by Kerri Rhodes Jenkins
There are three paths from addiction: Recovery, Jail, or Death.
After we lost Taylor in 2018, I promised I would find a way to be part of making a dent in how we treat addiction and help create programs that would have helped him in this fight. Delegate Carrie Coyner, Anne Moss Rogers, and I took HB 928… Read more...
I get this question daily. How can I stop my child/spouse/sibling from doing drugs, drinking too much, and even watching too much porn or gambling? Families feel they have tried everything and the helplessness of watching their loved one self-destruct is overwhelming. Not to mention how it affects the rest of the family and those relationships.
You can affect change. It’s not fast, it’s not guaranteed but you can improve your situation and create an environment for change. It’s important to understand how the person using a substance thinks and feels and how your actions play into their use. Empathy … Read more...
“My demons up against me
Charles Aubrey Rogers, Rap Song, “Just to Hurt”
I’m facing them now
I wear the face of a clown
I feel so unloved
Because of the monster
Created from drugs.”
As most of you know I lost my son to suicide who suffered from an addiction to heroin. Many think he died from an intentional overdose. Not so. His death was far more desperate and visceral. My son would not have been counted in the stats of overdose deaths. We know 100k died of overdose. But what about all the other drug-related deaths? The accidents? … Read more...
by Leslie Hanson
“Your mom isn’t answering the phone. I’m worried about her. Can you check on her?” Immediately following this text, my cell phone rang with a familiar phone number. It was my mother’s cousin, Laurie. I knew why she was calling. Cousin Laurie spoke with my mother daily and routinely called me when she could not be reached.
Over the years, I came to address these calls with diminished urgency as experience taught me my mother was either ignoring the calls or incapacitated by her addiction to opioids. Cousin Laurie had designated herself as my mother’s keeper … Read more...
See the website here. Susan E. Casey is a grief expert and therapist who wants to help people find the light in grief. In this episode, you can join the conversation with a mother, Rebecca, whose son died from an accidental overdose, and how she is finding a path forward a year after her son’s recovery and shocking overdose.
Susan and I met a few years ago when I was writing Diary of a Broken Mind and she was writing Mining for Joy in the Deep River of Grief which is about sibling grief. She was my “beta reader” and … Read more...
by Heidi Anderson-Swan
California’s SB 1097, warns about the mental health risks of high potency THC
The warnings would include the increased risk for mental illness. Recently, Colorado led the nation to become the first state to mandate stronger warnings on the high potency marijuana concentrates to its consumers.
It is a matter of public health, and human decency, that California consumers as well as other citizens of states where marijuana has … Read more...
By Jill Cichowicz
When my mom asked me to read the reflection at Scott’s funeral, I thought to myself, “How can I sum up a relationship and a bond that I shared with him for 38 years in 3-5 minutes?”
Luckily, you all had the pleasure of knowing Scott as well, he was obnoxiously obsessed with the Chicago Bears, could sell anything to anyone, argue about anything to anyone that would debate him, and had a charming way about him as well as dashing good looks.
They say you get in the biggest fights with … Read more...
by Bart Bright
My son, Kevin, died by suicide on August 14, 2018. He was 29.
The last articulate words I heard him speak were, “Cannabis has ruined my life.” He suffered many episodes of Cannabis Induced Psychosis, a diagnosis in the DSM-5. Over the last two years, I have communicated with hundreds of parents whose children have suffered from Cannabis Induced Psychosis.
In Colorado in 2017, marijuana was present in the blood of 32% of suicides, ages 15 to 19 according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. My friend … Read more...
Listen on Jeff’s LivingUndeterred.com website and see the show notes.
Living Undeterred is a podcast created by author Jeff Johnston and founder of the Choices Network, Ltd. Jeff lost his oldest son, Seth to heroin in 2016. His personal struggles gave him the inspiration to become vulnerable and to share how he has remained…undeterred. Jeff is in recovery from addiction, and for 11 years had his own wealth management and financial show.This show focuses a lot on the intersection of mental health, addiction, and suicide.
by Cathy Jo Harper
When Jason was 16 years old, he had a car wreck. Six weeks of physical therapy was followed with a new wonder drug for pain, Vicodin…..and a lifetime addiction to opioids.
Through relapses, college, rehab, counseling, the Marines, my life was filled with anxiety over how to help, anger at the situation, and fear; I was losing my son, my firstborn. How would I survive? How would his siblings survive without their big brother, their confidante, and at times their enemy?
Addiction and/or mental illness soon becomes a game the whole family gets … Read more...
