FORT FAIRFIELD, Maine — After Lisa Betancourth’s son, Andrew Mallett died of a drug overdose on April 1, 2017, she was motivated to speak out and raise awareness about the opioid crisis.
She has spoken since at various gatherings locally, but after joining an online support group, Betancourth decided several weeks ago to write a letter to U.S. President Donald Trump. In it, she expressed her grief not only about the loss of her 21-year-old son to an overdose of fentanyl at a Limestone party, but also to express her pain about the continued loss of other people’s children.
She said she was “shocked” when she received a response in late July.
Trump wrote, “I am so terribly sorry to hear of the loss of your son, Andrew. Melania and I send our prayers to you and your family.”
Lisa Betancourth, whose son Andrew “Peaches” Mallett, overdosed on fentanyl on April 1, 2017, wrote a letter several weeks ago to U.S. President Donald Trump about his death and the opioid crisis. She received a response from the president the week of July 23. (Courtesy of Lisa Betancourth)
Betancourth said during an interview on July 27 that she had wanted the president, “to know about the pain I am feeling about this ongoing crisis. This is an ongoing epidemic that is robbing parents of their children when they are in the prime of their lives. It is heartbreaking and frightening and more must be done” to curb the drug problem and help addicts.
Mallet was at a party in Limestone when Betancourth got a call from her son’s phone. She was horrified, however, when the caller turned out to be a friend of her son’s who was contacting her to say, “Your son has taken an overdose.”
Emergency personnel responded but were unable to save her son, who was dead by the time she arrived at the Limestone residence.
Mallet, called “Peaches’ by family members, had struggled with mental illness since he was a young child, but did well on prescription medications, according to Betancourth. When he was a teenager, however, he began experimenting with marijuana and progressed to using cocaine, methamphetamine and opiates. He sought treatment for his addiction in 2013 while he was still under 18 and succeeded for a while. But then he stopped taking his prescribed medications when he turned 18 and eventually suffered a relapse, according to his mother. He tried off and on again to stay away from illegal drugs and actually had gone through a five month period of sobriety up until about two weeks before the overdose, she said.
“I told the president Andrew’s story and sent a picture of my son,” she said. “I let him know that my son needed treatment and he was on a waiting list for six months for treatment, but my son didn’t make it six months. He didn’t have that time. And that is not an unusual story here in Maine. We need more treatment centers and we need more funding for treatment centers.”
She said that Trump responded by thanking her for sharing her story and noted that “too many of our fellow Americans are losing their lives to opioid abuse.”
“My administration is fighting this on all fronts,” he wrote. “Together we will face this … We will overcome this addiction in America.”
Betancourth said that she was satisfied with the response and would continue to tell her son’s story in an effort to effect change.
“His death should not be in vain,” she said.
