Spiraling down
Home early from work one day last June, Dave picked up a letter in the mail from Allegheny County’s court system, one Tyler probably hoped to intercept himself. Their oldest had been caught in possession of heroin.
“It was devastating,” Betsy said. “You can’t even imagine. I believe I just fell to my knees, because what else do you do? You can’t even comprehend that someone you gave birth to, that someone you have raised to the best of your abilities, chose to do something so harmful.”
From there, it was about trying to get him help. It was about trying to keep that burden from his younger brother, Zach, about concealing it from friends, family, the world.
Dave and Betsy have some regrets about the first steps they took with Tyler — “hovering” is how his mother puts it now. Endless questioning every day was their natural response as parents. Confiscating his cell phone seemed to make sense, but only secluded him more. Looking back, they’d react differently in some ways, but they never stopped loving him and did the best they could.
“It was a tough year,” Dave said. “A long year.” Soon enough, it was Zach’s burden, too. The brothers were home alone last year when Zach noticed Tyler had been in his room for a long time. Zach went upstairs, and the door was locked. He pounded on it, telling Tyler to answer, but got nothing. Finally, he picked the lock and went in. Tyler was hunched over on the other side of his bed, barely able to pick up his head and look over at Zach when he shouted his name.
“He had no idea where he was,” Zach remembered. “Me, I felt like I gave up on him at that point. … I think I called him a dumbass, said some other choice words to him. I went over and shook him, he looked up at me, and I was mad.”
Zach didn’t actually see his brother with a needle that day, but he didn’t have to. At the time, maybe he was too naive to admit that it was heroin that put his brother in that stupor. Soon enough, it was a scene he saw over and over again — one he can’t get out of his mind.
“I had seen him do so many things that it was just like, ‘How can you keep doing this to yourself, knowing that we care about you, and you’re going to lock yourself in your room and do this?’ ” Zach asked. “It wasn’t him. It was the drugs that made him do that. It was hard to talk about, then I realized we had to talk about it.”
The Challingsworth brothers were never ones to have deep, thoughtful conversations. They’d call each other up and talk about Zach’s Pitt games, sure, but never any substantial one-on-one discussions, just brother to brother. At least not until Zach realized the magnitude of what Tyler was up against.
First, it was anger. Not so much at his brother, but at his parents for keeping his secret. Zach didn’t talk to them for about a month, a decision he now calls stupid because he could’ve been trying to help in that time.
“We wanted to protect Zach,” Betsy said.
And that came from Tyler. He was embarrassed, worried his brother would think less of him. The first few times Zach broached the subject with him, he lied about it. Eventually, he couldn’t lie anymore. Zach went online to find the drug charges, the DUI, and showed them to Tyler, who couldn’t explain away his criminal record.
Once Zach fully realized what was happening at home, he made some sacrifices. He stepped away from football, in large part to spend more time with Tyler and his parents. Eventually, he decided he was done for good, getting a job instead of pursuing a final season of eligibility at Pitt or elsewhere.