MOTHER FIGHTS FOR STRICTER DRUG LAWS IN FACE OF DAUGHTER'S DEATH

On Jan. 18, 2006, Kelly Lee Bonnville was rushed to the hospital,
unresponsive and near death.

Two days later, the 31-year-old woman from Shelby died.

The official cause of death listed on the certificate of death:
Narcotic Toxicity.

Bonnville died of an overdose of legal narcotics -- prescription
painkillers to which she'd become fatally addicted.

"This is something you read about," says her mother, Laurie Beckman,
who lives in the Stony Lake area in Oceana County. "It doesn't happen to you."

But it did happen, even to a nice girl from a small town in the
country with a family who loved her and stepped in to try to stop her
downward spiral into a dependency on painkillers.

Twice Beckman and other family members "intervened" and checked
Bonnville into drug treatment programs. A third time, they convinced
Bonnville to enter into treatment on her own.

All three times, as soon as Bonnville was released from rehab, she
started using drugs again immediately.

Road to addiction

Over the course of two decades, Bonnville got hooked on Vicodin and
Fentanyl, a painkiller 100 times more powerful than morphine. She
used amphetamines, sleeping aids, diet pills and anti-depressants --
all legal and prescribed by a series of doctors she consulted.

Beckman, 56, comes forward nine months after her daughter's death,
not to point fingers nor to condemn, she says, but to warn others of
the devastating effects of addiction to narcotics. "Street drugs or
prescription drugs, they have the same effect. I don't want anyone
else to go through what I have."

Her daughter's addiction to painkillers started when she was in high
school and was being treated for severe ovarian and menstrual pain.
Early on, Bonnville didn't abuse the drugs, Beckman says, but she
wonders if somehow they fueled an addictive part in her daughter's personality.

"You trust your doctors. You put your faith in them," Beckman says.
"I wonder if somehow, we could have seen something that would have warned us?"

About nine million people abuse prescription drugs in the U.S.,
according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency.
"Addiction to prescription drugs can be treated, but it needs to be
long-term therapy ... and it has to be especially for prescription
drugs, not AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) or NA (Narcotics Anonymous),"
said Dr. Thomas Kaye, a Muskegon physician with HarbourPointe Medical
Associates, whose practice includes those with addictions.

"Ninety percent of the population can handle prescription drugs,"
Kaye said, "but for 10 percent of the population, there's a genetic
link .. a predisposition to addiction."

Prescription rules

Dr. Leonard Wright, a Muskegon physician who recently was named
medical director of the Wege Institute of Mind, Body and Spirit in
Grand Rapids, treats patients for pain with alternative health
options, including acupuncture and meditation.

"I think it's engrained in our culture that there's a pill to fix
everything ... and that can be a formula for disaster," Wright says.

In an effort to control prescription drug abuse, the Drug Enforcement
Administration has required patients to see their doctors each month
for a new prescription. However, that policy was overturned recently.
The DEA proposed a formal rule that allows doctors with patients who
need a constant supply of morphine-based painkillers to write
multiple prescriptions in a single office visit.

Under the new rule, a doctor can write three, 30-day prescriptions at
a time -- two of them future-dated to be filled a month apart.

"Kelly used to have jars as big as those brown bean jars filled with
painkillers" Beckman says. "I used to say, 'Oh, Kelly, please don't
take so much medicine.' "

After high school, Bonnville moved to California and married for a
short time. In the early 1990s, she fell and injured her back. She
went through a series of back operations and began to use painkillers
regularly.

Distance could neither hide Bonnville's growing addiction nor quell
Beckman's concern over her daughter's deteriorating health.

More setbacks

In 1997, Beckman and a friend flew out to California with the
intention of forcing the issue of her drug dependency -- substance
abuse counselors call it an "intervention" -- and get her into a drug
treatment program.

When Beckman got there, even she was shocked. Bonnville's weight had
plummeted to 90 pounds. She had taken so many drugs, she'd developed
pancreatitis and most of her organs "were shutting down." She was on
a feeding tube.

"When I think about it, I could have lost my Kelly so many times.
That's how I've had to look at it since January," Beckman says.

What followed that first intervention was a nine-year roller coaster
of events and emotions. For awhile, Bonnville moved in with her
mother and stepfather, Bill Beckman. Bonnville was estranged from her
biological father.

After regaining her physical health if not her sobriety, Bonnville
went to college, earned her associate's degree, found a job and moved
into her own apartment. She fell in love "and we thought things were
going to get better," Beckman says.

Then in 2003, disaster. Bonnville was hit head-on by a drunk driver
in a traffic accident in Oceana County and she began to rely even
more heavily on prescription painkillers to offset the pain.

"I could always tell by her eyes if she was using the drugs. All it
took me was a couple seconds to know if she was in 'la la' land," Beckman says.

Every part of Bonnville's life suffered. She couldn't work. She slept
all the time. She severed relationships. She pushed away even those
who loved her the most. She didn't show up to family gatherings on
time or at all.

"It wasn't bad all of the time," Beckman says, "but when it was, it was awful."

Family ties

For her part, Beckman tried everything she could -- tough love,
pleading, even a little motherly guilt, anything to try to reach her daughter.

"Kelly would ask me what I wanted for my birthday, and I'd tell her,
'Kel, all I want is for you to be drug-free,' " her mom says. "I used
to pray before she'd come over, 'Please let this be a good day.' "

By Christmas 2005, Beckman was in a "tough love" phase of loving her
only daughter. Bonnville kept showing up late for family outings and
gatherings, even though her brother, Rob Bonnville, and his
daughters, Brooke and Shyan, were visiting for the holidays from Seattle.

There was a time when mom would have asked everyone to wait, make
allowances, but not last Christmas. When Kelly Bonnville didn't show
up on time to go fishing, everyone left, even though she was mad that
they did. When Kelly didn't arrive on time for a family Christmas
portrait, the rest of the family decided to go ahead and have the
picture taken anyway -- without Kelly.

"It was our last Christmas together, but we didn't know that," Beckman says.

In January, Bonnville told her mom and stepdad she was going to
Memphis, Tenn., for an operation she'd read about to help with the
chronic pain in her back and legs. She was going to get a spinal cord
stimulator implanted to help offset the numbness and pain in her leg.
It was a relatively minor procedure, so Beckman decided not to
accompany her to Memphis Baptist Hospital. She'd used up all her
vacation time, taking her daughter to doctors' appointments and caring for her.

"I hate to say this, but Kelly took up a lot of my energy," Beckman says.

By then, Kelly also required a health caregiver, so she wouldn't be alone.

On Jan. 18, Beckman received a call from Memphis telling her that her
daughter -- who had been released and was recovering in a nearby
hotel -- had been rushed back to the hospital. Beckman got the first
flight South that she could.

"I really thought I'd find her sitting up in bed when I got there,
but I didn't," she says.

Rough ending

Bonnville was on life-support. For two days, Beckman sat at her side
and prayed for a miracle, but Bonnville's temperature shot up to 108
degrees. She never regained consciousness. The Beckmans decided to
donate her heart, liver and kidney -- which given the years of drug
abuse were, amazingly enough, still healthy.

Doctors discovered a fatal dose of Fentanyl and methadone, prescribed
for pain, in Bonnville's system. Beckman discovered a suitcase full
of painkillers back in the hotel.

"She must have been so afraid of being off the pills, she took them
with her," Beckman says.

Since her daughter's death, Beckman has tried to figure out how she
might have stopped her. She's gone to a grief counselor. She's tried
to discover "the plan God must have for me in this."

"I lie awake at night, wondering," she says. "Maybe this is the beginning."

Kelly Bonnville loved animals, adored her two nieces, had a beautiful
smile and a "giving" personality, her mom says. That's a side of the
story that Beckman wants people to remember, as well as hearing about
the life of addiction she led.

"I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me," Beckman says. "I don't
want attention. I just don't want anyone to go through what we have."