On Thursday, Anita Devlin told the audience her son entered Barnstable High School as a freshman with a shoulder injury that left him in a sling.
“A guy approached my son like a moth and asked if he had any pain medicine,” she said.
That gave Michael the idea to take opiates recreationally, leading to years of addiction that culminated with him sitting in a bathtub at a Vermont motel, popping pills and waiting to die. A text from his mother that day may have saved his life, he said.
“I was a very busy mother who was busy talking (judgmentally) about everyone else’s children and the worst part is my son heard it all,” Anita said. “I wonder if he didn’t come to me because he was worried about my judgment.”