Preventing Pain

FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

Dietetics director finds solace in educating others after son’s overdose

by DeAnn Hays

Dylan Smith was a brother and son, an uncle and grandson. He was a companion and loved. He was smart, funny, and athletic. He also dealt with personal struggles caused by a mental illness, diagnosed at a young age. Dylan died in fall 2022 from an accidental drug overdose. He was 29 years old.

“There was enough fentanyl in his body to have killed 6½ people,” said his mother, Liz Smith, an associate professor and director of MTSU’s Dietetics program.

Heartbroken, she decided to focus part of her grief on sharing the circumstances surrounding Dylan’s death as a way to educate others about drug addiction while leading an on-campus effort to train others how to use naloxone. Commonly known as Narcan, the nasal spray or injectable medication is used to treat a narcotic overdose in an emergency.

Smart and Talented

The MTSU professor wants the world to know there’s more to Dylan’s story than his addiction and untimely death.

She and her husband, Mark, adopted Dylan as a newborn in Florida after experiencing infertility. They later had two biological children, including a son eight months after they brought Dylan home.

“We talked to the lawyer on a Thursday, thinking it would be at least six months before we had a baby. On Monday of the next week, we got a call that a mother who was eight months pregnant had come in, and we were the first ones on the list. We really believe it was a God thing,” Smith said.

Described by his mom as extremely bright and stubborn, Dylan thrived at sports growing up.

“He was a really good teammate, and people loved playing with him,” she said. “He was just really talented. He was very intuitive, very logical, and things just came easy to him.” But, when he was around 10 years old, Dylan was diagnosed as bipolar.

“We started noticing things fairly young, but we thought he was just all boy,” Smith said. “We didn’t really give it a second thought. Then he started having some different behavior issues.”

Struggle Begins

Dylan worked with doctors to adjust his medication. He even spent some time at a residential facility, and “things went fairly well for a while,” his mother said. He continued playing sports throughout school, did his schoolwork, and stayed close to his siblings—a constant companion to his brother, Tyler, and a protector for his sister, Katelyn.

As he got older, though, it became a struggle to get Dylan to take his medicine, especially during high school.

“You could see him leveling out. But to him, that didn’t seem normal,” Smith said. “He told us the minute he turned 18, he would not take his medicine and would leave home. He left the day after he turned 18, and he never took his medications again.”

Dylan began self-medicating with marijuana and later Adderall and methamphetamine, his mother said. He went to rehab four times during his 11 years of using.

“We were always really hopeful, but he would always walk out after a few days,” Smith said. “The last thing I texted him is that he needed to go to a long-term rehab. I wanted him to do that so that he would still be here. I think my husband and I always knew we would get that call [if he didn’t get clean].”

Before his death, Dylan had a second interview scheduled at an Ohio fast-food restaurant, excited about earning $13 an hour and aiming to buy a car. “He had plans for the future,” his mom said.

She wants to save lives. As a college educator, she knows education can do that.

From Sorrow to Support

In the summer of 2023, months after losing Dylan, Smith knew her son’s story could make a difference. She began organizing trainings on Narcan (naloxone) on MTSU’s campus with the administration’s support, including that of Amy Aldridge Sanford, vice provost for academic programs.

“She’s heartbroken over the loss of her son, and it did not surprise me that an educator would want to educate as their activism,” Aldridge Sanford said. “She wants to create systemic change; she wants to go out and make sure that we minimize the possibility of this ever happening again.”

Since June 2023, Smith has held around a dozen training sessions at MTSU and helped educate about 475 people on Narcan with the help of the state Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.

“Her passion is unbelievable. Unless you’ve been through it, you can’t be that kind of messenger. She’s so brave,” Aldridge Sanford said.

“She wants to save lives. As a college educator, she knows education can do that.”

In the one-hour trainings, Smith tells her son’s story, and overdose prevention specialist Brittany Laborde goes over how to administer Narcan, what happens when a person overdoses, and how Narcan works.

Saving Lives

Fentanyl is the No. 1 killer of people ages 18–45 in the U.S., and a deadly dose can be as small as 2 milligrams, according to Laborde. It is nearly impossible to know if a drug contains fentanyl without testing it.

There were 3,814 fatal overdoses in Tennessee in 2021—a 26% increase over the previous year— and almost three in four overdoses in the state involved fentanyl.

“When in doubt, administer naloxone if it is available,” Laborde recommends. She says naloxone very rarely has negative side effects if no opioids are involved, but that breathing will temporarily be restored for 30–90 minutes if an opioid overdose is occurring. It’s important to stay with the person until emergency medical services arrive, she adds.

Tennessee, like many other states, has a Good Samaritan Act that provides protection for people or agencies who administer Narcan to someone believed to be overdosing. The state’s Tennessee Addiction Treatment Act also allows the use of Narcan and provides some legal protection for the person calling for medical attention and the person experiencing an overdose.

“If I can save one person, I feel like I am at least helping,” Smith said.