Community Corner

Addiction, not Homelessness, Killed Boston Mike, Sister Says

Boston Mike died in an abandoned truck fire trying to keep warm. His death has sparked a call to action on the homeless issue, but for family members, substance abuse is the root problem.

Michael Bourque was a good looking guy who went to Disney World more than 10 times as a child.

He grew up in a single family home on a dead end street. 

He went camping every summer and grew up in a good home with a supportive and loving family.

When he was 15, there were signs that struggle was ahead.

"Michael did not die on March 18 because he was homeless," his sister, Michelle Bourque, said. "He died because of the grip that substance abuse had on him."

As a family, they tried everything. There were interventions, trips to rehab, counseling. He lived on his own. He moved back home. Family members paid his rent, co-signed apartments, and on and on.

Bourque did manage to graduate from college and had some time living and working independently for a while, "but eventually the substance abuse and possible underlying undiagnosed mental illness began to take control of his life," Michelle said. "We as a family tried everything."

It's easy for many people to scoff at the assertion that addiction is a disease, or that it's someone's choice to drink or take drugs and suggest that Bourque's fate was sealed when he made his decisions.

But those people, his sister said, fail to understand that Boston Mike was the boy next door, the source of crushes, smart, funny. He was a son, a brother, a human who had feelings and aspirations. Despite being clouded by addiction, he was someone's baby, born with promise and potential like your child. Your child, who could break your heart and fall into the hole of addiction just like Boston Mike — no matter how hard you try to stop it.

"I do not blame anyone for Michael's death but the reality is nobody wants to deal with the chronic substance abuser, not the police, not the hospitals, not the homeless shelters," Bourque said. 

Bourque said Michael was kicked out of every apartment, mainly for letting other homeless people stay with him some nights.

No landlord wants homeless people hanging around their properties, Bourque said, so he found himself on the street. The family paid his rent and even co-signed leases to keep him off the street but eventually, "this year, we finally decided as a family that maybe we were the problem."

That decision is one that many families of substance abusers come to when they're finally at their wits end. After years of heartbreak and being let down, the advice of countless counselors and recovery workers starts to ring true: your efforts to support and protect are actually enabling, not helping.

By pulling support, Boston Mike was on the street once again, and that's when he found himself in the homeless shelter this past fall. He seemed to be doing OK for a while.

"They had rules. There was a curfew," Bourque said. 

But the night of his death, he was intoxicated. He called his mother.

"I pissed someone off," he told her. "I'm not sure what I did but I can't stay here."

His last words to his mother: "Don't worry about it. I will figure it out."

"My poor mother did worry about it but she lives two hours away," Bourque said. "She thought he would bring himself to the ER and end up at Phoenix House, which is what he has done the countless other times he called when he found himself in such a situation."

The family will forever pain to think of what they could have done that night save him. They wonder if he could have somehow stayed at the shelter on that 19 degree night, despite what he did. The family was told that he was offered an alternative place to stay the night he was told to leave. They don't blame anyone, but "the reality is nobody wants to deal with the chronic substance abuser," Bourque said.

"Where do they think he was going to go?"

"My brother was human and did not deserve to die that way," Bourque said. "He was someone's child, someone's brother!"


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