About Austin's Story
Our Vision
At Austin's Story, our vision is to create a community where mental health is a top priority and individuals can access the resources they need to achieve optimal well-being.
Austin's Story
Austin’s Voice
Austin Graves grew up in Boise, ID as a very happy and comedic child. He was quick with his wit and wanted to make everyone around him laugh.
When Austin was 19, we went to Texas to work on the pipeline. He was there for about a year and was drinking way too much to fit into the crowd. When he came home from Texas, he was really struggling with mental health. He said that his head just wouldn’t quit spinning and he was feeling anxious all the time. He was having problems sleeping and would stay up all night. He thought that the alcohol was a way to calm him down. I would find him down in the game room trying to call anyone he knew just to talk through the night. Many of you probably received those late-night calls.
This was all during Covid and we knew the whole world was struggling with getting into any doctors. The only help we could get was Teladoc. He did several online mental health appointments with them, but they could not prescribe him anything. Then it was harder and harder to get an appointment.
Austin begged me to send him to Hawaii to live with his friend Keegan. So, we got his stuff together, bought him a new luggage set, got the special Covid test that would allow him into Hawaii and off he went. He seemed to be doing great there. He had a great job, met many new friends and started a healthy diet and exercise. His phone calls home were once or twice a day. He was doing great.
Then something hit him again and the number of phone calls rose back to 5-6 a day. Austin was starting to struggle again with his mental health. He called me after a fender bender and was in complete panic, so I flew him back home the next day. He hated Denver and didn’t have many local friends.
He wanted to be back in Boise. That was his happy place. So, we packed up all his stuff again and I drove him back. He got a great job and was so proud of himself. But the struggle was back, and he turned to Xanax to help calm his head.
While Austin was there, we (his family) moved to New Mexico. I received a very depressing phone call one afternoon and he was asking for help. He thought that he was going to die if he stayed there. His dad took off work and drove the 14 hours to Boise to go and get him. He was in bad shape, but we had him home again.
Austin wanted help. He wanted to know what was going on in his head. He would ask everyone he saw if they had mental struggles and what they were doing to fix them. He bought books and read up mental illnesses.
We found a clinic that was willing to give him medication to wean him off Xanax. It seemed to be working well until the clinic was shut down for lack of funds. We tried everywhere and nobody could get him in for an appointment for over 6 months. We sent him to a program in Las Cruces and they diagnosed him as Bi-polar with severe anxiety. When he left there, they gave him a one-month prescription for Lithium and sent him home.
We tried every mental health professional for miles and could not get anyone to get him in. “New Mexico has a lack of doctors” is what we kept being told. We tried Teladoc again, but they were not able to prescribe the medications he needed.
We were beside ourselves watching him struggle with everything in his head. Being his mother, I was in pure anguish trying to fix everything for him. To make him feel “his normal”.
He lost a very close friend last year and with no medications or medical help, he went back to the drugs to cope.
We could not find any detox or rehab program that could take him in New Mexico. So as parents, we chose to send him to a center in Indianapolis. There they told him that he was not Bipolar, he just had depression and anxiety. We sent him from there to Ohio for another program to complete his recovery. While he was in rehab, he did numerous paintings with his body with different heads on it. One was a snake, one a crushed can and another was an animal skull. That is what he said that his mind felt like at different times. He was gone for over 3 months before he graduated from the program and came home.
They sent him with a whole box of medications. Ten to be exact. They had been giving him the medications on a set schedule and when he came home, we were at a complete loss as to what they were and when to take them. When you look them up, they are used for different things. Two of them are actually for Bipolar and they said that he didn’t have Bipolar. Another was for high blood pressure which he never had. Others were for anxiety, sleeping, withdrawal, ADHD, and seizures. Calls to the rehab went unanswered or I was told that he was an adult, and they could not talk to me. He quit taking some as he felt he didn’t need them.
When it came time to refill those prescriptions, it just couldn’t be done. They had sent him with handwritten ones and we could not get a pharmacy to fill them. I still have them. I went back and forth with the doctors in Ohio to try and get them electronically submitted. Some would come through and others they “just weren’t receiving”. We fought to get them for months. The concoction that was working couldn’t anymore because we couldn’t get them all. I tried everything I could think of and reached out for help every day. I cried on the phone with my insurance trying to find a place that could see him. His mental stability was going downhill quickly, and we could not get him help.
Again, he turned to the Xanax that he could buy off the street.
We finally found Austin an out-patient center that would prescribe him Klonopin to wean him back off. He had to go in weekly to take a drug test and get his prescription. They gave him 7 days at time, but the pharmacy would take a couple days to fill it and he was without at times. Sadly, they did not provide mental health.
We had lost all hope and exhausted every avenue we could find. He had constant mood swings, didn’t want to get out of bed and went through several jobs.
We did get him an appointment with a family doctor but that was 5 months out. We finally had him on a waiting list to see a psychiatrist but no appointment. Those 5 months seemed like forever. With the help of the Klonopin, he did find a job that he loved and was doing great at it. If he had those pills, he said that his head would function enough to get him through the day. The nights were still really rough.
Austin made it through to his medical appointment and was again diagnosed with Bipolar and severe anxiety. He was so excited to have a diagnosis and a doctor who could prescribe regular prescriptions. They gave him Lithium and Klonopin. When he went to pick them up, he was told they wouldn’t be ready until the next day. He never got to start them. This was two days before he passed.
The night before he left us was our 15th wedding anniversary and we had gone out for dinner and drinks. Austin had just received a promotion at work and a large raise. He was so excited that things were turning around for him. He called me and asked if he could join us. He sat with us for over an hour and we talked and laughed. When we went to leave, he said that his head just wasn’t calming down and he wanted to go to another local hangout to see if there were people his age to talk to. That was the last hug and kiss I would ever receive from him.
He went down into Albuquerque and bought some pills to calm his head. They turned out to be fentanyl.
I woke up at 5:22 am in a panic, instead of getting up to check on him, I looked at the camera. My car was in the driveway, so I knew he was home, and I dozed back off. Edison woke up at 6 and heard the shower on. I got up shortly after and also heard the shower. I figured that he was getting a jump on the day. I made coffee and took a cup outside to the patio, like every other morning. It dawned on Edison that the shower had been running for too long and came and got me. Austin wouldn’t answer my bangs or yells for him. We had to break into the bathroom. There he was on the floor. His little brother Brayden called 911 while I started CPR. The police showed up in 10 minutes and took over for me. It was too late. He had been gone for a while.
That afternoon, the psychiatrist where he had been on the waiting list for, called to schedule him an appointment. Obviously it was too late.
What we went through as a family should never be endured. Our goal with the Austin Graves Foundation is to make sure that this does not happen to another family. We needed resources and help and could not get them. That is what we want to provide for other families in need, to bridge the gap and make sure we can find them help when they need it the most.