Opiate Nation: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Acceptance

My husband, John, and I lost our 25 year old son to an accidental heroin overdose.

In the wake of his sudden death, we wrote a journal every day for a year, recording our feelings of unbelief, anger, hope, despair, sadness, regrets: the process of grieving. Our musings are the spine that holds all the separate pages of our book together, as we recall the 10 year journey with our son and his battle with heroin addiction with hopeful attempts and bitter failures as he stumbled on a path for lasting recovery.

As we tried to understand why and how this happened to us, I dug into the past, searching for clues in our family, our community, and our society. We are passionately open and honest in writing about our failures and regrets because we are convinced that only by letting light into the secret and hidden places will shame and stigma disappear and lives be saved.

Our memoir is our gift  to all those who are struggling with addiction, to those who love and surround them, and to all those who have lost someone they loved to addiction.