Sprague — In the last years of Gage Andrew's life, those around him felt like he was living two different lives.

There was the one he had always lived, his mother, Angela Cloke, said: the daredevil, the jokester, who loved football and who would do anything for his friends.

"If he had a nickel in his pocket, he'd take a blowtorch out and give you half," longtime friend Austin Gadreau said.

But there was another side of himself he refused to talk about — a deep struggle with drug addiction that cut him off from the things and people he loved, and that eventually would take his life.

Andrew died on the morning of Jan. 15 from a suspected heroin overdose in a home in Norwich. He had turned 23 two weeks earlier.

The recent opioid crisis peaked in Connecticut in 2015 before seemingly leveling off last year. While first responders will tell you there is no typical overdose victim, an analysis by The Day of 101 opioid-related overdose calls in the first half of 2016 shows that many of them are men in their 20s, like Andrew.

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When he was growing up in Baltic, everyone who knew Andrew said he was fast.

In school, he had difficulty applying himself despite scoring high on placement tests. But on the Norwich Technical High School football team, he shined, playing halfback, defensive back and running back. And though he wasn't a huge guy, he always exceeded expectations on the field.

"He'd go in there and wreck everyone," aiming low and knocking out players twice his size, Gadreau said.

Andrew and teammate Mikey Trudelle would have competitions during practice: who could hit the hardest or run the fastest. At a tryout for a semi-pro football team, Andrew outran one of the fastest kids in the state, Gadreau said.

And at an away football game against Stonington, someone came up to Paul Cloke, his stepfather and asked him about the running back they couldn't stop.

"He was easy to brag about. ... I was so proud,” his stepfather said.

But there were inner struggles. Andrew was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, which kept him from concentrating and his mind running faster than he wanted. He initially was medicated for it but eventually stopped.

"Opiates were always his thing because they were downers, and I think he probably did them to calm the racing thoughts,” his mother said.

He also suffered from migraines as a teenager and had more than one serious football injury, including a season-ending tendon sprain in his foot.

When he transferred to Norwich Free Academy his senior year, he changed. He lost his love for football and struggled more in school. He quietly dropped out just before he graduated.

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Two weeks after he died, his family still is trying to piece together how his addiction began.

Angela Cloke works as a nurse at York Correctional Institution and had planned many transitions for addicted inmates from prison to sober homes. Even after working with addicts for years, she still had a tough time realizing her son was an addict.

"He kept it pretty hidden from us," Paul Cloke said. "He would sit in the car and nod off and sleep crazy hours."

As with many heroin addicts, he began with pills: Vicodin or Percocet, possibly after a football injury, though his parents aren't sure.

The turning point came when he was 20, when the family was returning from his sister's soccer game and found Andrew in the driveway slumped over in the driver's seat.

That began a frustrating series of trips to detoxification clinics, rehabilitation and sober houses, attempting to find a program that would take Andrew, accept the family's insurance and, most important, keep him away from opioids for as long as possible.

Andrew traveled twice to rehab in Florida — leaving the clinic both times, ending up homeless and, on one occasion, getting arrested for larceny and spending time in prison.

He refused methadone, and one trip to a clinic to get him on Suboxone was unsuccessful.

"It was like a repeating record," Paul Cloke said.

Andrew would return, sometimes looking well, and then would inevitably relapse.

“You get to the point where you're so frustrated, so angry even when you've someone like me who deals with addicts every day,” Angela Cloke said.

Despite his constant cycle, his mother said even when he was at his worst, "he never came across as a tough kind of person. He never said … a bad thing.”

“I think whatever he did, using at this point was the easiest thing for him,” she said.

The effect addiction had on her son’s brain is the toughest thing she has to explain to those who dismiss addiction without seeing it up close.

“You’re persecuting somebody who didn’t know they were going to become an addict, I’m pretty sure that’s not every child's life dream. … It’s people’s attitudes like that who will never understand the need for them to have long term treatment,” she said.

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As his relationship with his family deteriorated further, Andrew drifted for a little bit before checking into the Stonington Institute in October, and for the first time he successfully completed a 30-day rehabilitation program. When he emerged in the beginning of November, staying at a sober house in New London, he looked better than he had in years, his mother said.

"He was looking forward to going into the sober house; he had an upbeat attitude about everything," she said.

He recently had gotten his GED and was connected with his friend Gadreau, who wouldn't tolerate drug use, and had decided to bring Andrew along duck hunting for the first time in the first week of January.

They brought Gadreau's black lab, Chase, who climbed onto the front seat of his truck to sleep on Andrew's lap, and drove into the woods at 5 a.m.

Though he was unprepared and freezing, Andrew fell in love with the experience — shouting with excitement every time Gadreau shot a duck, and asking how he could get into the sport.

When he was off drugs and with a friend who supported him, "he just wanted to do normal things," Gadreau said.

But the 30-day rehabilitation was just too short for Andrew, his mother said. Two weeks later, on a Sunday morning, Andrew died.

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His mother said she never shied away from his addiction and talked about it all the time.

"I didn't feel like that helped me or helped Gage by hiding it," she said. She said she wants others to know that addiction can occur in any household and with any child, even one with a large support network like her son.

She advocates for longer rehabilitation programs for people with addiction problems.

"Thirty days isn’t long enough for anyone to get their mind right to get their addiction under control; you’re sending them out to the wolves. ... I think it's going to be a sad day in 20 or 30 or 40 years when we have to explain why we’re missing half a generation,” she said.

At Andrew's funeral, classmates from his high school and friends he had been out of touch with in attendance, spoke up to tell stories about him, "crying over the friend they remember,” Angela Cloke said.

It was a comfort, she said, to be reminded of how much his friends cared about him.

In the months before his stepson's death, Paul Cloke had a medallion made up for Andrew inscribed with the phrase, "Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."

Angela Cloke said it was to remind her son that "you can always make amends, and the people who love you will always forgive you.”

n.lynch@theday.com