It was an Ohio father’s social media version of Neil Young’s 1971 song about heroin, “The Needle and the Damage Done.”
Tim Sherman of Eastlake shared a heartbreaking and graphic post on Facebook after his 23-year-old daughter died from a heroin overdose on Christmas Eve, the Newark Advocate reported.
Sherman had warned Karisten Sherman that if she could not beat her heroin addiction, he'd have to zip her up in a body bag one day.
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On Sunday, he had to make good on his promise.
“At 5:50 p.m. I got the call from the [detective] at Eastlake police that my daughter was found dead in her bed from an overdose,” he wrote. “I immediately fell to my knees in the snow and began to cry like a baby. I could not believe that my Tigger had done this."
Sherman said he drove to his daughter's house and found her sitting upright and dead in her bed, the Advocate reported.
“She … had her arms straight out with a slight bend at the elbow, fists clenched, with her thumbs tucked under her fingers grasping so tight at what looked like she was trying to grab life back in her,” he said. “She was all blue-faced, veins out, had a little blood from her nose, and her teeth were so tight together that her mouth wouldn’t open.”
(Warning: Language in this post may be disturbing to some)
When police told him he could not touch his daughter without gloves because there might be lethal powder on his skin, Sherman did not hesitate.
“I ask(ed) for gloves and glove up cause I’ll be damned if I’m not going to help my daughter one last time or hug her and let her know I love her,” he wrote.
Sherman then zipped his daughter into the body bag, the Advocate reported.
“I kept my word and spread the bag out and carefully placed her in it to say goodbye to her so they can find out what it was that she took,” he wrote. “I zipped her up in her body bag and helped them carefully place her on the cot.”
Sherman said his daughter's addiction started with Xanax, and she turned to heroin because it was cheaper and easier to obtain, the Advocate reported.
He said he is still shocked by his daughter's death, especially because she repeatedly expressed her desire to never "go back to that stuff ever again."
“I just want ALL of you to know that no matter who you are or what you do or how perfect you think someone is, that this heroin … can come into anybody’s life and destroy it,” he wrote. “Do not be blind to this.”