By Bitsy Mammel, Theo Rammidi & Kelly Craig
Focus
Midland HS
1st Place
Division 3, News Writing
Human Interest Feature
Andrew Copus was very involved with sports when he was young, playing soccer, baseball, football, basketball, and track. When he was older, he enjoyed coaching with his father. His mother, Lynette Copus, described Andrew as having a great personality: always respectful to his peers and teachers. She thought of him as an average student who could have better applied himself.
“He was a good person, he really was,” Lynette said. “He had a good heart, he was kind to everybody, and people liked him.”
Andrew’s close friend, Micah Linton, said that Andrew was a very caring person, and that he would do anything for the people who were close to him.
“If you ran out of gas across the state, Andrew would be the first one in his car to come help you out,” Linton said.
Linton thought of Andrew as someone who would always be willing to do the right thing, and frequently thinks of Andrew in decisions that he makes today.
On June 25, 2012, Andrew died of an opioid overdose.
Andrew was first introduced to opioids when he was a junior in high school. He often had kidney stones and went to the Midland Hospital to have them passed. His doctors would then give him morphine and send him home with a prescription of Vicodin to help ease the pain. At first, Andrew used the medication healthily; but as time went on, Lynette said it got out of control.
“The first couple of years he was in high school, he never really took the medication unless he took it that day,” Lynette said. “I had control over it most of the time. It kind of snowballed from there after he got out of high school.”
Lynette said that during Andrew’s time at Bullock Creek High School, his life had structure. He had a schedule that he would follow every day: wake up, go to school, go to practice, and come home. This structure vanished once he graduated and started attending Delta College. Lynette felt that he didn’t know what to do with himself anymore.
When Andrew was in his early twenties, he was offered heroin for the first time by a friend.
“He had the choice to say yes or no, and he said yes,” Lynette said. “After that it wasn’t a choice.”
Sam Price, a representative from the 1016 Recovery Network, a local drug rehabilitation center, said that the brain is rewired to want those substances again.
“The biggest struggle that a person deals with during early recovery is the cravings and urges to use again,” Price said. “Because of their highly addictive properties, and the way that a person’s brain has been rewired to seek that substance out when they are feeling distressed, their brain starts asking for that drug to escape those feelings.”
After his first experience with heroin, Andrew could not control himself. If he didn’t have access to heroin, he took advantage of the Vicodin prescribed to him. His family grew suspicious. Frequently, there would be
needle-marks on his arm. Despite the few physical indications of opioid abuse, Lynette said everything else seemed normal.
“He didn’t really act any different,” Lynette said. “His personality pretty much stayed the same. He was very good at hiding stuff from us.”
Linton had no idea how severe Andrew’s addiction was, or that Andrew was even using heroin at all, until after his death. After Andrew had started using heroin, their close friendship crumbled and became nonexistent.
“It was one day in the summer,” Linton said. “He just fell of the face of the planet. I would text him, not hear from him. Call him, not hear from him. I’d invite him over or invite him to something, he wouldn’t show up, he wouldn’t respond. It was like he just was totally gone.”
The initial symptoms of drug abuse were lost on Linton. Price stated that some signs of opioid addiction are subtle, but noticeable.
“The biggest signs are excessive sleepiness and pinpoint pupils,” Price said.
Linton says that he noticed Andrew exhibiting unusual behavior when he was abusing drugs, including having spoons in random places, having a drastically fluctuating body weight, and stealing sunglasses from his parents to sell.
“I remember he would wear long sleeve shirts in the summer,” Linton said. “And then for three days straight he would be just sweating his guts out in the middle of the winter, and really weird stuff that a normal person wouldn’t do.”
In October 2010, Andrew came to Lynette. He needed to go to the hospital; he had taken too much Vicodin, and after researching it online, he realized that he could die if he did not receive help quickly. At the hospital, Lynette was told that Andrew had marijuana, Adderall, Vicodin, and heroin in his system. He stayed in the observational unit that night, and after he had been released, he was under constant supervision for a month. The incident was so severe that he had to start drug counseling at 1016 Recovery Network, which did not last very long.
Lynette said that he thought that he wasn’t like the other addicts at the center because he didn’t have the same background as them. She was frustrated that Andrew couldn’t admit that he was an addict.
“I said, ‘What are you talking about? You’re an addict, Andrew. You have a house, a car, food, and parents who love you, some of those people don’t have that. You do, but you are still an addict,’” Lynette said. “He was in denial that he was.”
Price thinks that many people in similar situations to Andrew’s are afraid to start or continue rehab because they fear how they will be viewed or treated for it.
“There is a lot of stigma that keeps people away,’” Price said. “One of the biggest reasons is fear and shame – people are afraid of what others might think about them or their loved ones if they learned that they were a heroin addict.”
Although he did not continue counseling, Andrew was clean from heroin for eighteen months. During that time he rekindled the friendships that heroin had taken from him. But some things were different, though, according to Linton. He explained that there were moments where Andrew would hint at his struggle with opioid abuse, but it never turned into a conversation. One of these instances was at Buffalo Wild Wings, when Andrew, Linton, and a few other friends were watching a UFC fight. A friend commented that one of the fighters was knocked out so bad that he looked dead.
“I remember Andrew saying something along the lines of, ‘I know what being dead feels like, and that guy’s not dead,’” Linton said. “He was referring to the first time he overdosed.”
Despite not abusing heroin for 18 months following his time in rehab, Andrew still abused Adderall and bought caffeine packets with friends. Linton said it was a common thing for their friend group since high school, and no one thought of the repercussions the drugs would cause.
“We played video games together a lot and everyone would come over take Adderall to stay awake and play video games all night,” Linton said. “Then they would wake up in the morning and all go out to a car and smoke weed. At the time you don’t think much of it.”
During the weekend of his father’s birthday, his parents and their friends went on a trip to Traverse City. They came home to Andrew mowing the lawn, but Lynette immediately sensed something was wrong.
“He looked horrible,” Lynette said. “He was pale and sweating.”
The night before, Andrew had been at a party with drugs and heroin. Linton said he knew the party would not be a safe place for Andrew, and tried to talk him out of going.
“I told Andrew jokingly, but seriously, ‘I can’t let you go over there anymore. Nothing good is going to come from that place,’” Linton said. “He just looked at me, chuckled and said, ‘I’ll be fine.’”
But Andrew wasn’t fine. Lynette first thought Andrew was on heroin again and that she should take him to the hospital, but ultimately decided against it. As the day went on, Andrew looked and acted better, so Lynette’s worries eased. That night, she asked him if he was staying home to celebrate his father’s birthday.
“He said, ‘No, I’m going to my friend’s house,’ so I just kind of gave him a dirty look,” Lynette said. “That’s the last time I saw him alive.”
The next morning, Andrew’s parents received a call from the hospital, notifying them that they should come as soon as possible. The last thing Lynette thought she’d hear was that Andrew was dead. He had overdosed on heroin, at only 22 years old.
Linton was called the next day by a friend, who broke the news. At first he didn’t believe him, and repeatedly asked his friend if he was serious or not. Linton said that deep down he knew that Andrew was dead, but on the surface he just didn’t think his death was possible. It wasn’t until Linton called another friend asking him if he heard the news of Andrew’s death that the words really sunk in. After saying it out loud, it hit Linton that his friend was dead. He abruptly hung up the phone and went to talk to his parents.
“I remember I got to the bottom of the stairs, only a few feet from my bedroom door, and I just started breaking down,” Linton said. “My whole body went numb. I remember just screaming for my parents and my mom.”
Following Andrew’s death, Lynette joined an organization called For A Better Tomorrow, that helps with people dealing with loved ones who have died or are currently struggling with addiction. It was through this organization that she was introduced to public speaking to groups, including four sports teams at Midland High this fall, to raise opioid awareness and prevention. They share and talk about their stories in the group, and one of the leaders in the group approached Lynette asking if she’d be interested in sharing her story in a public setting.
Ironically, Lynette hates public speaking, but she’s used this experience to help her grieving process. She wants people to know that there is not just one type of opioid or drug addict, and that addiction is prevalent everywhere, even in the “sparkling” city of Midland.
“It helps me to tell his story and just say that he was a normal kid,” Lynette said. “He played sports and had friends, but that doesn’t matter because this could happen to anybody.”