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JACKIE HEADAPOHL
MANAGING EDITOR

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othing safeguards you
against addiction — not a
loving family, not wealth,
not faith, not age, not intel-
ligence, wisdom nor willpower.
Addiction can overcome anybody
and, once it has you in its steely
grip, it can cost you your health,
your family, your home, your live-
lihood and even your life.
Jamie Daniels paid that ulti-
mate price, dead at 23 from an
opiate overdose while he was in
the midst of a recovery program.
His mother, Lisa Daniels of West
Bloomfield, has been left “bro-
ken,” she says, “and the only thing
that will partially repair me is
to know that people like Jamie,
young people struggling with
addiction, get the help they need.
They’ve got to be able to speak
up and get help without being
shunned, without fear of being
labeled an addict for the rest of
their lives.”
The alternative — silence —
only exacerbates the problem. “I
didn’t tell anybody,” Daniels says.
“None of my friends knew what
was going on. None of my family
knew. We didn’t share what Jamie
was going through. Now it’s time
to stop that. If we had, maybe
Jamie would be alive today.”

12

March 1 • 2018

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no ONE is

mmu

Addiction touches nearly every
family. It’s time to talk about it
openly and without fear.

JAMIE’S STORY

Jamie had struggled with an addiction to
prescription medication. With great effort,
his family worked tirelessly to get him help,
but it was always “one step forward, three
steps back,” Daniels says.
She and former husband, Detroit Red
Wings announcer Ken Daniels, who will be
speaking about Jamie at an event March 7
at Temple Israel (see page 18) didn’t learn
about his problem with addiction until
December of his senior year at Michigan
State University. A friend told his sister
that Jamie was getting into stronger
prescription drugs.
“He didn’t want people to know
what he was going through. He was
afraid if people knew, they would
use it against him, even his peers,”
Daniels says.
Unlike the majority of families with
an addict, there was no predisposition
to the disease in Daniels’ family. “I didn’t
know what the signs were but, in hindsight,
I realized that from the time he was young,
he was often alone and said he felt like he