This Man Lost His Memory After An Overdose, And Doctors Don't Know Why

“I was terrified to think of going to work and having him being home alone,” his mom, Laura Frongillo, said. She worried he would forget to turn off the oven, or even worse — that he would overdose again.

By 2016, doctors had found 14 cases of people who had almost exactly the same pattern of brain damaging that Max did, and had also lost the ability to form new memories. Twelve of them had a history of using heroin or other opioids.

Some doctors think it could be tainted drugs. Others suggest that it could be an unknown side effect of fentanyl, a cheap heroin alternative that's 50 times more powerful. (Last year, 75% of people who died of drug overdoses in Massachusetts had fentanyl in their system.) Still others argue that maybe these are just run-of-the-mill overdoses: maybe some small percentage of drug users like Max who overdose deprive their brains of oxygen for just long enough to damage their hippocampi.

But the doctors researching the cluster are sure there's something more going on here.

"People have been abusing these medications for years and years, and overdoses have been happening," said neurologist Jed Barash, who led the study that first found the 14 amnesia cases. "So it's an unusual pattern to see 14 of these cases in a limited window."

But everyone agrees that, as the opioid epidemic continues to spread rapidly across the country, we'll begin to see more cases like Max's emerge. So the Massachusetts Department of Public Health is now alerting doctors to send them more of these cases, in the hopes of figuring out just how many addicts are losing their memories — and why.

"I can't believe that that happened to me, and that I still continue to make bad decisions," Max said. "But what keeps bringing me back to trying to be healthier is just knowing that I'm just ruining everyone's life around me."

"At this point, I feel like, the gig is up. Like, I can't keep doing this. I'm going to die or, you know, I'm just going to end up ruining my life and like, living under a bridge," Max said. "It's getting really close to that point."