Love/Hate
‘Heroin Was My Life Preserver’
Why teenagers across the country are finding love in heroin
Vicki Allendorf noticed that her oldest son Zachary was losing weight. “Mom, I’ve just been working out,” he’d say. But Allendorf, who is Midwestern-nice with a big pinch of Type A, knew that her skater son was no gym rat. “He looked gaunt,” she said. In the early 2000s, drinking and partying was how kids typically passed the time, especially in small cities on the edge of the Mississippi River. Around 2008, opioids like OxyContin, and eventually heroin, spread across the Midwest. Zachary was one of the tens of thousands of teens who had gone from using OxyContin recreationally to being trapped in a full-blown addiction.
Shortly after Allendorf realized that her oldest son was using opioids, she learned her two other sons were also addicted to heroin. “Eventually, it was their whole friend group,” she said. Terrified, Allendorf sought support from a local Families Anonymous group, which pushed a religious approach to addiction treatment. “Parents were telling me to ‘let go and let god.’ If I ‘let go and let god’ my kids will die tonight,” Allendorf thought to herself. Frustrated by the lack of resources and information, she took matters into her own hands.
