College football fans know ESPN sideline reporter Lauren Sisler for her sunny personality, sharp interviews, and enthusiastic dancing during games.side line shimmy”
But the 39-year-old from Birmingham has a painful past that she has kept hidden for nearly 20 years. When Sisler was in college, his parents died of drug overdoses.
Her mother Leslie went first. She had ingested an entire package of fentanyl and was found unresponsive on the front porch of her Virginia home. Sisler's father, George, did the same thing hours later and was found dead on the kitchen floor.
The night they died in 2003, police found an empty prescription bottle containing 348 OxyContin pills, 60 Oxycodone pills and 82 other painkiller pills. Sisler's aunt and uncle later found painkiller wrappers, suction cup sticks, razor blades and a pill crusher under the sink.
The locked box where the super-strength fentanyl patch had been hidden was empty. My mom and dad used up two weeks' worth of supplies in a few days.
They kept their addictions secret from their children, families, and communities.
Sisler told the Post: “Everyone was in absolute shock.”
But now she's ready to tell the story. Her new book, Shatterproof: How I Overcame the Shame of Loss My Companies to Opioid Addiction (And Found My Sideline Shimmy), is a powerful, horrifying, but ultimately empathetic and redemptive look at prescription drug abuse. It's something.
Sisler was infinitely optimistic when she met The Post on the High Line last week, talking about Halloween plans with her 15-month-old son, Mason. (Sisler, who is married to John Willard, who owns a roofing company in Birmingham, Ala., wants to dress Mason and her family's yellow lab, Magnolia, in an M&M costume. Don't you think it's cute?'' she said in a flirtatious southern accent.
Over a Coke Zero in a Chelsea cafe, she became emotional as she explained her decision to come clean about her parents' past.
“The ones who hold their secrets and their shame are [they had surrounding their drug use] I couldn’t provide enough services for my parents,” she said. “And it didn’t reflect well on those around me.
“And when I started telling more people the truth, I realized that people who loved my parents thought of them no different. They found peace, and I couldn't have loved them more, and I couldn't have loved them more.”
The truth, she discovered, can even save lives.
“I realized, hey, I can be open about this, and it doesn't change who it is, but [my parents] It doesn't matter if I change or not, I can ultimately help someone who is suffering. ”
Sisler had a happy childhood. She recalls summers playing flashlight tag with her brother Allen outside Roanoke and watching local stock car races with her family. “Sports was in my blood,” she says, adding that she started doing gymnastics early. “My parents had to take me to the emergency room multiple times because I would jump up and down on the bed.”
Sisler's father, known as Butch, was a Little League coach and recorded her gymnastics routines with a video camera. Her mother, Leslie, prepared a hot meal every night. “I always felt loved and valued,” Sisler said. “Have we been spoiled? Yes. Were we disciplined? Sometimes. We could have been a little more disciplined, but they did everything for us. I was very lucky to have parents who supported me.”
Butch may be unstable. Sisler recalled that as a child, he would go to the bender several weekends a year. He got drunk and made an extravagant purchase, which angered his mother. But no one said he was an alcoholic. “I never think my dad has a problem,” Sisler said. He cried himself to sleep, regretted it, apologized, and stayed sober for about six months. “We just move on with our lives.”
Sisler believes her family's situation began to deteriorate when she moved from Roanoke to the countryside as a teenager. The house they built ended up costing much more than originally budgeted, and her mother's lively social life became much quieter. Leslie was later diagnosed with degenerative disc disease and underwent several surgeries. Meanwhile, Butch underwent back surgery.
They were prescribed medication to deal with the pain, but as the family's finances spiraled further out of control, they visited a pain specialist who continued to increase the doses of the narcotics. It was, as Sisler writes, “a means to help them cope with chronic pain and depression…” [but] No one in our family knew about their struggle. ”
Even when her father was rushed to the emergency room the night before Thanksgiving in 2002, Sisler had no idea he had inhaled a cold fentanyl patch. It's a trick I read on the internet while searching. What will make him rise fastest and highest? Sisler thought he had simply mixed up his medication and had a heart attack.
“I just couldn't accept that my parents were drug addicts,” she said.
On March 23, 2003, she was sleeping in her dorm at Rutgers University, where she was a freshman on a gymnastics scholarship, when her phone rang at 3:30 a.m.
It was her father. He looked like he was in pain. “Lauren? I want to talk to your brother about something,” he said.
“What's going on?” Sisler asked, dazed and confused.
After Sisler gave him his brother's phone number, Butch said, “I'll call you back in a few minutes.”
When he called back 60 seconds later, he told her the terrible news.
“Lauren, your mother passed away,” he said.
Mr. Sisler couldn't believe what he was hearing. She had just talked to her mother before going to bed. She seemed okay. She was 45 years old, healthy and vibrant.
Sisler fell to the floor. The next thing she knew, her roommate was shaking her and saying, “Wake up!” I'm having a nightmare! ”
On the flight home, she looked at the clouds and thought to herself: This is where my mother is now. mom is in heaven. Then she wondered if her father was there too.
“But I thought he couldn't die either,” she said. “The worst can't happen, can it?”
When her uncle and cousin arrived at the airport instead of her father, she knew the worst had happened.
When she saw her parents in their coffins, she could barely recognize them. “They looked so sad, so sad, so devastated,” she said with tears in her eyes. “And I was afraid that's what I'd see about them for the rest of my life. These two guys were so fun and full of life.”
Sisler was initially Her parents refused to believe that she died of a drug overdose. She told people that her mother died of respiratory failure. She said her father, who had cardiovascular disease, had a heart attack shortly after. He just “can't live without her.”
It wasn't until 10 years later that she read the toxicology report after her parents' deaths.
Sisler returned to Rutgers University and changed her major from a master's degree in medicine to communications with the goal of entering the broadcasting industry. Her work as a local reporter for news stations in New Jersey, Virginia, and Alabama exposed her to death and suffering up close. Slowly, she began to search for the truth.
“At first, for example, whenever my aunt brought up my parents or their death, I would just shut her out or defend them,” Sisler said, adding that she was not the custodian of their estate. He added that it felt like it was. But she saw how the truth freed the people she interviewed.
She was reunited with the paramedic who visited her family home twice that fateful night, and with the deputy sheriff who discovered her father's body. She reviewed medical and financial reports. And she felt “relief.”
“The truth really does set you free,” she said.
Sisler began speaking about opioid abuse at schools, conferences, and nonprofit organizations. She realized that more people than she imagined were struggling with prescription drug addiction or had loved ones struggling with prescription drug addiction.
And she thinks her parents would be proud of the way she handled their heritage.
“I truly believe that no matter how much pain and sadness they are going through when they leave, they are here in this moment with big smiles on their faces because they know that their story is Because I know I’m making an impact,” she said. “I truly believe their stories are saving lives.”
