Annapolis native Jessie Dunleavy could never have anticipated the challenges ahead of her when she gave birth to her son, Paul Reithlingshoefer. Her time soon became occupied with doctors’ appointments, meetings with teachers and visits to prison. Reithlingshoefer was born with learning disabilities and mental health challenges that confounded Anne Arundel and nationally renowned education and behavior experts.

Feeling constantly inadequate, Reithlingshoefer found solace in heroin. When he died in April 2017 of an overdose from substances laced with fentanyl at age 34, it wasn’t for a lack of seeking treatment. It was due to him being denied suboxone, a drug that helps counteract the effects of addiction, because of restrictions placed on the distribution of the life-saving medication, Dunleavy said.

After her son’s death, Dunleavy found refuge and pain in searching through her son’s belongings. She sorted through his journals and computer filled with insightful and heartbreaking poems and decided his gift needed to be shared.

“He was a deeper thinker than people realized,” Dunleavy said.

As she started to collect the poetry she realized this wasn’t the whole story.

“His poetry absent his life isn’t as interesting and his life absent his poetry isn’t as interesting so I decided that I needed to combine the two,” Dunleavy said.

The ultimate package became her 2020 memoir “Cover My Dreams in Ink.” The book follows her and her son’s journey navigating the school system, mental health world, criminal justice system and drug recovery. Nearly three years later, her book is continuing to affect readers and her time is spent doing all she can to save other parents from her fate.

Dunleavy, a librarian by profession, saved every record of her son’s life — all his journals, Mother’s Day cards and hospital bills. She wanted the book to help dispel myths about who uses drugs and why. It’s a stigma she said prevents Maryland and the nation from making necessary changes to save residents from overdoses.

“I wanted to say good people fall into bad circumstances,” Dunleavy said. “He was self-medicating and what I came to realize too, and it’s so sad, is that that’s most people who fall into chaotic drug use.”

Watching and partaking in her son’s journey led her to understand there is a better way to manage drug addiction. As she slowly untangled widely held stigmas, she came to see how drug use takes root and thrives and why governments allow it to do so.

Most people who use drugs don’t become addicted, she learned, because addiction is a mental illness only a small percentage of people have. According to the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, in 2020 about 25% of illegal drug users had a drug disorder, and of those about 25% had an opioid disorder, using opioids like pain relievers or heroin.

While drug addiction is her main cause, Dunleavy is adamant that substance use disorder spirals out of control because of systematic failures like poverty and racism and profoundly believes drug abuse must be dealt with as a mental health issue and not a criminal justice issue.

“I’d give anything to have had it go differently, to have him, but I am really focused on preventing others [from dying of overdoses],” Dunleavy said.

Aside from being part of county, state and national groups that work on drug reform, including the Anne Arundel County Health Department’s Opioid Intervention Team, Progressive Maryland’s Drug Decriminalization Coalition and the national Drug Policy Alliance, she regularly testifies at the Maryland legislature on bills related to drug use.

In the current legislative session, Dunleavy is particularly passionate about two bills, one would decriminalize drug paraphernalia and the other would authorize community organizations to run pilot overdose and infectious disease prevention services programs. The latter bill, sponsored by Anne Arundel and Prince George’s Del. Joseline Peña-Melnyk, would allow residents to use drugs safely at certain sanctioned sites.

Of the roughly 200 overdose prevention sites across the world, not a single one has reported an overdose death, according to Drug Policy Alliance. Peña-Melnyk said the bill has been introduced to the legislature at least four times but has yet to pass.

“I really, really believe in it,” said Peña-Melnyk, who visited one of these sites in New York City in December. “From the minute you enter you can see the organization and the support and the atmosphere is calm.”

Aside from nurses and other medical professionals, the centers have beds, counseling and other resources. Professionals at the sites can also test the drugs for additives like fentanyl.

To Dunleavy and Peña-Melnyk, authorizing these centers is a no-brainer. People across America are dying of overdoses, but not at these locations.

“People that are consuming the drugs are dying in dark alleys, in the bathrooms,” Peña-Melnyk said. “They’re dying alone in their apartments where they could be revived and helped and, if you have a loved one, wouldn’t you want someone to be near them if they overdose?”

Dunleavy and Peña-Melnyk suspect it hasn’t become law yet, even in the majority Democrat Maryland General Assembly, because some legislators feel uncomfortable authorizing drug use in any capacity.

“We have to be creative. We have to be visionary and try different things and think holistically,” Peña-Melnyk said.

She is now waiting on the Maryland Senate to bring the bill to a vote.

“The war on drugs has indoctrinated all of us,” Dunleavy said, adding that since the 1970s, Americans have been taught drug use is the root of many social ills rather than the result of them.

Peña-Melnyk added that the concept of “Just Say No [to drugs]” from the 1980s purported a powerful message that drug addiction is something that can be conquered with sheer willpower, not mental health treatment, as she and Dunleavy believe.

Dunleavy hopes her book, more than 400 copies of which have been sold, can counteract these generalized assumptions about drugs and provide readers with a face and nuanced story to promote empathy for those facing addiction.

“I hope they can say, ‘Wow. This is an Annapolis family that lives in Murray Hill and this is what they faced,’ “ said Keely Fitzpatrick, Dunleavy’s daughter and Paul Reithlingshoefer’s sister.

Readers, including Dunleavy’s work acquaintance Deborah Hoffman, have said it has humanized the illness of addiction for them.

“I had mistakenly felt that the addict had more control. I didn’t quite understand why someone couldn’t just say, ‘I’m going to get this problem conquered and move on with my life,’ ” Hoffman said. “I think it’s very easy to place blame when it’s really not about blame.”

Now, Hoffman sees the solution as finding the right answer for the individual experiencing the addiction. She said it’s changed the way she views people she knows now going through recovery.

“When you read about people in the newspaper you think, ‘Oh, it’s those people,’ but it’s not. It’s us,” she said. “It really affects all of us in so many ways.”

Throughout the book, Dunleavy does not shy away from acknowledging what she views as her own mistakes, including a marriage to a man she had only recently started dating, Reithlingshoefer’s father, who largely abandoned the family, and a second marriage to a man who verbally abused her son.

“I want people to let down their guard,” Dunleavy said. “It’s OK you made a mistake. I see so many parents who say, ‘Well I did everything for them,’ and you can tell by their adamancy that there’s some guilt.”

Fitzpatrick said she’s amazed at her mom’s ability to turn her pain into action. Seeing the poetry and Paul’s story encapsulated in the book was a catharsis for the family, she said.

“I’m in the house where I raised him. He’s everywhere,” Dunleavy said. “I can still get really sad and sometimes I talk to him. He doesn’t talk back to me. I wish. I’ll say, ‘I’m just so sorry, Paul. I’m just so sorry. You should be here.’ ”

She often reminds herself, though, that “life is for the living.”