LOUISVILLE, Ky. — As many University of Louisville fans were celebrating the basketball team's 2013 national championship, Arlene Rice remembers April 8 for other, unfortunate reasons.
"I didn't know how to help Gabriel. I didn't know how to help him," she told WHAS11.
Her 31-year-old son Gabriel overdosed on a mixture of alcohol and heroin. He spent four days in a coma and died in her arms.
"I never thought that it could happen in my family," Rice said.
The likelihood of dying from a drug overdose has now surpassed your chances of dying from a car crash, according to a new report from the National Safety Council.
"We often times see the same patient back in multiple times in the course of a day or in a 24 hour period with multiple overdoses," said Dr. James Frazier.
He's the vice president of medical affairs for Norton Healthcare. He's working to reverse that trend, or at least slow it down. He's pursuing federal grant dollars to start a project with healthcare providers and the state to allow patients to go straight to therapy after sobering up.
"They would then literally be walked over to a treatment center that day where they would be admitted for treatment," he explained.
It's promising news to Rice, who says Gabriel wasn't given that option. When he first overdosed in 2010, he was sent home from the hospital. "He stumbled out of the ER with me holding him up even though I had asked for help," she said.
Rice is now starting her own outreach program to help families - and mothers like her - who lost a child to addiction. She's becoming an advocate for her son. "I do it in his name, to keep his name on my lips. But, also to let people that they there's hope and it doesn't have to end up that way," Rice said.
Rice started the 'Gabriel Project 930' in honor of her son. She is also part of the 'Citizens Attacking Addiction' non-profit. For more information, you can call (502) 219 - 2599 or (502) 625 - 6163.