A desperate mother has shared chilling before and after photos of her son — who she says is addicted to heroin and methamphetamine — in an effort to bring awareness to addiction.
Jennifer Salfen-Tracy, of Wentzville, Mo., said her oldest son, Cody Bishop, is suffering from a drug addiction and she’s been “hesitant on sharing” the private details of their lives, “but many people ask how things are going so I feel I should share.”
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“The face of heroin and meth,” the mother wrote on Facebook Wednesday, “is reality for so many people and families in this world today.”
Bishop is living in Las Vegas, where he’s homeless, Salfen-Tracy said. In two drastically different photos of her son taken seven months apart, Bishop appears wildly different. The “before” shows Bishop seemingly healthy with a stocky build. In the “after” photo, Bishop appears substantially thinner, with markings covering his skin.
“That is how fast someone is effected [sic],” Salfen-Tracy said.
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“Hearing how bad he is doing is hard but not hearing at all is worse. The unknown is what makes a person not sleep at night,” she said online. “It is hard to understand how someone who has families and children who love and need them live the life they do.”
Salfen-Tracy said she prays to God that her son — who, according to KSDK, was an athlete at Wentzville Holt High School in Missouri before graduating in 2011 — “decides he is tired of living like this and wants to come home to get help.”
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The mother wrote that her son’s problems with addiction are “not just a problem that my family faces but almost everyone knows someone who has a drug/ heroin addiction.”
As of Sunday, Salfen-Tracy’s post was shared and liked more than 100,000 times, and received more than 26,000 comments. She asks that if her son sees the post, to please call her.
