A Lake Charles mother is hoping to prevent fentanyl poisoning deaths by sharing her own story of loss.

Tonya Doucette’s world unraveled on Nov. 23, 2020, when her 21-year-old son, Trey, died after taking a fentanyl-laced pill he thought would help him get the sleep he so desperately needed.

“He had been clean for 15 months and this friend of his kept asking him to take some over and over again for about five weeks,” she said. “My son would say, ‘Hey, I’m done with that. You should be done with it.’ He had no intention of going back. He was happy. We had him back.”

Doucette said she feels her son was targeted.

“Because he had gotten sober, people were afraid he would talk — that’s what we’re assuming,” she said. “This friend asked him over Instagram to come over. Then he asked him if he would take some. He said, ‘No, dude.’ Then he asked if he would help him move them. He said no. Then he asked if he would hold them for him while his girlfriend came over. ‘She can’t see these,’ he said. I guess my son thought he was strong enough.”

Doucette said Trey hadn’t been sleeping well since returning home from a long-term rehabilitation facility to find his family dealing with hurricane damage.

“Over-stimulation for a recovering addict’s brain is very dangerous,” she said. “Their brain takes a long time to heal.”

Trey was set to start a new job the next day, Doucette said, but the lack of sleep mixed with tooth pain he was experiencing was too much for him.

“I found him the next day.”

Doucette believes her son thought he was taking a sleeping pill that would dull the tooth pain.

“He was so happy and he was strong,” she said. “He would even ask me to go back and show him what he looked like. I took videos of him when he was messed up so when he had to go to the hospital I could show him what he looked like. ‘This is what we see. You don’t see that,’ I would tell him.”

Doucette said she was told Trey had ingested “a lot” of fentanyl from the one pill and died within 10 minutes of taking it. His death certificate lists accidental overdose as the cause of death with fentanyl as the main factor.

There have been no arrests.

“It’s hard because nothing’s been done about it but, like I tell other parents, you just gotta pray,” she said.

“Just try to face the day. If this boy (who gave Trey the drugs) would come up to me and say, ‘I need help,’ I would be willing to get him help. He’s sick, too, obviously,” she said, her voice quivering.

About a year after her son’s death, Doucette created Project Trey, an advocacy organization for recovery and change.

“When my son was younger, there wasn’t any help for youth,” she said. “Anything I can do to help parents find the help they need, I will. I’ve built connections all over and know of facilities for youth that can really help them.”

She also recently launched the Project Trey Recovery Cafe at 3902 Common St. for those 18 and older.

“It’s a safe haven for people that have struggled with anything — it could be mental illness, substance abuse, someone dealing with depression or trauma — we’re all recovering from something,” she said. “It’s a place where people can feel connected, to feel like someone loves them.”

All that’s asked of visitors is for them to be sober when they arrive.

“She has been a rock star, really, creating a nonprofit and doing all kinds of stuff in the community,” Calcasieu Parish District Attorney Stephen Dwight said. “She’s giving people a safe place to go and it doesn’t cost them anything to get a lunch, get a cup of coffee.”

Doucette said Project Trey is “what keeps me going.”

“This helps me,” she said. “When someone passes away like that people are scared to bring up a loved one, but we want our loved ones brought up.”

Fentanyl legislation

Fentanyl has changed the illicit drug game because counterfeit pills are everywhere, Doucette said. Street drugs like cocaine, ecstasy, heroin and meth are often laced with fentanyl. In many cases counterfeit prescription pills are made with fentanyl to look like Xanax, Percocet, Adderall, Oxycodone — even Tylenol.

“These kids are taking it and they don’t know what they’re taking,” Dwight said. “They think they’re taking Adderall or something like that and they’re getting it from friends, they’re getting it on the secondary market or getting it online and they don’t know it’s pressed with fentanyl. It’s disguised as to what it is and they’re taking it for a party or to focus on college or high school and they don’t know what they’re taking.”

Dwight said lab testing indicates seven out of 10 pills seized by DEA contain a lethal dose of fentanyl. Nationwide it’s involved in four out of five Gen Z — those born between the mid-1990s and mid-2010s — drug deaths.

Doucette said traces of fentanyl have also been found in candy products packaged to look like Jolly Ranchers and gummy worms.

“Fentanyl has been the No. 1 killer in the United States the last three years,” she said. “The year my son passed in 2020 there were 52 fentanyl-related deaths in our community, the next year it was 100, last year there were 65. This year, I think there’s going to be more.”

Dwight said he’s working with legislators to try to change fentanyl-related laws in hopes of going after the distributors. He said the law right now “is a little gray.”

“The problem is the coroner being able to make the link of fentanyl to the cause of death,” he said. “We want to change it to make it a significant contributing factor to the death when it’s listed on the certificate. That way we can make the link and the coroner can make the link and we can put them on the stand and start charging these dealers and distributors with murder.”

Dwight said he will hold dealers accountable if someone dies of an overdose.

Gov. Jeff Landry this week signed into law a bill dealing with Fentanyl and the sale of it to children.

“What it does it has severe penalties for those who sell Fentanyl that appeals to children, so imagine candy, or things with rainbow colors, actually the media has dubbed it rainbow Fentanyl and so it increases the penalties to 25 to 99 years if you’re actually creating Fentanyl to appeal to children,” said Rep. Laurie Schlegel, a Republican from Jefferson Parish authored the legislation.

Doucette said she will be there when Dwight speaks at the Legislature to share her story.

“Fentanyl is here,” she said. “They’re making it everywhere. Parents need to be aware of that, talk to their kids, know there’s help out there.”

Part of that helps is Dwight’s One Life at a Time program, which focuses on fentanyl education and awareness. A list of resources can be found at www.calcasieuda.com.

“Opioiods are being sold and people are dying right here in our community,” he said. “It’s our hope that through Fentanyl education, and holding dealers accountable, we can save one life at a time. I want those struggling in our community to know there is help and plenty of resources. One life lost to an overdose is too many.”

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Online: https://projecttrey.org/