I'm sure this photo makes a lot of people uncomfortable it may even piss a few people off but the main reason I took it... 
 
 Eva Holland posted a photo to Instagram/Facebook of her and her children next to their father's open casket. Eva's longtime love, Mike, recently passed away from a heroin overdose. 
 
 A post made on social media by a mother attempting to raise awareness of "the reality of addiction" is going viral. 
 
 "I'm sure this photo makes a lot of people uncomfortable it may even piss a few people off but the main reason I took it was to show the reality of addiction." 
 
 Eva Holland posted a photo to Instagram/Facebook of her and her children next to their father's open casket. Eva's longtime love, Mike, recently passed away from a heroin overdose. 
 
 (Courtesy:Eva Holland/Facebook) 
 
 Mike's addiction started off with pain pills, Eva said. It wasn't long before he was hooked on heroin. 
 
 "He was once so happy and full of life. He was a great son, brother, friend but most importantly he was a great dad. He loved those kids more than anything. But as we all know sometimes life gets tough and we make some wrong choices." 
 
 (Courtesy: Eva Holland/Facebook) 
 
 Realizing what was happening to his family, Mike decided enough was enough. He put himself into rehab. 
 
 "He got out right before Christmas as a brand new man. He had found His purpose for living again, he found his gorgeous smile again, he became the man, the son, the brother, the dad that we all needed him to be again." 
 
 For several months everything seemed to be on the up and up, but when Mike took medication for a tooth ache, Eva said he fell off the wagon. 
 
 (Courtesy: Eva Holland/Facebook) 
 
 "He said he could handle it, that he could stop on his own and didn't need to get help again. Well he was wrong..." 
 
 Mike passed away on September 2, leaving behind two children and a woman who loved him. 
 
 "No parent should have to bury their child and no child as young as ours should have to bury their parent." 
 
 Now Eva has a message to share. 
 
 "This was preventable it didn't have to happen but one wrong choice destroyed his family. I know a lot of people may be upset I'm putting it out in the open like This but hiding the facts is only going to keep this epidemic going. The cold hard truth is heroin kills. You may think it will never happen to you but guess what that's what Mike thought too." 
 
 As of September 14, the post had been shared 246,368 times. 

 An Ohio mom is raising awareness on social media of the tragic toll being taken by America's heroin epidemic. 
 
 "I'm sure this photo makes a lot of people uncomfortable it may even piss a few people off but the main reason I took it was to show the reality of addiction," Eva Holland wrote. The photo, posted on Facebook and Instagram, shows Holland and her two young children posing by the open casket of their father, who died after struggling with heroin and prescription pain pills. 
 
 "The cold hard truth is heroin kills. You may think it will never happen to you but guess what that's what Mike thought too," she wrote. 
 
 I'm sure this photo makes a lot of people uncomfortable it may even piss a few people off but the main reason I took it... Posted by Eva Holland on Thursday, September 10, 2015 
 
 Holland said she and Mike had been together 11 years. His addiction problem began, like so many others, with prescription pain pills, and later progressed to heroin. She said he went to rehab late last year and came out "a brand new man." But after a few months of healthier living, he relapsed over the summer. 
 
 "It started with a single pill for a 'tooth ache' which inevitably lead him back down the road of addiction," Holland wrote. "He said he could handle it, that he could stop on his own and didn't need to get help again. Well he was wrong." 
 
 Mike died on September 2, CBS affiliate WTRF reports. Although the coroner has not yet released his official cause of death, Holland is certain it's connected to his struggle with drugs. 
 
 Now, she wrote in another Facebook post, "Lucas will grow up without his dad there cheering him on during his games and Ava will never have her dad walk her down the [aisle]." 
 
 Such tragedies are becoming increasingly common. Between 2001 and 2013 there was a five-fold increase in the total number of heroin deaths in the U.S., according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. 
 
 Over the past decade, heroin use more than doubled among people ages 18 to 25, and the CDC finds those who are addicted to prescription opioid painkillers are 40 times more likely to become addicted to heroin. 
 
 "If you don't choose recovery every single day this will be your only way out," Holland wrote. "I just needed to share his story in case it can help anyone else."
– An Ohio woman who lost the father of her two kids earlier this month responded by posting the rather jarring photo of herself and the children standing next to his open casket in an attempt to warn people about the harsh reality of heroin addiction, reports CBS News. The photo, which she posted to Facebook and Instagram as well as on two heroin support sites, has been shared almost 300,000 times, and she says people have already told her it's helped them to quit, or to stay clean even if for just one more day, reports the New York Daily News. "If you don't choose recovery every single day this will be your only way out," Eva Holland writes of Mike Settles, who died Sept. 2 at the age of 26. (His cause of death hasn't been released, notes WTRF, but Eva believes drugs played a role.) The couple have a boy, Lucas, and a girl, Ava. Settles' struggles with addiction began with pain pills, which led to heroin, Holland writes. "The cold hard truth is heroin kills. You may think it will never happen to you but guess what that's what Mike thought too. We were together 11 years. I was there before it all started. I knew what he wanted out of this life, all his hopes and dreams. He never would've imagined his life would turn out this way." She says that he got clean after a stint in rehab last year, but this summer "a single pill for a 'tooth ache' ... inevitably led him back down the road of addiction." The number of heroin deaths increased five-fold between 2001 and 2013, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and those addicted to prescription opioid painkillers are 40 times more likely to turn to heroin, reports the CDC. (Read about the wrenching process of weaning a baby off heroin.)