‘He had so much hope for the future’: B.C. mother describes son’s struggle with addiction before overdose

TORONTO -- Less than 24 hours after her son Morgan told her he loved her over the phone, Kathleen Radu got a second call -this one to tell her that Morgan had died of a lethal overdose. In the month of June alone, there were 177 illicit drug toxicity deaths in British Columbia, eclipsing a record set only one month earlier.

Morgan Goodridge, who died only a week after his birthday, is just one face behind that grim statistic. But to his family, he meant the world. “He was an incredible kid,” Radu told CTV News. “He was always full of energy, always really excited about what he was doing. He just always lit up a room, he always made friends super easily.” Goodridge had struggled with addiction for a few years, but at the time of his death, the 26-year-old had been clean for five months, and was living in second-stage housing with a non-profit organization.

“It was the best we had seen him,” Radu said. “He had so much hope for the future. He had just got a new car and was starting a new job. Life seemed really positive for him.”Goodridge’s struggle started before August 2018, but that was when his family got their first “crash course in addiction,” Radu said. That summer, the then-24-yearold had begun to use heroin, and three weeks in, he suffered septic shock, which almost killed him.

“We didn’t realize how bad his drug use was, and that he had hidden it from us for a long time,” Radu said. While they had been aware that he had sometimes used “party drugs,” they didn’t know that in his fight with addiction, he had crossed over into using harder drugs. “Now I realize that here is really no line anymore because of the toxicity of the drugs that are on the streets,” Radu said. Goodridge spent 60 days in a recovery program, but relapsed again only nine days after leaving the program.

His family was right there for him.

“With the support of family and friends, we were able to get him back on the right track every time he relapsed,” Radu said. Over the course of 23 months, Morgan relapsed five times.

“We know that relapse is part of recovery. The average person will relapse seven to 12 times,” Radu said. “Morgan didn’t make it to that.”

The night before Goodridge relapsed for the sixth time, Radu had spoken to him on the phone. He had been excited, she said, about a camera he bought for his birthday. He had been taking night photos with it.

“We had a great chat,” she said. “He said, `I love you.’ I told him I love him.”

The next morning, Radu texted her son. He didn’t respond.“I got a call at 4:00 that afternoon -- 4:03, actually,” she said.

She thought the call would be about another relapse. And it was. But this time, the unthinkable had happened. “Somewhere in the course of that morning, he relapsed,” she said. “And unfortunately it was a toxic dose of fentanyl. He died pretty instantly.”

Health officials have grown increasingly concerned about the toxicity of drugs in B.C. and Canada as a whole. Chief coroner Lisa Lapointe said in a statement in July that the “drug supply in our province is highly toxic,” and that statistics showed a number of drug users were dying because their supply had been laced with extremely high levels of fentanyl.