My son Randy died in 2018 from an accidental fentanyl/heroin overdose.
More importantly, hed been sober for two years.
She found him dead on the kitchen floor in the early morning hours.
People are sometimes shocked hearing me say the word dead or death or died.
It seems too jarring too harsh.
The grief I felt was beyond shattering.
Friends encouraged me to write about Randy and his addictions, which began in junior high school.
They suggested it might shed light on this catastrophic epidemic that is killing a significant part of a generation.
But I wasnt ready.
I tried to reassemble the pieces of my life and figure out how to move forward.
These people understood my sons addictions and understood my grief.
Many of them were drug-sick from withdrawals.
The class was for them to write their stories of addiction and what they thought the solution was.
Nobody agreed on a solution.
Several students were trafficked as children; others suffered physical and mental abuse and incest.
There was sex work, drug-dealing and rape.
The women in class seemed worse off than the men.
Some showed up with black eyes.
They wrote about such violent childhoods that I began a weekly therapy session to process all of it.
The class was a revolving door.
The pull of drugs drew many of my students back to the streets.
I lasted a year.
My quest brought very temporary relief to a very few instead of enacting one iota of change.
Not every addict grows up in a tough situation and ends up on the street.
Randy had a carefree suburban childhood with opportunities galore, which wasnt anything like my students experiences.
He played sports, had lots of friends and had a stable home life.
I believed my boy was safe.
The tentacles of addiction have no boundaries and can grab ahold of anyones child.
It took me four years before I wasfinally able to write about my beloved sons death.
I realized that deep down, we all shared a sense of having somehow failed our children.
I am still in contact with several of the mothers who emailed me.
We are tethered together by something that has changed us in ways we never expected or wanted.
Should we as family members be experiencing this kind of pain?
Should we as a country be experiencing this kind of loss?
What can we do?
There is no known answer in sight, andstronger drugs are in the pipeline.
At the end of 2023, theU.S.
populationtotaled about 336 million.
That same year, the Drug Enforcement Administrationseizedthe equivalent of 381 million lethal doses of fentanyl.
Whats to be done?
I wish I had answers.
The pill farms and cartels seem way beyond the reach of any government officials.
Maybe we need to trade compassion for character lectures.
Maybe we treat the addict as a patient instead of a criminal.
With grief, perhaps, but without the stigma attached.
Parents are reluctant to speak about their childrens addiction problems.
I understood why she said that.
That is why Im writing this today.
We must treat this as the crisis that it is.
The death count is growing.
We cant do this alone.
Need help with substance use disorder or mental health issues?
In the U.S., call 800-662-HELP (4357) for theSAMHSA National Helpline.
Karen Wallace Bartelt was a weekly newspaper columnist for The Oregonian and has written for many other publications.
She worked at Paramount Pictures in its heyday.
She enjoys teaching creative writing to unhoused people who are transitioning into stable housing.
She can be reached atksweekly@aol.com.
This article originally appeared onHuffPost.
