Lost to addiction: Bourne High grad Justin Chase

BOURNE — It’s been more than two months since Justin Chase, 28, died of a heroin overdose, and his family is still in shock.

Until his death, Chase, a Bourne High School graduate, looked healthy, continued to work as an insulator, never losing his charming and cheerful personality, according to his older sisters.

Jessica Cardoza, a nurse in Boston, and Julie Parrott, also a nurse living in Long Island, New York, both said they see heroin-addicted patients every day. But their brother never looked like that.

“Honestly, I didn’t even know he was on heroin,” Parrott said.

When you are living your life, it’s easy to ignore the warnings, Cardoza said. And with addiction, even heroin addiction, the signs often are not obvious.

“I just wish there was more information about how many normal people are doing heroin,” Parrott said.

When family members confronted Chase about abusing prescription painkillers, he told them he could handle it on his own.

“And unfortunately, we accepted that,” Cardoza said.

On August 6, Chase’s mother, Linda Redman, of Buzzards Bay, found his body in the house they shared.

“I thought he was asleep,” she said.

Redman says she still cries often and has trouble leaving the house. She remains out of work on disability and worries she won’t be able to maintain her composure in public. She doesn’t want anyone to be judgmental.

“He was a kind kid,” Redman said. “That’s what hurts the most. Some people thought of him as a junkie. You get judged and it kills me.”

Chase played basketball and was a sensitive, laid-back person, she said.

After high school, he attended Dean College, Cape Cod Community College and Massasoit Community College.

Like so many people caught up in the nation’s opioid epidemic, Chase’s addiction began with a prescription for the opiate-based painkiller, oxycodone. Doctors prescribed the drug after he struck another car head-on on Quinaquisset Avenue in Mashpee.

Chase, then 17 and in high school, was severely injured in the crash. His jaw was wired shut and he had to have steel rods put in his body. He missed two months of school.

The accident left him scarred emotionally as well, Redman said.

“It was always eating at him,” she added.

After his death, family members found two full notebooks in which he wrote poetry and perhaps rap lyrics that detailed his despair over his addiction and grief over the drug-related deaths of his other friends.

“He knew he was killing himself and hurting his mother,” Cardoza said.

At one point following the death of a friend, Chase wrote that he wished he would also die to end his suffering, Cardoza said.

While many had no idea of his struggle, in fact the last months of his life were consumed by trying to get sober.

“I know he tried, it’s just a horrible disease,” Redman said. “It (drug use) was a choice in the beginning. But then it becomes a disease.”

Several months before his death, Chase fell asleep at the wheel while driving and the police found marijuana in his car, Redman said.

He lost his license, and was ordered by the court to attend substance abuse classes. At some point during the classes, the instructor made him take a drug test. When he tested positive for opiates, Chase entered Gosnold on Cape Cod’s detox unit. After a week, his insurance ran out and he had to leave treatment, Redman said.

Redman picked him up at the detox and he told her in the parking lot, “I’m not ready yet.”

Redman took him to her doctor where he received a prescription for Vivitrol, a monthly injection that blocks the effects of opiates such as oxycodone and heroin.

He stayed on Vivitrol for four months, Redman said.

After about two months, he told his mom how much better life was without having to spend all his time waiting for a dealer.

But then when he felt better, he didn’t want to use Vivitrol anymore.

“My doctor and I told him to stay on it,” Redman said.

He died less than a month after going off the medication, she added.

If she could say something to her brother now, Parrott would ask: “Why? Why couldn’t you ask for help and apply yourself in a different way? Why did you have to do this to yourself when you knew it would hurt your family?”