Coping With The Stigma of Grieving an Overdose Death

Some people struggle to understand and communicate their emotions surrounding death and grief. When a loved one dies, they dive into planning services, organizing households or closing finances. However, the silence can be deafening when it comes to the avoidance of conversations about drug-related deaths. Overdose deaths outnumber traffic fatalities in the US, which means that we most likely all know — and are maybe even close to — someone who lost their battle to drug addiction. In fact, with the opioid epidemic still tearing through our country, the number of deaths due to overdose in 2016 crept into the top ten leading causes of death in the US.

The truth is, we don’t like to acknowledge that addiction can touch anyone. We blame weakness, willpower, poor parenting or poor choices, making it hard to imagine the real faces behind those statistics — the real lives lost and the real people grieving.

Grief for an overdose death is still a social taboo. It’s cloaked in stigma, often resulting in survivors feeling guilt and shame about discussing their grief and loss. However, for those experiencing the bereavement of an overdose death, there are ways to cope. Here are a few reasons why drug-related deaths are so difficult to talk about, and how we can open the dialogue up with compassion and understanding. For More Information, please click Here