In this Facebook post, he discovered his best friend, Timothy Rothman, was found dead in a motel room in Pittsfield Township, Mich.

The cause of death was intravenous drug abuse, and heroin was found in tests of his blood and urine, according to the Washtenaw County Medical Examiner’s Office. He was 20 years old. Rothman died on Jan. 31.

“I saw on his brother’s Facebook status, ‘Rest in peace, my brother Tim,’ and that was the only way I heard about it, and I didn’t believe it; I was in denial,” Karson said. “I drove right to his mom’s house. It was around 10:30 at night, and I just started crying, and I was like, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.’ And I held her, and she held me, and we cried.”

Karson said this was a turning point in his life, and since that event, he has kept a promise he made to his friend, a promise he is fulfilling through a drug prevention education organization he founded in his friend’s memory: the Tim Rothman Organization.

A promise kept
Rothman battled with drug addiction throughout his youth, starting with cigarettes in middle school, progressing to his “gateway drug,” marijuana, in high school, leading to cocaine and eventually his killer, heroin, Karson said.

Karson said his “brother” would go through rehabilitation periods and was trying to get off the drugs.

During one of these “rehab stints,” Karson said he remembers an instance as if it were yesterday.

The two were sitting in his 2006 Jeep Liberty Renegade, and Rothman told him his dream: to one day be able to educate kids on drug prevention through telling his story, so no one else would have to suffer in the way he and his loved ones have suffered.

Karson said that day, he made a promise to help his friend and, since Rothman’s death, has carried on his dream through the organization.

The Tim Rothman Organization is a drug prevention education program geared toward college, high school and middle school students, Karson said.

The organization hopes to educate students with stories about people affected by drugs, stories they can relate to.

“We are telling Tim’s story, my relationship with Tim, how our friendship developed and how I watched him lose everything — his freedom, getting kicked out of the house, all of the drama and nonsense,” Karson said.

Communication senior Kelsey Prena, a good friend of Karson’s who attended school with Rothman, has become a speaker for the organization and decided to get involved after hearing about Karson’s objective — having witnessed a similar situation with her cousin.

“I don’t want to sound sappy, but having to see somebody you love go through something like that, I wouldn’t wish it on anybody,” Prena said.

Prena said what she tries to advocate is help for the loved ones involved, including advice on when to step in or not.

“It’s hard, (and) you want to know when you should say something or when you should let it be,” she said.

Youth addiction
James Galligan, an MSU pharmacology and toxicology professor, said the earlier an individual starts using drugs, the more likely he or she is to develop a chronic drug addiction.

This was the case in Rothman’s situation ­— he first started smoking cigarettes in the eighth grade, Karson said.

When a person starts to use drugs early while his or her brain is maturing, the brain will develop the need and demand for the drug — creating a chronic addiction.

But Rothman’s drug abuse advanced to heroin in the 11th grade, Karson said.

According to the 2011 Monitoring the Future report, an examination of adolescent drug use, national statistics have been constant throughout the past 35 years in terms of the percentage of eighth-, 10th- and 12th-grade students who have used heroin on a yearly basis, hovering around only 1 percent.

Galligan said Rothman’s early addictions to such strong drugs could have been a red flag.
“It could be narcotics; (using) things like heroin … would be pretty rare, but it does occur. One of the best predictors of somebody who is going to have a lifelong problem with drugs is how early they start,” Galligan said.

Diane Rothman, Tim Rothman’s mother, of West Bloomfield, Mich., described any heroin addiction as something out of an individual’s control.

She said by trying heroin once, a person can get addicted, something she thinks young people should take note of and educate themselves about.

Galligan said there are several possible explanations for the drug abuse of individuals college-aged or younger.

“People who develop problems with alcohol or other drugs often have other psychological problems, (such as) stress (or) anxiety, and the drug helps to cope with that,” Galligan said. “So, on the one hand, you’re experimenting with something new and the drug makes you feel good, but it also takes care of this other problem that can make it into a habit.”

Galligan said most addictive drugs act on nerve cells in the brain that use the neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine is a chemical-signaling molecule in the brain that’s very important in reward pathways.

“When you study and you get a 4.0 on an exam … you feel good, and so that’s the reward, and dopamine plays a role in that,” Galligan said. “It’s unfortunate that these addictive drugs that we talk about — narcotics like heroin, nicotine, alcohol, cocaine — … act on this dopamine pathway in the brain to produce euphoria.”

Galligan said this type of reward can “hijack” the reward pathway, creating a need in the brain for the drugs and acts of getting the drugs, rather than other things.

Goals
Since the organization went into full swing in July, Karson said he has received an endorsement from state Sen. Mike Kowall, R-White Lake, and support from other community leaders.

He said he presented his story to members of the MSU Greek community.

He also is in the process of making a Wayne State University chapter and is planning to travel to high schools in the Metro Detroit area this fall.

Karson said the goal of the organization is to someday expand throughout the state and nation, in hopes that one day, drug addiction will be a thing of the past.

“(I) just (want to) speak to as many kids we can, (and) I just want to help people. This is step one; this is keeping a promise,” Karson said. “Providing adequate, sufficient drug prevention education so this can not be a problem anymore.”

Diane Rothman said she was in full support of the organization when Karson pitched the idea to her on what would have been her son’s 21st birthday, April 16, as this was something her son would have liked to do himself.

“The message is strong, and a person can continue to influence people even after their death,” Diane Rothman said. “It is a way he continues to live; what he couldn’t do in life, he can do in death.”