'Do something': Those who lost loved ones to overdose, addiction gather for support

In the twilight Friday in Alexandria City Park, families held photos of their loved ones lost to overdoses and addictions while telling their tales and supporting each other.

Two mothers talked about their 17-year-old daughters, both of them overdosing while trying to cope with their mental illnesses. A husband warned it’s not just drugs that kill, sharing that his wife died from inhaling fumes from aerosol products. Multiple people shared how they lost their husbands, daughters or sons to overdoses on different substances.

They were attending the Moonlight Memorial sponsored by Millie Mattered Overdose and Addiction Advocacy, a nonprofit that started five years ago when founder Lilly Harvey lost her daughter, Lillie “Millie” Harvey, to a fentanyl overdose in the same park.

No one was doing much advocacy around the fentanyl epidemic at that time, Harvey said. It was just beginning “to show its ugly face when I first lost my daughter,” she said.

“We didn’t know at that time that fentanyl could be in anything and everything.”

She considers herself fortunate that the dealer who sold the drugs to her daughter and then fiancé, Matthew Chase Dauzat, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to prison. People began reaching out to her to ask her how she was able to get that justice, but Harvey credits God instead of any of her actions.

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When she agreed to be interviewed by a USA Today Network reporter, she later realized her daughter’s death was one of the few instances where prosecutors were able to get a conviction in the South. She told of how she became friends with the prosecutor who worked out that deal, the late Rapides Parish Assistant District Attorney Brian Mosley.

Mosley died in March of esophageal cancer, and his widow spoke to the group about how much he loved the community and those like Harvey and the families who have lost loved ones.

“He loved people, and all he wanted to do was help,” said Susan Mosley, who works for the Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office. “He knew that people needed second and third and fourth chances. He understood that because he also understood that he needed them, too.”

Faith was important to him, she said, and he often talked to her about what he was going through and when he needed her to pray about something.

“I’m telling you, you mattered. You mattered so much to him,” she said.

He kept that mindset all the way through his cancer fight, she said, even when he was near the end and needed to use prescribed fentanyl. Harvey had asked Mosley for a copy of her daughter’s fingerprints. He received them just days before he died, and Susan gave them to Harvey during the event.

Some who are involved with Millie Mattered are recovering addicts, like Harvey herself. The chair of the Lafayette chapter is, too, and she spoke about her journey back from a heroin addiction that started when she was 14 and losing her 22-year-old son, Hunter Lee Clemons, to a fentanyl overdose.

Christy Couviller met Harvey at her first event in Lafayette, bringing with her other addicts in recovery so they could see it was possible to live a full life after drugs, she said.

She said she “never, ever thought in a million years” she’d add her own son’s photo to a remembrance wall of victims. His death opened her to a relationship with God that she had refused before, even at her son’s urging.

“Couldn’t get me in a church before my son died,” Couviller said. “When my son died, using was not an option, but suicide was, and the only thing I had never tried was going to church.”

She said she spent a lot of time after her son died asking why, especially since he had found a wonderful life in Florida. He had struggled with drug use in the past, but Couviller said he didn’t think he was an addict like her. So he bought what he thought was an Ecstasy pill and took half with no ill effects.

“My son, of all people, knew about fentanyl,” she said. “Fentanyl almost cost me my life. It almost cost his life, and he buried many, many friends. So he knew, but he thought he could trust somebody. He thought he just knew better.”

After he took the rest of that pill, he later was found dead in his bed. She was honest about Hunter’s death in his obituary, and it was highlighted in national magazines and newspapers.

Grief is hard, she told the crowd.

“And the best thing I can tell you to do is do something for your loved one,” she said.

This article originally appeared on Alexandria Town Talk: Alexandria event lets families remember lost loved ones, offer support