STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Laura Phillips believes that if love was enough, her son would be alive today.

Phillips' son, Kenneth "Kenny" Antonick, 26, was found dead on Sept. 1 at a friend's apartment in the Bronx from a suspected overdose.

Phillips, who lives in North Carolina with her husband, Steven, and children Michelle Antonick, 23; Caitlin Phillips, 13, and Emily Phillips, 12, said she hadn't spoken to Kenny for almost three weeks before she received the devastating phone call.

She last saw him in June, during a trip to Staten Island.

"I knew he was using then [when I saw him], but when we last spoke on the phone he told us he was doing OK; he said not to worry. We were on the phone for almost three hours," Phillips said.

"You're always afraid of the phone ringing or a knock at the door when you're the parent of an addict," Phillips explained, because "you fear the news that's on the other end of the phone or on the other side of the door.

"I know it [addiction] starts with a choice, but it is still a disease. I know damn well my son didn't want to grow up to be an addict, only to die at 26. Nobody wants that," she said.

Phillips had her son's body flown to North Carolina to be buried.

She also made the decision to have Antonick's obituary says that he lost his battle with addiction.

"I'm not embarrassed of my son," she said. "I wasn't going to write that he died in his sleep; I wanted to be brave. I want other people to know that this can happen to them and that we need to talk about it. We need to break the stigma, and hiding what happened isn't going to do that."

'I COULDN'T REACH HIM'

The Phillips noticed a change in their son's behavior when he was 15 -- they were living on Staten Island at the time -- but thought it was "normal teenage behavior." She said he started having "an attitude," became argumentative and was spending a lot of time with his new girl friend.

"When he was 16, we had an episode with him drinking; he came home excessively drunk one night, but we grounded him. We took care of that situation," Phillips said.

By the time Antonick was 17, he was smoking marijuana and abusing Xanax.

In 2008, he entered rehab the day after Thanksgiving for the first time. He stayed in the in-patient center for almost six weeks until the insurance company would no longer pay, insisting he transfer to an outpatient facility.

"We were always fighting with the insurance company. They only wanted outpatient treatment, but the problem is, when your kid is really bad and needs to detox, outpatient isn't going to work, they need to be in a facility. The withdrawals are absolutely brutal; you can't just say 'go home and sleep it off on the couch'," she said.

Phillips has been a nurse for years, working with addicts and patients with mental health issues. So she knows, firsthand, just how medically and physically difficult the detox and recovery process is.

"I think being a nurse made me tougher and more compassionate when dealing with Kenny. I was honest with him and honest with my patients. I told them 'you're going to die'," she said.

A SIGN OF HOPE, BUT ...

Antonick cleaned up and began outpatient treatment at the South Shore YMCA before joining the Army. He graduated basic training in 2009 at Ft. Campbell in Kentucky.

"He was fabulous at this point; he looked beautiful," she said.

He relapsed after 15 months and was briefly incarcerated after going AWOL from Ft. Campbell in 2011. When he came home, he was clean and determined to get his life together.

He was clean for 23 months before his grandfather, Lenny, died.

"Kenny took [his death] really hard because his grandfather was his biggest supporter. He would always tell him that he could overcome his addiction," Phillips said.

In March 2013, he asked his family for help getting clean.

"He was using heroin at this point. I think he started when he couldn't get pills anymore. I had noticed that he started nodding out all of the time, and other people noticed it too and would say something to me," she said.

"When he was on heroin I noticed his behavior was so different, more than ever before. It was more bizarre; he was hard to reason with and just all over the place. I just couldn't reach him."

No matter how bizarre the drugs made him at times, Phillips said her son's generous heart always remained.

"Even when he was using, he was still volunteering at soup kitchens and if his friends needed anything, he was there," she said. "He didn't care if you were white, black, gay, straight, broke, rich, whatever. He loved everybody."

He had an especially unbreakable bond with his three sisters.

"There's nothing he wouldn't do for them; they loved each other so much."

By April 2014, Antonick was clean -- again.

DON'T BE AFRAID TO TELL

Antonick's grandmother -- whom he was living with on Staten Island -- moved to North Carolina last month to live with his parents and siblings. Phillips' goal was to have her son join the family in North Carolina.

"He was living with his grandmother until she moved; we hoped him not having a place to live and being on his own would get him to come out here with us," Phillips said. "But I told him that if he came to live with me, he had to be clean."

Phillips said her son began renting a room in the attic of a friend's apartment in the Bronx, but was still commuting to Staten Island daily to buy heroin.

When his roommates didn't hear from Antonick and noticed the door to the attic was locked, they had the landlord unlock the door. It was then that they discovered his body, surrounded by drug paraphernalia.

"I've never hid Kenny's addiction from my younger kids; I didn't shield them from anything that happened right up until his death," she said, stressing the importance of being honest about drug use.

"Parents need to tell their kids that if their sibling is doing something, don't be afraid to tell your parents, don't be afraid to tell on your friends because you're afraid of getting them in trouble. You could save their life," she said.