This image is meant to be confronting.
A mum has shared a picture of her teenaged son who overdosed on heroin in an attempt to raise awareness of drug addiction.
The before and after image of 18-year-old Brayden Travis has gone viral after Kelly Smith-Miller posted it on Facebook along with a warning to parents.
“I share this with each of you in hopes that you won’t feel pity or be offended, but rather share and get these pictures in front of your teenagers, she writes.
“Don’t be scared to share the horrific outcome of what most likely will happen when using heroin! It’s not the only drug that will kill you either.”
Kelly says her son has struggled with drug addiction since he was 15 years old. He went into a coma after he OD. She described the incident on Facebook alongside the image.
My son is an addict and has struggled with drugs since he was 15 years old. My son’s first choice of drug was marijuana, which in time led to other drugs. The ultimate dead end road drug for my son was heroin, as is for a lot of teens/adults. He used last Wednesday at some point in the night and overdosed from a very deadly cocktail of heroin & Xanax. Heroin alone will kill you, as well as Xanax. He laid for at least 7 hours or longer before he received medical attention due to no one calling 911, possibly in fear of suspected consequences. Medical personnel believe my son should have been dead long before he was able to get the medical attention he needed, but for some unknown reason he has stabilized. His lungs and kidneys had failed and his heart was functioning at 10-20%. His body temperature was 90 degrees and was very cold to the touch. Brayden ended up with severe pneumonia from aspirating. I was told by two doctors he wouldn’t make it through the night. Brayden has pulled through all of it besides the damage to his brain. While overdosing and in nonresponsive state, Brayden suffered a stroke. He has experienced severe damage to the Hipocampus and Cerebellum parts of his brain.
Doctors have reported Brayden is now awake and breathing on his own although he suffered a stroke and now has severe brain damage.
Do you think sharing this image will help warn teenagers away from drugs?
Top Comments
How very sad.My heart goes out to the family.
But posting these pictures won't stop anyone from using drugs,which is also very sad.
Spot on. The people inclined to this type of thing are very, very lost. Lost in this world. Lost in themselves. In my experience, they tend to be extremely shallow and vulnerable to the superficialities which are almost entirely consuming. Especially that far-away glassy-eyed look of seduction which is celebrated as some kind of look to aspire to (seen on too many models, selfies, come-hither commercials and the ridiculous duck-face pout etc) when all I see is ugliness. They, and many, do not. Unfortunately, I think this scene (the picture) does absolutely nothing to or for the drug takers/users/junkies of society. They simply believe they will not fall into the level of depravity which drug use inevitably leads to. I am anguished over the fact that it is a billion dollar industry and the reason nothing serious will ever be done to fix the situation. Mostly because no one is interested in getting to the heart of the issue.
"Do you think sharing this image will help warn teenagers away from drugs?"
Not really, no. It's only going to scare away the teenagers that are already unlikely to touch those drugs to start with.
Based on personal experiences and teenagers I currently know, I think many teenagers would likely look at those photos and just scoff, maybe have a laugh, depending on how callous or desensitised they've become and either ignore it and/or go back to smoking weed and whatever drugs they're currently experimenting with. I think one of the biggest problems with underage drug addiction is that scare tactics don't work on teenagers, they're not-yet-fully developed brains think they're invincible/infallible and therefore these warnings wont apply to them.
Example:
One teenager I know claims he can speed at +100km/h anywhere because he "knows where ALL the cops are" yes, quite literally *all* the cops, at *all* times. It doesn't matter if you explain to him (till you're blue in the face) that even the police don't know where all the other police are at all times. In his underdeveloped brain, he thinks he knows it all.
It's horrific what this mother has had to watch her son go through and it's equally tragic what this boy has done to himself.