He listened to Eminem. He thought Dave Chappelle was hilarious. He loved to skateboard. He always knew how to make someone else smile.
That’s how Dillon Paice’s sister wants him to be remembered. Not as the person he was when he was high or the way he died.
“When I say extraordinary, I truly mean it. I know people use it more than they should, but Dillon was truly extraordinary. He had a heart of gold, he always put others before himself, which I think is kind of how he ended up where he is now,” Megan Paice, 26, said.
Her brother Dillon died of a heroin overdose in October at the age of 23. His addiction took a toll on their relationship.
“When I found out about what he was going through, I tried to be as supportive as I could but I got tired of seeing him high because it was just too sad,” she said. “I stopped going home, I stopped talking to him, I would send him a text every couple of days.”
And she always told him “I love you.”
But she said it was painful to see this person she loved when she didn’t recognize him.
“I mean it changes everything, addiction it kills your spirit, it kills your personality, it turns you into a person that you don’t necessarily want to be or even be around,” Megan Paice said.
Community in Crisis: Chasing the High, an in-depth look at the heroin problem in Maryland, airs Thursday at 7 p.m. on ABC2 News.
She feels her brother resented her for distancing herself from him.
It wasn’t always that way, though.
“He actually told me a couple years ago how it got started,” she said.
Megan Paice, who lives in Middle River, explained her brother got into some trouble before turning 18 and was put on probation, which involved drug testing.
“He would smoke pot every once in a while, and because he couldn’t smoke pot anymore, he would take Percocets because they would get out of his system faster,” she said.
She said eventually the Percocet wasn’t enough to get him high anymore.
“Then he started with OxyContin, and just this past spring that’s when he started heroin,” Megan Paice said.
He went to rehab twice, then relapsed.
Megan, meanwhile, took a course on addiction through the treatment center Father Martin’s Ashley to learn as much as she could. She encouraged her family to put into practice what she had learned from that program.
“When he came into my apartment, I loved when he would come over, but I couldn’t leave medicine out because I didn’t know if he would take it,” she said, “There was no intent to hurt me, but he was an addict.”
She remembers him detoxing on her couch for two days and they got to talking about the changes he wanted to make in his life.
“I looked at him and I said, ‘Dillon, I’m serious, I can’t lose you.’ He told me ‘Megan, I’m done. If I got high again it would be insulting to you and to mom.’ He meant it. He wasn’t messing with me,” she said. “He went home that night and got high. That’s how easy it is for an addict. If you’re not in a program with someone who really understands you, more than likely you’re going to get high.”
The day before he died, he showed up at their mom’s house high.
“He called, it was the last time he spoke to me, and he asked me for the number for rehab,” she said.
He told her he wanted to be himself again, and it was the first time that rehab had truly been his idea.
“I think he went out on one last binge, which a lot of addicts do, you know one last hurrah before you get clean and his body couldn’t take it,” Megan Paice said.
She said she takes comfort in knowing that her family did everything they could to help. She said her mother always stood by him.
One of the things that bothers her most now, though, is trying to remember the details of their last conversation.
“I can’t remember with our last conversation if I said I love you or not, I can’t remember. I think that’s the one thing that bothers me the most. That I can’t remember if I said I love you when I got off the phone. I usually would have, and he knew that anyway, but that’s really the only thing,” she said.
She takes comfort in memories.
After he died, she found videos on his phone of him laughing, smiling and dancing – he loved to dance. Friends shared videos and photos with her, too. She combined those into one and she watches it every day (see condensed version above).
She said it helps her feel like he’s still with her.
“Truthfully I don’t even really blame Dillon. He fell to a disease that is taking so many people from their friends, their family,” Megan Paice said.
Instead of dwelling on the disease, she is reminded of his smiling face, his love for playing sports, the time he taught their mom how to nae nae, his volunteering, his ability to make others laugh when they were sobbing and the little things that made him the brother she loved.
“To a family I would say don’t give up, and as hard as it is – because it is not easy – be there for them because they will need you. At some point they will need you,” she said. “Every moment that they’re not high, savor it, never forget it because I can tell you every story of him not being high in at least the past year. I could tell you every day he wasn’t high because I had my brother back.”
Photos and video provided by Megan Paice and the friends and family of Dillon Paice.
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