Support for Grieving Families

Do you know a grieving family who has lost their son or daughter because of addiction?  

Are you looking for resources to help with the grief process?

When your child is dependent on alcohol or drugs, it is a great concern for any parent.

Our greatest fear is that our children will lose the battle with their addiction. For some families, this fear has become their new reality.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse:  Overdose deaths increased by 37.2% from February 2020 to August 2021 and were predominantly associated with synthetic opioids other than methadone (primarily fentanyl or analogs) and methamphetamine.

Deaths can occur from dependent and nondependent use of medically prescribed or illegal drugs.

Also, unintentional injuries, homicides, and other causes indirectly related to drug use and newborn deaths due to a mother’s drug use are other aspects of substance use disorder’s negative consequences.

Addiction takes thousands of lives each year. Grieving families that have lost their children are left with the loss and the stigma of how their child died.  It is important to remember that anyone can develop an addiction to alcohol or drugs. Many good people do.

With continued awareness and prevention, these types of tragedies can be prevented from happening to other families.

For those that have suffered the greatest loss, support is available for grieving family members.  Counseling, support groups, and church organizations can all be helpful. Also, some online websites and books are beneficial.

When you have young children, explaining overdose is complicated and often overwhelming for children. Tips for Talking with Children about Addiction and Overdose Loss is an article that you may find helpful.

Everything that’s written about mourning is all the same, and it’s all the same for a reason – because there is no real deviation from the text. Sometimes you feel more of one thing and less of another, and sometimes you feel them out of order, and sometimes you feel them for a longer time or a shorter time. But the sensations are always the same. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

Memorials

Go to the Partnership to End Addiction’s Memorial page to remember a life lost to drugs and alcohol.

Shatterproof.org also has a My Last Photo page to create a photo page of your lost loved one.

GRASP

Grief Recovery After a Substance Passing.

Grasp was created to help provide sources of help, compassion, and, most of all, understanding for families or individuals who are grieving because they have had a loved one die as a result of substance abuse or addiction.  The website was started by Russ and Pat Wittberger and passed on to Gary and Denise Cullen in 2010. Click here for their Facebook page.  GRASP is part of the website, Broken No More

The Grasp website states:

“Anyone who has lost a loved one through addiction knows that society treats that death in a much different manner than a death from any other cause. There is the unspoken feeling that the individual who succumbed to drugs must have somehow been less than a good person. And for the person who has survived, surely they too must have somehow been a failure for “letting this occur.” Why were they not strong enough to stop this from happening? You were, they feel, in whatever way, partially a factor in the demise of the person you grieve. ”

As Dr. Carlton K. Erickson, Professor of Pharmacology, and Director, of the Addiction Science Research and Education Center at the University of Texas, Austin, commonly states in his lectures: SPAM — Stigma, Prejudice, And Misunderstanding kills more addicts and alcoholics than anything. We believe that it does great harm to those who love the person suffering from this disease and ultimately impairs their ability to grieve as well.”

The Compassionate Friends

Another group that parents have found helpful is The Compassionate Friends: Providing Grief Support after the loss of a child.  The group has more than 660 meeting locations across the country. Someone is there to listen, share and offer grieving family members the emotional support they need for healing to begin.

“The Compassionate Friends is about transforming the pain of grief into the elixir of hope. It takes people out of the isolation society imposes on the bereaved and lets them express their grief naturally. With the shedding of tears, healing comes. And the newly bereaved get to see people who have survived and are learning to live and love again.”  ~ Simon Stephens, founder of The Compassionate Friends

Bereaved Parents of the USA