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This article is part of an ongoing New Bedford Light series examining the far-reaching impacts of addiction.
Pam Clarkson’s happy memories of her firstborn son Randy are encapsulated in a specific time frame. When she thinks back, she pictures him as a shy little toddler growing up in their old farmhouse in the countryside of Westport. She can see him riding his dirt bike up and down the fields, or just a little older, having fun mowing the grass with big tractors and playing paintball with his school friends all dressed in camouflage outfits.
But as Randy reaches 16 years in Clarkson’s memories, the happy moments start to fade. More precisely, they halt on the day Randy tore his anterior cruciate ligament while playing football with friends after school.
Clarkson recalls the doctors at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston reassuring her, saying it was a very common injury. After the surgery, they prescribed Randy two weeks of oxycodone.
All the years that followed, Clarkson said, seem like a blur. It’s as if everything gets mushed together — Randy’s overdoses, the stigma, the guilt, the helplessness. “After that injury, everything changed,” Clarkson said. “That was his turning point.”
Over a decade later, at 30, Randy Clarkson died of fentanyl poisoning in his room at his mother’s house. The medical examiner’s report also showed the presence of marijuana and Xanax, Clarkson said.
Since he was a child, Randy dreamed of becoming an Air Force pilot. “Like the true perfectionist he was,” Clarkson said, he would spend hours assembling piece by piece the engine parts of remote-controlled airplanes. Then he would go out into the fields, get them off the ground, and watch them fly.
The knee injury struck Randy’s ambitions. “He realized he wouldn’t be able to join the Air Force,” said Clarkson. “He got kind of depressed. I think the opioids were the way he numbed himself.”
When doctors started to wean him off the oxycodone, Randy told them he still needed the medication for the pain, said Clarkson. Doctors refilled the prescription at least three times, she said.
Randy’s personality shifted, she said. He started spending more time in his room, isolating himself. When he couldn’t get oxycodone anymore, he began buying Percocet pills, his mother said. Anxiety set in and Randy found a primary care provider who prescribed him Xanax, his mother said.
It took a while for Clarkson and her husband to realize their son was getting addicted to medications. “He was embarrassed to admit it,” Clarkson said. “He wouldn’t talk about it with anyone.” Stigma, Clarkson said she believes, is what kept Randy from seeking counseling and help.
One day, Clarkson remembers, she heard noises coming from downstairs and found Randy passed out. She later learned that her son had overdosed by mixing the medications. “I said ‘this is it. We got to get him somewhere to get help,’” Clarkson said.
Because her son had refused help so many times, she decided to take matters into her own hands. Clarkson went to the Fall River court and petitioned for an emergency mental health commitment for Randy, she said. “They placed him in a program for three months in Plymouth.”
Clarkson said she heard stories about how dangerous it is for someone to use drugs after a detox program due to the low tolerance. She said Randy began taking Xanax again after his time in Plymouth.
Randy died a few weeks after he returned home from Plymouth. Clarkson was at work, assisting the elderly as a caretaker in Rhode Island, when she checked her phone. There were 22 missed calls and a text message from her husband. “Call me right away. There has been an overdose.”
Clarkson raced home, driving anxiously while attempting to operate the phone to call her husband back, without success. When she eventually arrived, police cars in the driveway confirmed her worst fears.
Randy’s death wasn’t the first close loss Clarkson experienced. Only eight months prior, her sister Catherine Oliveira and her brother-in-law David Oliveira were killed in a motorcycle accident in New Hampshire. Clarkson said she hadn’t yet overcome the grief of her sister’s death when suddenly, Randy’s passing overshadowed everything.
“When you experience multiple deaths in a row, you are not sure who to grieve more or first or last,” said Clarkson. “Now I feel like I just keep going, one foot in front of the other.”
Clarkson said she recalls that hours before he died, Randy cooked dinner for everyone and went to sleep. She used to knock on his door to say goodnight, but that night, for some reason, she didn’t.
“Maybe I would have been able to save him, but that’s just a mother’s wish,” said Clarkson. “We kinda think we can save our children, but then we find out that they really need to save themselves. Because we are not God.”
Email Eleonora Bianchi at ebianch@newbedfordlight.org
Emotional read. In consolation, I would say Clarkson did all she could to keep Randy. But life happens.