On Dec. 5, 2005, our 21-year-old son died, alone, in his apartment in Boynton Beach, Fla., from an overdose of drugs. He had been battling a substance abuse addiction, which began in high school, for more than three years.

	Jim and Nancy Bildner live in Manchester, Mass. Their e-mail address is jbildner@newhorizonspartners.com.

During those years, he had been in and out of six "treatment centers" and at the time of his death he had "graduated" from the latest treatment facility and was preparing to go back to school.

Some will read these words and say it was his own fault -- and part of that must be true, because ultimately the decision to use drugs is a choice an adolescent makes. But kids make that decision without the maturity or knowledge of the consequences a single act can have. And the odds against becoming addicted were overwhelmingly stacked against our son just as they are against other kids now. National recidivism percentages are in the high 80s and for addicted adolescents the struggle to stay sober is in conflict with their need to be "accepted," making their long-term recovery much tougher.

Our experience was not unique. In the past five years alone, it's estimated that more than 100,000 kids have died from overdoses. And this statistic is not likely to improve anytime soon. But our son was more than a statistic. He left a sister, two parents and hundreds of friends, neighbors and family members who filled the church for his memorial service on a snowy morning on Dec. 9.

Drug addiction is an equal opportunity killer -- it kills regardless of education, ethnicity or economic status. It's in the backpacks of kids who drive BMWs and in the pockets of kids who prostitute themselves to buy drugs. It's not a pretty scene and there is no guidebook on how to parent a child through it. We clearly failed. We probably never had a chance. The simple truth is this is a war with the decks completely stacked against you. And the folks who profit from it, know it.

Our schools and our communities are infested with drugs including guaranteed killers like cocaine, crystal meth, heroin and Oxycontin. And our kids are not being introduced to these drugs when they're mature enough to grasp the concept of addiction -- no, that would be too kind. Many encounter these drugs between the ages of 11 and 13. According to a recent national survey, the number of students who attend schools where drugs are used, kept or sold has jumped 41 percent for high schoolers and 47 percent for middle school students. That's right: Kids in sixth, seventh and eighth grade.

Our son never got a second chance. His drug of choice was heroin and it addicts instantly. In what we can only imagine was a reckless act of youth, in one instant, he threw his life away, long before he died.

Before we learned of his addiction, like so many parents, we followed the news about teenage drug use, but we were detached. It wasn't our son, our neighborhood, or our city. It was somebody else's problem to fix. Then everything changed that day three years ago when I found his knapsack on our library floor, its contents mistakenly left strewn on the carpet.

Inside, was the Brooks Brothers tie we bought him for Christmas the year before, but now it was cut in half and he was using it as a tourniquet. Just under his physics book were several bags of heroin and a bunch of new and used syringes. Instantly, we began to see things through a different lens.

We met other families of kids who had become addicted. We saw people mortgage their homes, their lives and their souls to pay for their kid's recovery because most treatment facilities don't accept insurance -- cash, Visa or check only, please, the fine print usually says. In these treatment centers we spent days in "parent programs" listening to others like us, also in denial and convinced their kids were somehow different -- reckless, perhaps, maybe depressed, but addicts, no way. But they were.

Too often the programs would end with an all-too familiar sequel: A few months later, we would get a card in the mail from one of the parents telling us that their child had died. And we would never hear from them again, nor did we try to reach out to them. It was too close to home.

Now it's our turn to write that note.

But we refuse to go quietly. You see, we talked to the detective who found my son's body in that apartment. He told me that in his small jurisdiction he sees countless sons and daughters every month. In a voice full of sad capitulation, he said he wished he could do something to change the situation, but he can't. The problem is too big for Boynton Beach, South Florida, or the United States. It's a problem no one can fix. "I'm terribly sorry, sir," he said, "It's just the way it is. Try not to think about it."

As we sat in our church surrounded by friends, family and neighbors, our daughter read from "A Million Little Pieces" (James Frey's forceful memoir of his drug addiction), proclaimed her admiration for her brother's fight and her love for him. I'm sorry, but we just can't take the detective's advice and not think about it.

Though we're in no position to give advice, here's a voice of caution. The stories in your local papers are real and so is the pervasiveness of this enemy. It's not afraid of anything -- not territorial borders, not law enforcement, not tariffs or interdiction.

It preys on adolescents and those most at risk in our society. At $4 a bag, heroin is cheaper than beer and easier to get. When our son was sober and alive, he would tell us that we could pick any street, in any city, in any state in America, and he could find a bag of heroin within a 10-minute walk. He was right

You see, it's not just someone else's son -- it's anyone's son. This time it was ours.

But here's a message for those vested in keeping the status quo: Don't count on our silence. We'll be damned if we'll sit on the sidelines and watch another kid die because the problem is too big to fix.

Our national policy is flawed and underfunded and our communities and families are just territories waiting to be taken. We need to build consensus around policies that prevent these drugs from getting into our neighborhoods and schools and then strictly enforce them. There is no compromising with this enemy.

We need to stop the economic incentives that allow drugs to enter our borders and restore funding for rehabilitation facilities to treat the vast majority who can't afford treatment once they become addicted. Most of all we need to fund research that looks at addiction as the disease it is.

But the exact details of these initiatives and policy options will have to wait for a little bit. We just buried our son.