FORT FAIRFIELD, Maine — When Lisa Betancourth picked up her ringing cell phone on April 1, 2017, and saw that it was her son Andrew Mallett calling, she smiled and answered with her usual warm greeting.
It wasn’t her son “peaches” on the phone, however, but a friend of her son’s who was with him during a party. He was using the phone to call her and tell her, “Your son has taken an overdose.”
Betancourth recalls thinking at first that “it was some kind of cruel April Fools Day joke,” but within seconds she was screaming hysterically as she struggled to get from her home in Fort Fairfield to the scene of the party in Limestone, where her son’s friends had called emergency services. It was there that she learned that her son had died from an overdose of fentanyl, Betancourth said that she can recall little else of what happened during that time frame.
“Life changed in a matter of seconds,” she said while recalling the experience. “Not just for my family, but for Andrew’s friends, all of whom he considered family. We will never, ever be complete again. We can’t even do something as simple as sit down for a meal without it being glaringly obvious that Andrew isn’t there, and never will be again.”
Although remembering the details of her son’s death is painful, she is hoping that speaking out and sharing her son’s story may help others. She would like to see more changes made to improve recovery efforts and recovery rates for those seeking help. She wants to see more education about the danger of taking illicit drugs and about drug addiction, and believes there should be additional rehabilitation facilities where people can seek treatment, especially in Aroostook County.
“I know the stigma that is attached to addiction,” she said. “But people have to realize, every addict is someone’s child.”
The Fort Fairfield resident said that her 21-year-old son “fought demons for years,” including being diagnosed with a mental illness when he was just 5-years-old.
“He was medicated and did well on it,” she recalled.
When he was a teenager, she said, Andrew began experimenting with marijuana and progressed to using cocaine, methamphetamine and opiates. He sought treatment in 2013 while he was still under 18.
“He did well, but we made a mistake in not seeking some type of guardianship over our son after he became an adult so that we could oversee his mental health care needs,” she said. “Because when he turned 18, he quit taking his medication.”
But he was scared into quitting illegal drugs in December 2016, she said, when, during a four hour span in just one day in Presque Isle, five people overdosed on heroin. One died as a result. Betancourth said that her son knew all of the individuals involved.
Andrew was able to get clean after that, she noted, and the five months of his life that he was sober before his death “were some of the best we ever spent with him as a family.” She said that blood tests showed that he remained clean up until at least two weeks before his death.
On the day before his death, she said that her son asked to be taken to see a friend before the individual moved away.
“Andrew went to do some errands with me, and he was hurrying me along,” she said. “I delayed taking him as long as I could to spend more time with him. I always told Andrew that I loved him before we parted company, but I can’t remember if I told him that on that day. I just remember looking at him and saying, ‘be safe.’”
Those were her last words to her son. An investigation later revealed that Andrew, who thought that he was purchasing heroin, actually received the potent prescription narcotic fentanyl.
As the rest of the family members, including his father Edward Mallett III, step-father Carols Betancourth, and five siblings, have continued to process their grief, Betancourth has found some solace in speaking about her son publicly recently and hopes to do more of that in the future.
“There needs to be a great deal more done in this state to curb the drug problem and help addicts,” she said. “I never understood addiction until it impacted my family.”
