Mom Shares Startling Photos Of Her Son Before And After He Became Addicted To Heroin

Addiction can touch anyone and when it does, it changes lives forever. A mother named Jennifer Salfen-Tracy is all too familiar with the destruction and pain that drug addiction can cause. This is because her eldest son, Cody Bishop, is addicted to both meth and heroin. In an attempt to bring awareness about the life-altering dangers of drugs, Salfen-Tracy shared photos on Facebook depicting what her son looked like before and after becoming addicted. It’s nearly impossible to tell that it is the same person in both photographs, according to Today.

In the first photo from before Bishop became involved with drugs, the young man looks strong, healthy, and happy. In the second photo, which was taken only seven months later, Bishop is almost unrecognizable. He is much thinner and spots from liver failure brought about by addiction cover his skin. He looks much older, weaker, and visibly unhealthy.

In her touching Facebook post, Salfen-Tracy said that she knew her son was homeless in Las Vegas, Nevada but didn’t know much else because she hadn’t been able to get in touch with him. As much as she wants to help him, it will take Bishop helping himself to get his life back. She emphasized that we as a nation need to be doing more to help those suffering from addiction.

“I have learned along this path that so many people and families deal with the same heartache but just do not talk about it. This is a true issue in our world today that we need to pull together and focus on to fix instead of the government worrying about and spending all their money on throwing each other under the bus. Update….. Cody is still homeless in Las Vegas and I have not heard from him in weeks now. Hearing how bad he is doing is hard but not hearing at all is worse.”

As The Inquisitr previously reported, drug overdose is now considered one of the leading causes of premature deaths in America. In the year 2016 alone, 63,000 Americans died from an overdose, which averages to about 174 deaths per day. Now it’s not just the commonly discussed drugs like meth, cocaine, and heroin that is claiming lives. In fact, it’s actually fentanyl that is considered to be America’s number one deadliest drug, leading to tens of thousands of deaths every year, these are most often accidental overdoses. Law enforcement has highly vocal about the dangers of this drug in recent years.