Elle Interview

Excerpt: How I Stopped Blaming Myself for My Son’s Overdose Death

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A son's death and a mother's love. This is the story of Josh Olt who overdosed on heroin and died at the age of 16. This is the story of the mother he left behind. It is not a story of "moving on," or "getting over it." For those of you who have lost someone you love to overdose, you know those things don't happen. This is, instead, a story of disenfranchised grief, of self-blame, of what-ifs, of should-haves, and how to find a way to let go of that guilt.

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Chapter Leader Questions Tim Ryan at CNN Town Hall Debate

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A GRASP chapter leader, Karyn Kerrigan O'Miller, asks Presidential candidate, Tim Ryan, about supporting the pending bill to deregulate buprenorphine prescription to treat opioid addiction.

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Denise Cullen interview

The Long Walk of Moms and Dads After Overdose

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Submission Date: August 28, 2015
Attributing Author: Denise Cullen
Source: Huffingtonpost.com

It's a hard road, the one that we walk after our children die from a drug overdose. It's a walk that numbs your feet from the miles of isolation and grief. So many Orange County moms and dads are on this road now, too many of them. I'm only one of thousands. The White House is now trying to grapple with the problem (In heroin fight, White House tries to break down walls between public health, police, August 16, 2015), but they will likely fall short. A strategy that doesn't prioritize empowering people who use drugs to save their own lives and the lives of their peers by making the opiate overdose reversal medicine naloxone far more readily available to them is doomed to disappoint expectations. Ask a parent of a child who could have been saved by naloxone, they'll tell you.

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