Read the original article (with pictures) and watch the video on the Queen City News website.
GASTONIA, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) – Library shelves are full of all sorts of stories. Some have you on the edge of your seat, others make you laugh or answer pressing questions.
At the Dream Center in Gastonia, a photo book at the Austin Library is an introduction to a bigger story.
“We left one in the library so that students could see who Austin actually was. He was just like them, and that is what I like them to see,” said Tammy Chowdhury.
Her son Austin Chowdhury was well-loved and well-read.
“I feel like he was searching for answers in the world because he read all kinds of things,” Tammy told Queen City News.
The Austin Library is a tribute to the young man who died of an accidental fentanyl overdose at 24.
“It was just a total shock, it didn’t feel real,” Tammy says, taking a breath as she relives that dark day.
Her husband Naz reaches out to her with his hand, as they once again ponder the weight of their loss and what led up to it.
The Chowdhury’s say they now know how little they knew back then.
“Until we got the report, I never heard of fentanyl,” Naz admitted.
“We didn’t know the signs; we didn’t know a lot of things,” says Tammy. “And as a parent, we really feel like we dropped the ball.”
Austin’s spiral of addiction began at 14 when he was prescribed oxycodone after a dental procedure. He continued to use opioids in high school, but experts assured the Chowdhurys they did not believe he was not an addict.
“I asked [Austin], and I said, ‘Why are you doing this?’ And he’s just like, ‘I don’t know I just like the way it makes me feel,’” his mother recalled. “And honestly I just thought, ‘He’s a teenager,’ that’s what it was, he was just experimenting. I didn’t realize you could get hooked that quickly.”
Austin went to UNC-Chapel Hill and seemed to be fully functional as he earned an undergrad degree in public policy and urban planning.
Addiction followed him through grad school. He was hooked on heroin until the day he overdosed.
“They said it was 100 percent fentanyl, they said ‘Your son didn’t have a chance,’” Tammy says. “He thought he was getting [heroin] and got something totally different, and unfortunately that’s what is happening to most people now who overdose.”
“We don’t want other parents to go through anything like this. It’s every day, there’s not a day or an hour go by [that] I don’t think about him,” said Naz.
Perhaps more families will learn to look for the signs if they see the signs all over Gaston County.
The Chowdhury’s nonprofit Remembering Austin put up three billboards to raise awareness.
“People are still dying almost every day. We need to stop this fentanyl trafficking,” Naz stressed.
The billboards read, “You won’t know it contains fentanyl until it’s too late!”
“Parents just need to, if they suspect anything, they really need to go with that,” Tammy says. “And no matter what anybody tells them, they need to do what they need to do.”
“Most of the parents, once something like this happens, because of the stigma associated,” says Naz, becoming emotional. “They don’t want to talk; they don’t want to get involved.”
They had to get involved, they say, to remind folks that anyone can be an opioid addict.
Today, a fentanyl-related death occurs every nine minutes.
The Chowdhury’s also established the Remembering Austin Memorial Scholarship. The annual scholarships are awarded to promising students at Gaston College.
“That jacket was his favorite jacket,” Tammy says, showing us a large photo of her son in the Austin Library. “I mean he just wasn’t into fancy things at all.”
Austin was an addict, but his mother says the way he died doesn’t begin to define who he was.
“Austin had everything, he was very smart, he could have [done] anything. He was simply hooked like so many other people out there. And I just want people to remember that Austin was a good person, he wasn’t a bad person, and it could happen to any of us,” she said, as her voice trembled.
It’s a heart-wrenching story that hits home for so many families.
“People with addiction aren’t bad people, they’re just sick,” Tammy says.
“He wanted to make a difference in this world,” said Naz.
Austin’s legacy lives on in the library named after him and with a message that could be the difference between life and death.