This program contains subject matter and language that may be .docx

This program contains subject matter and language that may be
disturbing to some viewers.
Viewer discretion is advised. Yes! When I shoot coke, it's
almost like an orgasm in your head.
He tells me, the only friend I have is the drugs. I can't bear to
lose another child. If I were to die, that would kill my
mother.
She probably would kill herself. He's actually at a point where
he's crazy.
I've got to scam something.
Maybe steal something or rob someone.
You want to just grab him and throw him through a wall
sometimes. I'm asking you today to please take the
opportunity for help.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
My name is Anthony A-N-T-H-O-N-Y. I'm 21 years old and I
live on the Jersey Shore.
The most important thing to me in the world is family.
What does my family do?

We make pizza. Everybody in my family has at least one or two
pizzerias.
That's my pop, he started it all.
There's my mom.
She busted her ass seven days a week for my brother-in-law
Angelo.
That's my brother Frederico.
That's him and his wife Desimona.
My brothers Sammy and Tony.
That's my nephew Antonio.
He's going to grow up in a pizzeria just like I did.
Say hi to the camera Antonio. All my brothers had their own
business by the time they were 21.
I'm 21 now and I don't have anything. I'm addicted to shooting
cocaine.
All right, love you.
Thanks pop.
See you in the morning. First thing I do when I get off of work
is go meet up with my dealer and get what I have to
get. I [BLEEP]

love coke. I get just a smile when I think about getting high.
He's absolutely killing himself. No one could go on the
way he's going.
Nobody. His arms, they've got needle marks all over.
When I see that, it breaks my heart.
I can't imagine where he is now in himself.
Some place lonely and dark for him to have to stick a needle in
his arm to get through a day.
I can't comprehend it. When I shoot coke, I get this crazy
feeling in my head.
Like it's almost like a orgasm in your head.
It only lasts for about 15 seconds, but that 15 seconds is so
intense. After that 15 seconds, you crash right away,
and you're very paranoid.
I'm bugging out right now.
That's what this does to you. When he's high, he seems like
somebody's trying to get him.
I feel like my mom called the cops or something.
Yeah, he's very jumpy.
He just gets crazy.

I feel like my heart's going to explode. Everything bugs me out
right now.
Every thing that comes by.
Cars and everything.
The desperation, that urge for more after I've shot up is
tremendous.
That's the problem with coke.
It's hard to get it out of my head after that.
I'm thinking about it right now.
I've got to scam something.
Steal something or rob somebody.
I don't know.
I've gotta get something though, I know that.
I really need to.
Feel like I'm bugging.
I would almost to anything to get the money to get one more.
Anthony got choked up when he admitted he stole it.
He seemed very, very remorseful.
I might regret some of the things and it might feel horrible at

what I've done after I've done, when I'm in that mode,
there's nothing really that could stop me. I've thought
sometimes that maybe we'd have been better off if he
stabbed me and what I did to my brother because it cause so
much disappointment, and it hurt.
You can't even imagine him doing this.
It's like, is it Anthony?
Is he that desperate?
You know?
You want to just grab him and throw him through a wall
sometime.
Sometimes you just want to get inside his brain.
And I say that to myself.
What are you, stupid?
What is wrong with you? But, it's hard when you can't really do
anything.
Because it doesn't matter.
You could talk, and yell, and scream until you're blue in the
face.
It's not going to get through. I don't think anybody in the family

understands me. Sometimes I don't understand
myself. He was a very gorgeous baby, Anthony, and
everybody'd come in, what a beautiful child.
I was very proud of him.
Every mother would've loved to have had a son like Anthony.
But Anthony was born into a very complicated family situation.
Anthony never got to live with my two sisters, and
they were in and out of his life, in and out of all of our lives. I
was young.
I didn't have an instruction book on how you're supposed to deal
with something like this.
And I tried all different ways, and then I tried the tough love.
Every time they got out of control, she threw them out.
With my two youngest children, Tommy and Anthony, I just felt
that I would raise them different than how my other
children were raised.
She just had high expectations for me, you know?
She'd say that to herself, like, I'm not going to mess up this
time.
There's no way I'm going to let anything wrong happen to this
kid. In the fourth grade, he joined a baseball team.
The first baseball game I remember was the first game I had

ever pitched, and I struck 17 out of 18 batters out.
As I got older, my life was all about baseball.
He used to hit that ball unbelievable. If it was the bottom of the
ninth and you were down two runs, he'd hit the
home run to win the game.
From nine to 14 years old, I played about 150 games a year.
I never missed one.
Come on, Anthony!
I loved to watch my son.
I used to come right out of my chair.
I was like one of these crazy mothers.
Yes!
My father didn't have too much interest in my sports.
I had a 150 games a year and my father didn't make it to one.
Well, he probably doesn't remember, but I did go at least four
times to his games.
He was too busy in his own addiction. My father's a big
gambler, so he's always on the road gambling.
That was his life.

That's his addiction. I don't say I have a gambling problem.
I can quite when I want to, I gamble when I got time. I think
Anthony growing up, when he really needed his father,
he wasn't there for him.
He was gambling.
He did cheat.
Things were-- they weren't good for a long time.
I decided to get a divorce to be separated and go on on my own.
When I was 14 years old, two horrible things happened to me at
the same year.
Right after my father left, my sister passed away from a drug
overdose. My mother just lost it.
Dropped to the floor.
I mean, I've never seen anybody react like that.
Dropped to the floor screaming at the top of her lungs,
absolutely out of control.
When my daughter died, that was it for hope.
After my sister passed away, my mother was never the same.
She went into a black hole for five years.

She felt like it was her fault.
She felt like she never got to say goodbye.
Besides the fact that we were upset that my sister passed away,
we just had to watch our mother just-- She was
broken up so terrible. My house was a very sad house after my
daughter died.
I'm sure I'm the one that made the sadness. Smoking pot took
my mind off all the sadness. My mother was caught
up in her own sadness and depression to even notice that I was
starting to go down that wrong road.
Pop didn't notice anything because he was never around.
I started trying all the hard drugs.
I've tried ecstasy, cocaine, percocets, vicodin, Valium.
I was looking for the fastest and cheapest way to get high and
stay high, and that let me to heroin. I started to
notice he got a lot thinner, dark circles under his eyes.
When Tommy told me that she thought Anthony was on hard
drugs, I didn't believe her.
So she rounded up my family and make me take a drug test.
When I saw the drug test come out positive, I truly felt the
sharpest pain to my heart.

I was just totally devastated. I still wanted to choose something
even though I was on methadone.
You can't really get high on heroin when you're on the
methadone program because the methadone is a blocker,
so I tried coke and I liked it better.
I love it. They said if he had waited five more minutes, he
would've died.
That's what the doctor told me.
If I were to die, that would kill my mother.
She probably would kill herself.
She would not be able to go on anymore.
I miss my daughter very much, and believe it or not, my son is
still here and I miss him so much.
I told him last night how much I miss him.
And he said, I miss you too mommy.
He says, I miss you too.
He says, I want you to be-- I want my old mom back. But I want
my old son back. Anthony.
Come on, it's time for work.
Come on.

What's up?
Anthony, come on.
Don't give me a hard time.
I'm not.
All right, come on, you've got to get a shower.
When I wake up in the morning, my grandma's screaming.
I can't take her voice in the morning.
Anth?
How many times are you going to ask me?
My mornings are always like this because he comes in late and
he can't get up.
I think I do enable my son.
He has his home, and his warm bed, and a shower.
He still lives like a gentleman. He wants me to cook him
something, I do it. We do everything we can for him.
Oh, I didn't give you the milk for your coffee, did I?
What don't they do for him?
He's got the life over there.

He does exactly what he wants.
Whatever he needs, they do.
You want more cereal?
Mm mm.
Here.
Thanks. Got any papers for me?
Yeah, here it is. Have you got Advil or something?
Something for my head.
Motrin. They think that they're helping him, but he's basically
controlling them.
Whoever gets you as a husband is going to-- I love you, see you
later.
--is going to be sorry.
My grandma does a lot of things for me around the house.
OK, drive carefully now.
I don't know if it's fair, but it's helpful. Maybe her workload
should be reduced a little bit, but I like that she's always
active because I think it keeps her going, it keeps her young.
Takes me a while to get up the steps because I have
two metal knees.

I wouldn't like her just to lay around and do nothing, because I
think she would die sooner if she did that.
I think. No, they're not helping him.
In my opinion, they're killing him.
And I tell them that.
My daughter has a very different outlook on drug addiction. To
put him out and not know where he's at, on the
street or in the gutter somewhere, I just can't see that, but that's
what everybody tells us we have to do. I know if I
put my son out of my house, I know it's a death sentence.
I know Anthony will die. Right now, we're going to my
brother's pizzeria in Bricktown, my brother Frederico.
That's where my father works two days a week and I'm going to
go help him out today over there.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I bust my ass.
I work about 70 hours a week.
And it's not like sitting around doing nothing.
I work all day long.

My son Sammy tells me all the time, Pop, he's an excellent
worker.
Zucchini sticks and mussels hot.
Everything he does, he does it to perfection. Sometimes I don't
have days off.
Sometimes I work seven days.
All right, miss.
Have a good day.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I like working though.
I enjoy it and that's my means to get money for drugs, so it
doesn't really bother me. His brothers are enabling
him by giving him a job.
I don't know why they do it. Well, my father asks us, me and my
brothers to help him, to give a job so he doesn't
steal.
I talked them in, begged them to let him go back work. Right
now, he's basically keeping me under control.
He knows that I'll spend too much money and I might kill

myself if I have too much money on me at one time.
He's a part time accountant now.
Pop's got to handle his money, pay his bills, fill his car up with
gas, pay his tickets, give his mother money.
It's like baby sitting a 21-year-old 24 hours a day.
Rub my shoulder, man.
I'm hurt.
I'm sore, man.
Oh, man, hurting.
In a certain sense, I do like how concerned my father is about
me.
My father never paid much attention to me before the drugs.
What time did you go home last time?
I got home 2:00.
2:00?
All right. I went to bed about 2:30, I got seven hours of sleep.
Woke up at 9:30.
Now I definitely have his attention.
I guess it took his son almost losing his life and becoming a
drug addict to really show how much he loved him.

You can't skip one night?
I can.
Well, why don't you do it one night?
Well, why don't you do it one night?
Give everybody a rest. Always got to worry about where you are
and if you'd ever come home.
Look at your eyes, they're all black.
I work every day.
That's what I'm saying.
You don't even give me a day off.
I've got to come around and work here.
This takes my day off.
I can't even work. Pops definitely has pain in his chest and his
heart is broken that his youngest son has this
problem, and it brothers me. That makes me feel sad, but I'm
just glad that he does love me.
I feel very, very depressed.
I know it's getting close to the time that he's going to leave, and
I'm going to be very, very worried.

I'll call you.
You're making me worried, bro.
It's making me feel bad.
Are you all right, or what?
What's wrong?
I want you to maybe go home early.
You don't hurt right here, right?
Have you got a pain?
Yeah.
I feel sick because I don't know where you're going and when
you're coming home.
I don't even want to go anywhere then.
I don't even want to leave you then.
You make me feel bad.
I don't want you to have a heart attack.
Are you all right?
Why are you so worried?

You never worried like this before.
I don't want you to stay out there because I don't know what's
happening.
I don't know if you're going to die out there.
Why don't I go home, I'll call you when I get home? I love you
Pop, all right?
Don't worry too much, all right?
All right.
Don't worry.
All right.
I love you.
See you later.
Come home early.
All right.
Love you, Pop. Pop, man, he's killing me right now.
I don't know, man.
He was crushed.
I don't know, he looked so-- I don't know.

I really didn't like that look that he had on his face tonight.
Seriously, that really-- I felt that in here.
I'm a man, and I don't like to cry in front of people. I cry inside.
I don't want them to look at me crying. I dread the nights I wait
for Anthony to come in.
Sometimes he doesn't come home, and I cannot sleep.
I know he's out there. It's 1:00, a little after 1:00.
I'm really starting to get nervous.
I'm so consumed with saving my son that I don't think of
anything else. It's 2:00 in the morning.
That's him. Aw man, she's going to freak out like a bitch. And I
do this every night. Oh man.
What's up, mom? What are you still doing up?
Am I not up every time you walk in that door? I have to get up
at 5:00 and go to work.
I don't know.
I don't know if I can go like this.
I can't take it anymore, Anthony.
I can't believe that you let your mother do this every single
night.
Every single night you don't even try, Anthony.

You don't even try a little bit.
You don't even try one night not to do something.
I'm not going to explain what I do. Jesus Christ.
Aw man.
I really can't take it anymore.
Can I go to sleep or what?
You had your fun for the night? I'm aggravated. Even when he
is home, I cannot sleep.
I check three or four times I go in and look, and I always look
to see that Anthony's breathing, that the covers are
moving. I can't bear to lose another child to drugs. It's hard for
me to imagine how hard it must be for Anthony's
mom to consider that she might have put Anthony out, but I
think she needs to do it.
And I'm concerned that she follows her bottom line if we have
to go there.
Here's the deal.
As soon as his problem becomes his problem, the odds go off
that he's going to get help.
Because right now, he gets to have the problem and you get to

pay the pain and consequences.
He's handed his life to everybody else, and you've picked it up,
and then we're all scratching out heads.
Why doesn't this guy change?
He doesn't have to change.
But now he does.
See, that's done.
That's over.
We're not doing that anymore.
Tomorrow, we're going to hand him back his life and a solution.
If he doesn't know, what does that mean for you?
For me?
Well, he works for me, so I'm going to tell him that he can't
work for me anymore.
OK.
Same here.
He will not be around my family or around me.
OK, what about you?

No car, no money.
All right, mom.
How do you feel about this?
I think, naturally, I have this fear that I'll put Anthony out of
my life and then he'll die.
I don't doubt that you know that you probably, if it comes to it,
are going to have to put him out.
I will do it.
If I think that's the only way that I'm going to be able to save
my son, I will do it. Sorry.
Tomorrow, when you're reading your letter, if you start crying,
don't apologize. OK?
This is a cryable event.
I've spent too many years crying.
I've disrupted my entire family. I've made life unbearable for
people.
Well, I suspect you're being harder on you than they would be.
Look at me.
You don't have to hide when you're crying.
You don't.
Don't hang your head.

Don't feel ashamed of crying.
You know why you keep crying all the time?
You never finish.
There's probably things with your daughter that you wish you
could say, but after tomorrow, you're not going to
wish you could say anything to him.
I know.
I know that's going to be so different. I'm ready. Oh my god, am
I nervous. Oh man, everybody's in there.
Oh. What's up? Listen.
We're really concerned about you.
We tried to help, but we all failed.
Mr. Van Vonderen here is going to help the family.
All right.
All right?
Yeah.
How are you doing?
Jeff.

What's up?
Nice to meet you.
You too.
Hey, sit over here.
What's up, Angelo?
What's up Anth?
How are you doing?
Good to see you, man.
What's up, Tommy?
How are you doing?
What's up, Freddy?
Well, Anthony, actually I've been here since yesterday and
spent quite a bit of time with these guys.
And I know you don't need me to tell you this, but they love you
like crazy.
But they feel like they're losing you and they want to fight to
get you back.
So this is inviting you to join the fight.
That's all.

Cool?
Mom, you can go first.
Anthony.
I'm here today to tell you how very much I love you.
The day you were born was the start of a new and exciting
adventure for me.
I have many wonderful memories.
When you walked little Danny Petrone home from school
because the older boys were picking on him.
Your first baseball game in the fourth grade.
Also, your last Little League game when you hit a home run and
we won the championship.
I remember your friend Chris was so ill and needed a kidney,
and you told his father if you could, you would give
him one of yours.
How you wanted your sister to meet Angelo because you wanted
him in the family, and Tommy to have a good
life.
A great memory of us walking to the beach and having breakfast
and reading the newspaper.
You had the sports.

Sometimes we would read our books in bed before we fell
asleep.
Yours was Goosebumps.
Now our times are spent being nasty, yelling, crying. Spending
time in the hospital for bad reactions to drugs.
Anthony.
Your addiction to drugs has resulted in my own addiction.
I'm so occupied with your destructive way of life, I've allowed
myself to be swallowed up in grief and despair.
I've become angry, bitter, and incredibly sad.
I bring nothing positive to the rest of the family or myself.
I'm asking you today to please accept the offer of help.
Just like the day in Little League you hit a home run, today is
the time to hit another home run and to take the
opportunity for help. Will you please accept help today? Yeah, I
accept it.
Yeah?
Yeah, definitely.
You want to know what the plan is?

Yeah.
I'm going to the airport, Newark Airport.
I'm going to the airport today?
Yeah.
I'm not going to work.
No.
OK, where am I going?
Southern California.
A place called Pacific Hills.
Before you go there, you're going to go to a place called Pat
Moore Foundation, which is a safe medical detox to
get you off all that stuff.
Great.
And that's the plan.
Awesome.
Thank you.
You're welcome. You can hug him now. I'll miss you, man.
Good choice.

I'm glad you're going.
I appreciate it.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, me too.
I miss you.
I miss you too.
I'm proud of you.
I miss you.
I love you. All right.
Let's go, let's do it. All right mom.
I love you, sweetheart.
Do well.
Love you.
This is a home run for you.
I got you.
I got you this time. I love you Pop, all right?
Pop's going to add some years back onto his life the couple

months I leave, right?
I mean, he's got to get old.
Huh?
I miss you.
I miss you too, I know.
I love you, Pop.
Tonight I will actually sleep in my bed the first time in six
months.
I love you, Ma.
See you later.
I feel such great relied and I know that he's safe. Anthony?
Yeah, how are you doing?
I'm Debbie, nice to meet you.
I'm glad you're here. How are you doing?
Nice to meet you.
I'm the program director here at Pacific Hills.
Nice to meet you.
I'm not afraid for myself in anyway, but I am worried about my
mother back home, and my family.

Anthony he has a great deal of care about his mother and his
grandmother, and that has the potential to draw him
out of treatment here.
So what we'll try to help them see is that he is of absolutely no
use to them if he continues on the road he's on. I
feel confident.
It's like starting over.
I really might not go back.
Maybe to see my mom and stuff.
Maybe I'll bring them out here and live. I begged him not to
bring him home.
He chose to bring him home. I've been screwing up a lot since I
got back.
Good times. All back to the same thing. He promised that if I--
you know, pop, if you give me back, I promise you,
I'll with you and I'll go straight.
I ain't doing drugs right now.
I'm OK. I was off the heroin for like two, three months.
I thought I was strong enough to do it again and it wouldn't get
me.

But, you know, wrong as usual. He manipulates his father.
His father believes everything he says, and then he goes and
gets him a car on top of everything else when he
knew Anthony was doing drugs.
I'm not the type of person to say I told you so, but I almost want
to scream it.
I feel really frustrated.
Frustrated with everybody.
And really not so much Anthony, but everybody else. I invited
Anthony to have Christmas dinner with me because
he had no place to have Christmas dinner.
Nothing changed.
I wonder the day we did the pre-intervention and the
intervention if anybody else was in that room or heard what
was supposed to be done.
They refuse to get help and they think that Anthony's the only
one with a problem when, in fact, they have a ton of
issues themselves to deal with.
But they don't see it that way. Right now, all my life is about
this next high, because I'm not in a happy place when
I'm not. So I'm doing like six, seven, eight bags in a day. Every
day is getting worse, and worse, and worse.

My life know is miserable again. I'm disappointing everybody
and anybody. Everybody who's had hope of me, I've
crushed all their hope. It's very discouraging, but it's me that's
doing it all. I made the wrong decision.
I'm really upset about this, but I did it because I thought I was
going to help him. It didn't work. Sometimes it takes
a relapse to catapult people into the program.
You've got to come out and stay for a while.
That's what you've got to do.
I'm an addict.
I lived in a program for a year.
And it takes that long.
And you might go up and down and up and down, but you've got
to take some direction.
Prescott's a great recovery camp.
Real different.
Anything I've got to do.
I want to make my family happy.
They deserve it.

So you're ready.
I'm ready.
All right.
I'm ready.
I came along way to get you.
Thank you.
You're welcome. Thank you for everything, Pop.
This time you don't come back, and maybe get better.
All right?
Huh?
Yeah.
All right.
I don't want to leave you.
I know, but you have to.
What are you going to do?
All right?
You did everything to help me.

Thank you.
I tried.
I love you so much.
I love you too, Anth. How are you feeling, Anthony? I don't
know.
Kind of happy, but I feel bad for my father.
The only reason he ever brought me back is he thought he was
helping me.
Yeah, but I bet he won't do that again. If his parents will get
some help, Anthony's recovery process will be easier,
but if he can get on the phone and call mom and dad and get
them to enable him again, they might as well send
him a syringe.
You know what I say.
You've got to give your parents a break.
It's time to man up.
You've got to do this.
You've just got to do it, and they need to go learn how to take
care of themselves.

I always say, if we could get the parents in treatment, we might
stand a chance.
That's the truth.
Yeah. I think there'll be some challenges in here in dealing with
Anthony.
He's sweet, he's adorable, but he's the kind of guy that might
steal your wallet and help you look for it.
My hope and my prayer for Anthony is that he gets down to his
core issues, because if he doesn't, he's not going
to make it. What do I hope for myself?
I hope six months from now I'm still here, and clean, and
basically have got a new life for myself. This concern
with changing my ways.
Let's hope I can do it.
[MUSIC - THE DAVENPORTS, "FIVE STEPS"]

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