurgling sound. She banged on the door and got no answer. When she and her husband kicked the door open, they found Walton blue. She called 911 while her husband did CPR on Walton.

And then she looked down and saw a needle, and suddenly, she knew her son had a problem.

Moore had no idea where to turn. She called a 1-800 hotline for addiction services, and was warned that his issues would only get worse. He would steal and lie, and at first, she didn’t believe it.

But he did. He stole tools, electronics and even a roll of nickels. He cut the wires on the security camera at their front door so his mother wouldn’t see who he was with. He would sit in cars right in front of their house, shoot up and then stumble inside and pass out, leaving the front door wide open.

And he would deny using drugs at all. His mother would show Walton a picture of his own face, with deep lines in his skin, and he would still deny it.

Moore didn’t feel safe at home. She couldn’t sleep, worrying about who would come into her home or whether her son would overdose again.

Walton stole anything he could sell for drugs, and then lied right to his mother’s face. He would even help her search the house for the item he had sold. At one point, he sold a ring Moore had gotten from her grandmother. Moore confronted Walton, telling him if he didn’t admit to it and get that ring back, she was calling the police.

Again, he lied, telling his mother he couldn’t believe she would accuse him of stealing. And then Moore went to the pawn shop and found her ring, and she stayed true to her word and called police.

Three times she kicked her son out.

“He couldn’t live here. He stole everything. That’s just not who he was,” Moore said.

She would let him come back home when he called her, saying he was cold and hungry and had no place to go. Each time, she would feed him, get him new clothes and make him start going to meetings. He went to rehab and he made it through multiple steps of one rehab program, but each time, he would use again.

Moore researched any option she could find, but the treatment programs were so expensive, she simply couldn’t afford it, even with insurance, she said.

They fought often, with Walton trying to control his mother and get what he wanted, acting the same way a child would, Moore said. Moore got Walton a cellphone, but locked it down so he could only call specific family members, telling him he didn’t want him to use the phone she paid for to get drugs.

“The whole family gets destroyed by this,” Moore said.

Walton was in and out of jail, with convictions for theft and sentenced to probation or work release. His convictions made getting a job hard, and Walton would get ashamed and discouraged and then relapse again.

At one point, his mother didn’t speak to him for months, and then got the call again that he wanted to come home. Moore set boundaries, telling him if he was going to come back, he had to change.

Walton was hysterical, telling his mom he didn’t want to live like this anymore and that he didn’t want to die. When she let him come back, she later found a cardboard sign in his stuff from when he had been panhandling to make money to buy drugs. The story he was using — that he had four children to support — wasn’t even true, she said.

She agreed to let him come back home, and this time was truly different. She watched him suffer through withdrawal, and then he was finally clean. And she made sure of it — requiring him to take drug tests.

He got a job at a restaurant, and was going to meetings. He was seeing his daughter and paying child support. He paid off his tickets so he could get his license back and saved up to buy a car. Life was better for those seven months, Moore said.

He was so proud of what he had accomplished, she said.

“I really thought we had it licked,” Moore said.

Walton decided to move in with a friend, and Moore felt good about that decision because she knew his friend wasn’t a drug user.

But a month-and-a-half later, Moore got a frantic call from her son’s roommate that Walton was unresponsive. Moore drove as fast as she could to get there, telling her son’s roommate what to do to help him, but she knew her son was gone.

Moore still can’t understand what led her son to use again, after going through the pain of withdrawal and seeing his life improve. But what he took that day wasn’t heroin — it was pure fentanyl and as soon as he injected it, he was dead and nothing could be done, Moore learned from the coroner.

“I don’t know why he would try it again,” she said.

Since her son’s death, Moore has struggled with all the feelings that have come up.

She misses him. The two used to be close, cooking together and just spending time together. But she is also still angry about all they went through as a family, with so many years of stress.

“That’s a hard one to deal with, being mad at your kid who’s dead,” Moore said.

“I just miss him.”

[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”About the series” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]

The United States is in the midst of the worst drug epidemic in history.

Opioids, including prescription painkillers, heroin and fentanyl, are killing Americans.

The Daily Journal is taking a yearlong look into the public health crisis that touches nearly every segment of our community and crosses all socioeconomic lines, from families who lost loved ones to health and law enforcement workers on the front lines.

Addicted & Dying also will explore solutions and a path forward.

Got an idea for our project? Contact us as 317-736-2770.

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