Upper St. Clair parent presents precautionary program
A box of tissues sat prominently on the table near Mike Burch, ready for audience members who needed to dab their eyes as he told his story.
It’s a story he formally has told 130 times, by his count, primarily to young people who are entering life’s crossroads, people he wants to help stay alive.
His son didn’t. Bryan Burch, who graduated from Upper St. Clair High School in 1999, died less than five years later at age 23 from a drug overdose.
“Bryan loved all the typical things that kids loved to do, from riding Big Wheels with his brother to playing soccer and baseball,” his father said at a recent program presented by the Youth Steering Committee of Upper St. Clair. “But kids grow up so fast, and before you know it, Bryan was in his senior year and dressed for the prom.”
To put a face to his son’s name, Burch distributed snapshots of Bryan to his primarily adult audience at the Upper St Clair Community and Recreation Center, and the prom photo shows him with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.
“When I look at this picture, I really feel that Bryan was at that age where you think you’re invincible and nothing can hurt you, no matter what risks you might take,” Burch said in the soft-spoken, matter-of-fact tone he used throughout the program. “As it turned out, nothing could be further from the truth.”
Working with Jace Palmer, a Fort Couch Middle School guidance counselor and former Upper St. Clair High School administrator, Burch has spent the past decade telling students about the choices Bryan made and the resulting consequences.
What led him to drug addiction actually started with what should have been a positive choice.
“After completing several semesters at community college, Bryan advised us of his desire to open a restaurant of his own someday,” Burch said with reference to his wife, Kathy. “He got our permission to quit school so that he could work full-time toward his goal.”
His job was at a downtown Pittsburgh restaurant, where he worked a midnight-to-8 a.m. shift. The disruption to his sleep patterns took its toll.
“Since his two fellow workers seemed to have energy to burn, he accepted their offer to try something – he didn’t know what it was – that would help him stay awake on the job,” his father said. “It turned out that Bryan’s fellow workers were both heroin addicts, sharing their products with others. That’s how they develop new customers.”
He described Bryan’s resulting addiction in terms of three phases.
“Early on in his first phase, when he was working at the restaurant, Bryan really felt that he could deal with heroin on his terms, meaning: ‘I’ll only use it every once in a while, when I feel like it,'” he said.
That proved not to be the case.
“Phase two was a cycle of Bryan entering a rehab facility to get the drugs out of his system,” Burch recalled, “followed by being released from rehab and starting over with a new job, only to relapse and start that whole cycle again.”
He went through rehabilitation four times in three years and was scheduled to go again at the time of his death.
“Getting clean in rehab means that you flush the drugs out of your system. But for the addict, that craving has not gone away,” Burch explained. “His phone would ring the minute he got out of rehab. Any idea who that first phone call was from?”
Palmer told about the reaction to the question that occurs during Burch’s presentations at Fort Couch.
“When Mike asks the eighth-graders that, they have never not gotten the answer right,” he said. “Even at that young age, almost all of their hands go up and they realize right away, that’s the dealer calling him.”
By the final phase of his addiction, Bryan no longer could keep a job.
“That had to be the most painful time for Bryan’s addiction, because the only way he could support his addiction was to steal from his family,” Burch said. “With his brother, Cris, away at Penn State, he sold his Fender guitar, worth almost a thousand dollars, for pennies on the dollar, just to get enough junk to last a couple of days.”
The situation was even tougher for Kathy and Mike.
“As parents,” he said, “we were forced to have our own son arrested, feeling he was safer in prison than on the streets.”
Burch closed the Youth Steering Committee presentation with what he tells students.
“Some of you are going to be offered something to put in your body, and you won’t know what it is. Always keep this in mind: The person offering the substance may have a name for it, but he doesn’t really know what it is. He has no idea where it came from, and he certainly doesn’t know how strong it might be.
“The substance that Bryan took that night came in a very small, clear plastic packet. But it was so strong, he died instantly in his room, with a needle still in his hand.”
“You only get one body. You only get one chance. If you find yourself at a crossroads like Bryan, please make the right choice.”
The Burches encourage visits to their memorial site for Bryan, bryanburch.com. For more information about the Youth Steering Committee, visit www.uscsd.k12.pa.us/domain/54.