Levi’s Story
My name was Levi, and I lived in a small farm town in northern Missouri. Life was good. I was a Christian, with a close-knit, loving family and solid friends. I had two older sisters and a younger brother I was supposed to start a job with on Monday. Things were really looking up.
I had been to a party in Kansas City. A friend there got me a Percocet. I would buy one now and then—just to help me sleep. I brought it home, like I’ve done before. Radio on. Door locked. My cat Gypsy curled up beside me. A quiet night.
As I was crawling into bed, I popped the pill in my mouth, expecting to drift off like always.
But something was deadly wrong. That pill wasn’t a Percocet.
The coroner told my mom that pill had three times the amount of fentanyl needed to kill me.
The moment it hit my tongue… I was dead. I never even made it under the covers.
My mom started calling a few hours later—she always checked in on us. I was the only one who hadn’t answered. She tried again. And again. And again. Nothing.
She called my siblings, and then my grandparents. No one had heard from me. She was on her way home from shopping in a small town about 25 miles away. Panic was setting in.
She asked my oldest sister and brother to go check on me. When they got to my apartment, they knocked. Then banged. Then pounded. They called my phone and could hear it ringing through the door—but I wasn’t answering. They called my mom and she told them to break the door down.
They did.
My sister found me face-down on my bed. She tried to turn me over to do CPR, but she knew immediately. I was already cold. I watched, helplessly, as they screamed in disbelief and sobbed, screaming at my mom on the phone that I was dead.
My mom arrived minutes later. She ran to me, dropped to her knees, and sobbed uncontrollably while holding my lifeless body. Her honey man, her nickname for me. Gone.
My funeral came quickly. Just 23 years old.
For three days, my mom sat by my casket. All day. She didn’t want to leave me alone. Family came from all around. My friends came and went-some brought flowers. Most just cried and said they couldn’t believe I was gone.
What happened? My joy was in helping people. I wanted to become a mental health counselor—to walk others out of dark places. But I never got the chance.
All it took was one pill.
Just one.
A pill that was cheap, fake, and made by someone who didn’t care if I lived or died.
That one pill destroyed my future. It shattered and forever changed my family. It changed everything.
If you think this can’t happen to you—think again. I didn’t think it could happen to me either. Three weeks before, there was a teenage girl in town who died from a fentanyl overdose. It didn’t even cross my mind it could happen to me.
Drug dealers don’t give a shit about your life. They don’t care about your dreams. They only care about money—and your life is just the price of doing business.
Don’t take a chance like I did. Don’t gamble with your life.
Never take a pill that wasn’t prescribed by a doctor and filled at a pharmacy. I don’t care if your best friend hands it to you. I don’t care if you’ve taken one before.
Because the next one could be your last.
Believe me when I say, you don’t want to be remembered like this.
MY NAME WAS LEVI…
