After 8 Years in National Guard Iraq Veteran Dies

Heartbroken family searching for answers after veteran’s suspected overdose death

The Citizen's Voice
BY BOB KALINOWSKI
PUBLISHED: NOVEMBER 6, 2018

The Citizens’ Voice interviewed Houck the day his unit, Bravo Battery of the 109th Field Artillery, left for Iraq in September 2008 for a yearlong deployment. His twin sons, then 9-months-old, were in a stroller by his side for the departure.

A local family is mourning the death of an Iraq war veteran from a suspected drug overdose.

Stephen Houck, who served eight years in a local Pennsylvania Army National Guard unit, was found dead inside his Wilkes-Barre apartment on Thursday. He was 32.

Funeral services with military honors will be held today at the Kielty-Moran Funeral Home in Plymouth following a viewing 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

“I was so proud of him. I told him how proud of him I was,” Houck’s mother Gloria Blizzard said Monday about her son’s military service.

Houck, a Larksville native, is suspected of taking a lethal dose of the synthetic opioid fentanyl and heroin, she said.

Blizzard, 70, of Noxen Twp., reached out to The Citizens’ Voice to notify the paper about the military funeral and a police investigation into her son’s death.
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Remembrance Day of Life Gone Too Soon

Military mom proud of her ‘hero’ son
Oliver Chronicle
By Dan Walton
November 24, 2017

"I wish I had been more knowledgeable. If that had been the case we would have sought out a qualified veterans PTSD program instead of shuffling around with psychiatrists here in the Okanagan.”
Jill McCullum

Jill McCullum holds up photos of her son after telling the heartbreaking story about him fighting PTSD and drug addiction. (Dan Walton photo)

Remembrance Day 2017 was the first year that local military mom Jill McCullum attended the ceremony since losing her son Nick Stevens.

After returning from the war in Afghanistan around four years ago, Stevens had developed post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and then an opioid addiction. He tried taking several paths towards recovery and had the full support of his family, but an overdose took his life in March.

“I don’t care if people know Nick had a drug issue that he finally succumbed to,” McCullum said. “Kids don’t just wake up one morning and decide to become an addict.”

While Stevens was facing the demons that come with PTSD, he was prescribed opioids as a solution only to the side effects – depression, anxiety and a sleep disorder. So at a time when he was coping with deeply painful memories, he was given access to an extremely powerful drug.

By 2015, “He fully grasped that he was masking his issues with drugs.”

“They were all handsome young men who are missed by loved ones,” she said. “I had no idea until one day I saw these names on his leg and I asked who’s that? And he told me. If I knew then what I know now I would have asked him to talk about it; I would have been a concerned individual. But I was naive, I didn’t know the depth he’d plummeted.”
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VA Says Veterans Sneak Drugs into VA?

Veterans can be ‘diabolical’ while sneaking drugs into VA facilities, official says

The Enterprise

Tom Relihan

August 21, 2017

They’ve found it hidden in patients’ ears, and in the pages of a book.

Following the overdose death of a Saucier, Mississippi, Marine Corps veteran at the Brockton Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center in March, U.S. Congressman Stephen Lynch said hospital administrators have assured him they’ve taken steps to improve security at the Belmont Street facility.

U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass. Carolyn Kaster AP File

But, the drug that caused the incident, fentanyl, is so potent that lethal doses can be difficult to detect, he said.

Hank Brandon Lee, a retired lance corporal and mortarman in the Marine Corps, traveled from his home in Mississippi to Boston during a black-out period brought on by severe post-traumatic stress disorder in February, according to VA records obtained by The Enterprise. 

He was admitted to the Brockton campus’s psychiatric ward to undergo treatment, but was found unresponsive in early March. He was pronounced dead at Good Samaritan Medical Center, and his autopsy report later revealed the cause of death as acute fentanyl intoxication. 

Exactly how Lee was able to acquire and consume the drug inside the ward is still unclear.read more here