MILFORD — For three weeks

MILFORD — For three weeks, Marybeth Hayes didn’t know what happened to her son. He had been in Florida, partly to get away from what had been haunting him in Massachusetts — his opioid addiction.

Josh MacDougall, 27, a 2008 graduate of Milford High School, died in a hotel room on March 19 after overdosing on heroin. His body was found the next day, but it took “three (expletive) weeks,” said Hayes, for her to find out where her son was.

Hayes, an addict herself who has been battling the disease since childhood, said she and her son talked on the phone every day. MacDougall had been back and forth between Florida and his hometown of Milford for about a year and a half. He went down there for help, but also to get away from a central Massachusetts problem that just isn’t going away.

It’s well documented that the epidemic is affecting just about every community in the area, but Milford has been hit hard. There were 92 overdoses and 15 overdose deaths last year, a drastic rise from the 48 overdoses and four overdose deaths the year before.

So far this year, there have been 30 overdoses and three deaths in Milford.

Statewide, the epidemic in 2016 claimed almost four time as many lives as it did in 2010: 1,979 compared to just 532.

As the conversation turns to treatment rather than punishment or jail time, Milford police have been taking a proactive approach. For every overdose call, a drug counselor responds to the scene or to the hospital.

Along with investigating where the drugs came from, detectives and counselors go into drug hotspots not to arrest, but to compel addicts into treatment.

The stigma of addiction, said Police Chief Tom O’Loughlin, needs to completely go away if attention is turning to treatment.

“It’s not particularly helpful in trying to persuade people to treatment,” O’Loughlin said.

There’s no longer a typical heroin addict, he said. They come from all social and economic classes: a star soccer player, a college student, a high school athlete. A broken home is no longer the background of an addict.

“The impact is just unbelievable,” he said.

Several of MacDougall’s classmates said they never knew the funny kid with the giant smile and even larger personality was struggling so much.

All they knew was that the he loved music, played a mean drum and could crack a joke.

Dozens of classmates from different backgrounds attended a memorial event last Sunday and dozens of others have already d onated to his family for a proper burial.

But few outside of his close group of friends knew that he was struggling and needed to get out of town.

“It’s where the sun was,” Hayes said of her son living in Florida. “He needed to feel that.”

Unfortunately, his addiction followed him.

Her son, Hayes said, was “born into it,” but his addiction didn’t truly take hold until after the death of his sister in 2010. She died in a one-car crash in Mendon.

“The night my daughter died, he hit the ground running,” said his mother.

He dabbled with drugs before, but that's when the drugs took hold, Hayes said.

With that came arrests and other brushes with the law, but by all accounts, MacDougall was a caring person - constantly inquiring about the comfort and well-being of others.

One person who asked not to be named said after a day of backbreaking work shoveling snow off of roofs, MacDougall was paid $400, but kept little of it for himself. He bought the man who drove him to the job a drink, sandwich and pack of cigarettes. He put another $200 aside for rent for his mother.

When another man in the group began talking about the possibility of losing his house, MacDougall handed him $100.

“Most addicts are just so sensitive,” Hayes said. “They’re so beautiful, so loving. They absorb.”

Unfortunately, that same sensitivity manifests itself in the form of pain.

“Addiction comes through the pain that they don’t know how to handle,” she said.

Hayes also spoke about the need for understanding rather than punishment, and authorities are beginning to make that transition.

Middlesex County prisoners are not only offered treatment while incarcerated, but are provided with a substance abuse navigator - a drug counselor of sorts who keeps up with the prisoner on the outside.

These programs have been successful, reducing recidivism by as much as 15 percent lower than the general population, Middlesex County Sheriff Peter Koutoujian said.

Many prisoners, he said, don’t have many people to turn to on the outside who won’t suck them right back into addiction.

“What we’re trying to do is turn the social network factor on its head,” Koutoujian said. “By having someone like our navigator - someone that cares about them in a good, positive, supportive way - that makes a big difference to these men.”

According to Amy Leone, who runs a regional substance abuse program in the Milford area, most addicts are reluctant to get help because of their own shame.

“When they already feel shameful and guilt for how they’ve hurt other people and themselves, it makes it hard to reach out and say, ‘I need help.’”

Access to treatment, including the absence of stigma, will make recovery easier for people “trying to escape the noise inside their head,” said Leone.

“People need to understand more,” she said. “We all have noise.”

Outside a friend’s house in Milford just days after an emotional ceremony to honor her son, Hayes said she has been clean for 8 months. She’s currently attending an outpatient rehab program outside of the Milford area.

For the majority of the hour-long interview, Hayes spoke with ease and conviction about addiction. She’s been dealing with it for decades.

She did, however, need a moment when discovering that her son succumbed to his pain and couldn’t find other ways to deal with it.

“Trust and believe: there’s so many more people out there like that,” she said with a cracked voice. “And it’s not because people don’t care. It’s because they’re lost for a minute.”

“They’re lost," she said, her voice fading.