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Oklahoma families battle chemical demons: Michael Stewart
SONYA COLBERG
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Published: August 23, 2009
Oklahoman
Michael Stewart was good.
The hazel-eyed teen with a wide smile was a good student, brother, son and friend.
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And he was a good customer for illegal prescription drugs. His neighborhood drug dealer would buy boxes of prescription drugs belonging to an older man and then pick them up from his mailbox, friends later told his mother. The dealer would divide and sell them to area teens.
"He was very good at hiding it,” said his mother, Angie Stewart-Mazza. "From the outside you would never know.”
Inside, he battled drugs and depression. Outside, he kept people laughing.
"We would be driving in his car and he’d dance to the music and be so goofy,” said his little sister Emilee Stewart, now 19. "Always had me laughing.
"One night we were sitting outside on his truck and I remember telling him I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I ever lost him,” she said.
The family’s suspicions about Michael Stewart’s addictions initially revolved around alcohol.
It all began one night when he was 15 years old and his cell phone accidentally rang his mother. She could tell he was at a party. When she drove by and saw kids with liquor, she slipped in and dragged him out. Back home he confessed he’d also been smoking marijuana.
During the next six months in drug rehabilitation and family counseling, Michael — the kid who was close to his parents, his sister’s best friend, active in sports and church — revealed he’d tried numerous drugs.
"Just freaked out,” Stewart-Mazza said. "I thought we were living the perfect life with the perfect kids.”
She continued watching him closely. She read his journals, saw counselors and researched drug use.
"I thought as a parent I was really, really smart. I thought I was on top of things,” she said. "I thought I was sneaky and nosy. And it wasn’t enough.”
She routinely searched for drugs in the backs of radios, speakers and other possible hiding places.
Michael Stewart didn’t even share the depth of his drug addiction with his beloved sister, Emilee.
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