Support After Loss

It's not just grief. It's everything mixed together — shock, regret, anger, confusion — and questions that don't really have answers. Even if you knew they were struggling, there's still a part of you that didn't think this would be the outcome. Your mind goes back. It replays things. Conversations. Moments. Little details that didn't seem important at the time. Not because you're trying to beat yourself up. Because you're trying to understand what happened.

And it keeps going back to the same place. "If I would have…" "If I would have seen it…" "If I would have handled that differently…" It feels like if you could just figure it out, something would settle. But it doesn't. Because this didn't come down to one moment.

Guilt shows up strong with this kind of loss. It can look like "I didn't do enough" or "I missed something I should have seen." That feeling hits hard because it's tied to how much you cared. But there's another side to it that's harder to accept — this is bigger than one decision, bigger than one conversation, bigger than one person. That doesn't make it easier. But it matters.

There's also anger. Sometimes at them. Sometimes at yourself. Sometimes at everything. And it doesn't always make sense — you can love someone and still feel angry at choices they made. A lot of people get stuck between two thoughts that don't sit well together: "They were in something bigger than them" and "But they also made choices." Both can be true. Most people want a clean answer one way or the other. This doesn't really give you that.

There are also thoughts people don't always say out loud. "Did they really want this?" "Did they think about what it would do to us?" Even thinking that can make you feel like a bad person. But those questions come from trying to make sense of something that feels personal and confusing at the same time. This kind of loss isn't just losing someone. It's losing what you thought was coming next — conversations you thought you'd still have, a version of their life that felt possible. That part doesn't get talked about enough.

If you lost a child, there's a layer underneath all of this that's specific to that. Losing a child breaks something that doesn't get explained well in grief literature. And losing a child to this carries its own weight — did they know what they were taking? Were they in pain? Was there a moment where I could have changed it? Those questions are natural. They come from love. But they are an almost impossible weight to carry, because the mind keeps searching for a logical answer to something that doesn't have one. What I know from losing Zach is that the love was real on both sides. His struggle was real. His hope was real. The ending none of us wanted was real. And none of that reduces to a simple explanation.

This is part of why The Drug Lies exists. Not to explain everything or pretend there's a clean answer — but to be honest about what this really looks like. If you're in this, you're not the only one. Even if it feels like it. You don't have to have it figured out. Just getting through the day counts right now. And while I am trying to do my part, I want to point you to some great organizations with far more resources than I have. Here are three that I think do great work and may have additional help that I do not have presently.

If you want support, here are a few places to start:

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — Call or text 988. If things feel overwhelming or you're in a dark place, you can talk to someone right away.

GriefShare — Support groups specifically for people dealing with loss. Local and online options available. griefshare.org

The Compassionate Friends — Specifically for parents, siblings, and grandparents after the loss of a child. People who won't try to fix it or rush you through it. compassionatefriends.org

You don’t have to be in crisis to reach out.

Sometimes just having someone who understands what this kind of loss feels like…
makes it a little easier to breathe.