Liz Perkins was thrilled when her first child was a boy. She named him John, after his father and grandfather, and throughout his childhood years he was an adorable, active baby who climbed out of his crib early and got into everything.
John did well in school and was always the life of every party. But in college, a series of stressful events lead him to experiment with drugs, particularly opiate pain relievers like Percocet and Oxycontin.
Liz was shocked when she realized her little boy was addicted to drugs. “I spent every waking minute getting him help,” she says. “He and I had a close relationship. He was smart and had his whole life ahead of him and I couldn’t believe this was happening to us. I felt scared and alone.”
She started reading up on addiction, searching for ways to help John and make sense of what was happening. “I read a book called Beautiful Boy by David Scheff and I realized that this road was much harder for John than it was for us. My understanding opened up. I also realized that we had family members who were addicted to opiates as well.”
The road for Liz and John was difficult. John would seek treatment, be sober for a while, and then relapse. It was a devastating cycle that took a strong emotional and physical toll on the family. But the worst was yet to come.
“[After a period of sobriety] John came home one night visibly upset because someone had hit his car in the parking lot,” recalls Liz. “I tried to calm him, but he went to bed. A few minutes later, I heard his car leave and had a bad feeling…the next morning he told me, ‘Mom, I fucked up again.’ I wanted to kill him, but I hugged him instead, told him how much I loved him, and said he would have to fight [addiction] the rest of his life.”
A few days later Liz received a hysterical call from John’s girlfriend saying she had returned home from work and found him unconscious on the bathroom floor. She called 911 and an ambulance took him to the local hospital. Liz and her husband rushed to the ER to see their son, but it was too late. He was on life support for 36 hours, then pronounced dead. It was May 5, 2011. He was 30 years old.
“When I lost John my life lost all of its meaning,” says Liz. “If I didn’t have another child and a husband I wouldn’t bother [living].”
Losing a child by any means is horrific, but losing a child to drugs comes with a unique stigma. The sympathy that most parents get after such a loss often isn’t there, replaced instead with fingers of blame and accusations of deservedness.
But Liz is strong, and instead of giving up, she channeled her grief into helping other parents who are also grappling with a child’s addiction or death. “After my loss of John, I realized that I could not sit back and be quiet about this [overdose] epidemic,” says Liz. “I founded the only GRASP [Grief Recovery After a Substance Passing] chapter in Delaware. I want to help parents who come after me. I am also involved in getting our state to institute a Good Samaritan 911 law [to encourage witnesses to an overdose to call 911] and over the counter access to Narcan [an opiate overdose antidote]. If we can save just one kid then it is all worth it.”
As the overdose epidemic continues to grow, more and more mothers experience the unimaginable suffering that Liz and others are going through. But if enough people speak up about overdose and turn grief into action, we might turn the tide of this silent killer.
“If John was alive today, I know he would be very proud of me for not putting my sad head in the sand, but trying to save others,” says Liz. “I miss him every day.”
If you are a parent who has lost a child, visit your local GRASP group (http://grasphelp.org) . To learn more about overdose, 911 Good Samaritan laws and access to Narcan, visit NC Harm Reduction (www.nchrc.org).