5A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, JANUARY 4, 2016
Ferguson: ‘I don’t know how I’m going to ... go on without her’
Continued from Page 1A
The family is awaiting the
autopsy report and toxicology
results, which won’t be ready
for several months. Whittney
had a history of congestive
heart failure; whether this ail-
ment contributed to her death
is unclear.
“We can’t make assump-
tions,” Geisler said.
What is perfectly clear,
however, is that Whittney’s
death ended a three-year battle
that transformed a likable, edu-
cated, upwardly mobile young
woman with a promising career
as a dental assistant into anoth-
er substance-abuse statistic.
“It destroyed her life,”
Geisler said.
‘It doesn’t
discriminate’
Rather than downplay
Whittney’s addiction, her
family has chosen to speak
publicly about it, to turn Whit-
tney’s story into a cautionary
tale. They hope to cast some
light on the malignant drug
problem in Astoria, Knappa
and surrounding communities
that can’t be addressed by pre-
tending it away.
“Nobody wants to go pub-
lic; that’s the problem,” Geis-
ler said.
In Whittney’s obituary and
at her memorial service —
held Friday at Knappa High
School, where Whittney grad-
uated in 2008 — Geisler made
her daughter’s struggle plain.
Though deep in mourning,
Geisler spoke with clarity and
conviction to the nearly 300
people gathered to pay their
respects.
“I need to talk about it,”
she said in an interview with
The Daily Astorian. “I don’t
ever want another family to
go through what I’ve gone
through.”
Geisler, in fact, warned
Whittney that, if she should
die from an overdose, Geisler
would tell her daughter’s sto-
ry as a lesson to all who may
learn from it.
“I said, ‘I’m not hiding it;
I’m not sweeping it under the
rug,’” she said. “She knew
that I was going to speak
about it and talk about it and
make a difference, because it
has to start somewhere.”
The tragedy serves as a
reminder of how pervasive
heroin and meth usage has be-
come in Clatsop County — as
it is nationwide — and how
easily the drugs can abridge
people’s futures and the hap-
piness of their families.
Sgt. Mike Smith, of the
Clatsop County Sheriff’s Of-
¿ce, said that when he joined
the county’s drug task force he
couldn’t believe the amount
of heroin available.
“At that time, I had 13 or
14 years in law enforcement,”
he said. “I was shocked.”
Courtesy of Brittany Ferguson
Whittney Ferguson, from
Knappa, took this selfie
Dec. 10, the day she re-
lapsed for the last time. She
died the following morning
while undergoing detox.
The old stereotypes of the
bums and junkies on Skid
Row didn’t apply. A good
percentage of today’s hero-
in users hail from middle- or
upper-class backgrounds, and
many of them — like Whit-
tney — began by abusing pre-
scription painkillers.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re
rich or poor. It doesn’t dis-
criminate,” Geisler said.
‘Downhill’
The details of Whittney’s
¿nal years aren’t pretty.
Around the time she began
missing work because of her
drug use, Whittney’s fami-
ly noticed that some of their
possessions had disappeared:
money, coins, silver, a wed-
ding ring that had belonged
to Geisler’s grandmother and
other treasures.
“I never thought in a mil-
lion years my kids would
steal anything from me, ever,
especially my grandmother’s
wedding ring,” Geisler said.
“By the time I even reali]ed it
was gone, it’d been gone for
months.”
From clothing to laptops,
Whittney sold anything of
value.
“That’s the reality of being
an addict,” said Brittany Fer-
guson, Whittney’s older sister,
herself a heroin and meth ad-
dict approaching eight months
of sobriety. “You lie, cheat
and steal.”
Whittney lost her job and
her residence. Her car was re-
possessed. She lived with her
family on and off, until Geis-
ler and her husband, Ronnie,
reali]ed that letting Whittney
live with them was merely en-
abling her.
“You try that drug one
time, maybe twice, and every-
thing gets taken away slow-
ly,” Geisler said.
Whittney entered rehab
more than half a do]en times
in Oregon, Washington and
California. She repeatedly
Photo courtesy of Linda Geisler
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
Family and friends watch a video tribute during a memorial service for Whittney Fergu-
son at Knappa High School Friday.
overdosed on heroin, landing
her in and out hospitals.
High on meth, Whittney
would slip into psychosis
during which she hid under
beds or in closets, talked to
herself, talked to plants, talk-
ed to people who weren’t
there. One time, she turned on
the gas stove and left it on.
“It just all went downhill
real fast,” Geisler said.
Whenever Whittney tried
to stay clean, she became
impatient with her progress.
Accustomed to the instant
grati¿cation that comes with
using, she grew frustrated that
she couldn’t put her old self
back together fast enough.
“You want everything
in your life back. You want
your job, your car, your house
— you want it all back right
now,” said Brittany, reÀecting
on her own experience as an
addict. “Well, your life didn’t
get this way in three months
or six months. It’s taken years
for your life to get here, so
you need to give yourself a
couple years to get it back.”
More importantly, she add-
ed, “You have to want it more
than you want the drug.”
‘My love can’t
save you’
Near the end, Whittney,
who had lost a lot of weight,
started selling sexually ex-
plicit photos of herself to feed
her habit.
“She was soliciting her
body,” Geisler said. “She
would take pictures and do
things, and then these men
would send her money.”
This behavior may not
have escalated into straight-
up prostitution, but “she was
de¿nitely using her body to
get money,” Casey Wray,
Whittney’s cousin, said.
The last time she remained
clean for a stretch, the light
had left her eyes.
“She wasn’t the same per-
son. She wasn’t there. You
could tell,” Brittany said.
“She just looked unhealthy
and not happy.”
While Whittney sought
treatment in California, her
mother called her every day
after getting home from work,
and every night before going
to bed.
“‘You can either,’ I said,
‘beat this thing and make a
stand and educate other peo-
ple on it, or you can become a
statistic,’” Geisler told her. “I
thought, ‘Maybe she’ll get it
this time. Maybe this will be
it.’ But you think that every
time they go in.”
Whittney passed away
shortly thereafter.
“In the back of my mind, I
always thought it was a possi-
bility because she was an ad-
dict,” Geisler said. “You have
to prepare yourself mentally
for it, although you can never
prepare yourself when it real-
ly happens.”
What remained of Whit-
tney’s belongings could ¿t
into two suitcases, two boxes
and a tote bag: clothes, jewel-
ry, makeup, ¿ngernail polish,
a journal and the Holy Bible.
“‘I love you more than
anything in this whole entire
world. My love can’t save
you,’” Geisler had told her
daughters. “And that’s so hard
for a parent to say.”
Fighting for their lives
Upon discovering Whit-
tney’s addiction, Geisler felt
ashamed and embarrassed —
and tremendously guilty.
“A mother is supposed to
protect (her) children from ev-
erything that comes around,”
she said. “I didn’t drink. I
didn’t smoke. I didn’t raise
them to be this way. We had
dinner every night together.”
For many years, Geisler,
a longtime employee at Safe-
way in Astoria, automatically
judged the heroin users hang-
ing around the store as losers
and dopers too la]y to get
their acts together.
“That’s the attitude I
had towards them because
I wasn’t educated; I didn’t
know anything about that,”
she said. “And then, after you
live it, and you see it, you al-
most feel sorry for them be-
cause it’s such a horrible, ugly
drug.”
But Geisler’s views gradu-
ally softened when she came
to accept that Whittney had
almost no control over her
habit.
“You’re raised with all
these great morals,” she said,
“but that drug just ...”
“... Changes you into a
completely different person,”
Brittany said.
The stigma attached to
addiction can be so powerful
and persistent that many fam-
ilies won’t acknowledge the
addiction even after it kills a
relative, Wray said.
“They all know what they
died from, but nobody’s say-
ing it,” Wray said. “It’s just
kind of behind the back in the
community.”
For addicts to feel com-
fortable seeking help, the stig-
ma must go away, said Kerry
Strickland, of Knappa, whose
son, Jordan Strickland, died
of an overdose last summer,
13 days before his 25th birth-
day.
“This is a disease, and
these kids didn’t choose to be
addicts. They were ¿ghting.
They were ¿ghting for their
lives,” Strickland said. “I be-
lieve these two kids would
have kept ¿ghting for sobri-
ety, to be clean. I believe they
had that in them.”
‘Toad’
Geisler and Strickland are
working to open a local chap-
Whittney Ferguson rides
her horse in 2008, just a
few years before her addic-
tion began.
ter of the National Council on
Alcoholism and Drug Depen-
dence.
“Our goal is to bring
it here to Clatsop County,
where we can provide re-
sources,” Strickland said.
Brittany said that an-
ti-drug education needs to
begin in middle schools, led
not just by law enforcement
or people who have never
tried narcotics but by former
users willing to share their
stories.
For Geisler and Strick-
land, the project is bitter-
sweet: Though a place that
offers tools for drug educa-
tion, prevention and treat-
ment is badly needed, it’s
not going to help Whittney
and Jordan. But it is a way to
honor them, and possibly to
prevent more lost lives.
“My daughter was an ad-
dict,” Geisler said, “but, yes
she was my daughter, and I
loved her regardless.”
Now the ashes of Whit-
tney Ferguson — the care-
free girl who loved her hors-
es and sheep and took part in
4-H for nine years, and whose
family called her “Toad” be-
cause, as a baby, “she was a
fat little thing that would lay
there on her arms and legs
like a big toad,” Geisler said
— reside in the house where
she grew up.
“I don’t know how I’m
going to get up every single
day and go on without her,
because I live my life for my
kids, and I’m never going
to see her walk through my
front door again and give me
a hug,” Geisler said at Whit-
tney’s memorial. “She knew
that I loved her, and I’ll miss
her so much. It’s going to be
really unbearable.”
The On-Air Radio
Auction is
January 23rd,
9am to 1pm
Luciaks: They’re set to launch their business this month
Continued from Page 1A
The Luciaks are due to
launch their business, Oregon
Mold Medix, an indoor mold
consultation, inspection and
remediation company, this
month. The couple believes it
will provide a much-needed
service in the area. They hope,
in particular, to help low-in-
come families, who tend to
be disproportionately affected
by the problem. Joseph said
if 1 in 10 of their remediation
projects could be done for a
low-income family, then they
can have a ³fairly signi¿cant
impact with our effort.”
“I don’t think those goals
are that ambitious,” he added.
“We all live here because we
love the air outside.”
They are excited to get the
business off the ground.
“By this time next year, I
think we will be able to say
we have had a bigger impact,”
through both their business
and charity work, Britta said.
They enjoy living in a
small, tight-knit communi-
ty. The advantage of having
good neighbors was evident
when, during the summer, By
the Way owner Linda Gold-
farb temporarily closed her
shop to help the couple look
for their missing basset hound,
Columbo. She located the dog
on U.S. Highway 101 near the
Sons of Norway Field.
“It’s nice to not just be
anonymous in the big city,”
Britta said. “Here’s it’s so
much closer knit.”
Joseph agreed.
“This place is so neighbor-
ly,” he said. “When we walk
down the street, I wish the lo-
cals would start to adopt the
nod, because my arm gets sore
from constantly waving at peo-
ple.”
When not working, Britta
and Joseph share time out-
doors with Columbo, going
outside during storms, hiking
and camping. They also enjoy
watching documentaries.
In Vancouver, Britta and
Joseph managed bars, dance
clubs and live music venues.
They volunteered with the
Access to Music Foundation,
a nonpro¿t organi]ation that
provides children in British
Columbia with instruments
and music education oppor-
tunities. Joseph recently re-
signed his post as chairman
of the foundation. After heavy
involvement at a community
level with performing arts and
community service, Joseph
said, they “haven’t really been
culturally stimulated yet down
here.”
you r loca l
Jan itorial & Paper S u pply S tore
503-325-6362 • 800-344-1943
2240 COMMERCIAL ST. ASTORIA
Millpond Area
Monday-Friday 8 am-5 pm
“We’re really looking to get
involved in any sort of capaci-
ty,” he added.
They feel Gearhart is a
good place to be and to raise
their ¿rst child, due in March.
“We’ll give it a good shot
here for a while and see how it
goes,” Britta said.
NEWS TALK FOR THE COAST
Providing live a nd loca l new s covera ge every da y
Y ou could see it ton igh t, rea d a bout
it tom orrow or h ea r it live N O W !