Every Time We Lose a Child, We Have Failed.

Originally published in the Daily Memphian

One year ago, my son Jack died of a fentanyl overdose. He was sixteen.

He never got his driver’s license. Never went to prom. Never made it to the canoe trip he had planned with his AA group that weekend. He didn’t get to grow up. And he didn’t get to become the healer he was determined to be.

Jack spent most of the previous three years in and out of treatment—fighting addiction, trauma, and mental illness. And through it all, he kept showing up. He kept getting in the car. He kept going to meetings. He kept trying. People decades older than him—people with long-term sobriety—told us Jack kept them going. They leaned on his wisdom, his humor, his friendship.

He was a light in their darkness.

And then he died.

The autopsy showed nothing in his system but fentanyl. Not a mix, not a party, not a bender—just a few grains of a poison he didn’t get a second chance to regret.

Jack didn’t die because he didn’t want recovery. He didn’t die because he was a bad kid. He died because the systems around him—addiction care, mental health care, the medical system, the so-called justice system—were inadequate, uncoordinated, underfunded, and broken.

We did everything we knew to do. Therapy, rehab, psychiatry, groups, prayer, research. We kept him busy—volunteering, making music, doing theater, running track. We paid out of pocket for treatment that insurance wouldn’t cover. We fought insurance companies when they tried to discharge him early. We watched care decisions being made by red-tape-hobbled gatekeepers, not trauma-informed clinicians. We saw our child slipping through cracks that shouldn’t exist—and that would not exist if we treated youth mental health and addiction as public health emergencies instead of moral failings.

Managing Jack’s care became a full-time job. Actually, it became several jobs—case manager, advocate, crisis coordinator, research assistant, insurance negotiator. And I already had a job. One I loved. One I lost.

I was told I could take FMLA time. But I was afraid. I was afraid I’d use it up, and then something worse would happen—and I’d have nothing left. So I kept pushing. Kept trying to perform both roles. And ultimately, I failed at my job. Because the system expected me to do everything, alone, with no net beneath me. Like so many parents, I was forced to choose between caregiving and survival.

Jack’s death was not inevitable. It was the result of policy choices.

Most treatment programs for kids like Jack—kids with trauma, mental illness, and addiction all knotted together—aren’t long enough. Aren’t trauma-informed. Aren’t adolescent-specific. Aren’t rooted in real science or real community. And they’re designed to fail unless you can afford to stay sick long enough to maybe get well.

And when you do try to get help, the insurance companies are there to remind you they’re in charge. Just six weeks before he died, Jack was denied further care because reviewers said he “hadn’t made enough effort to get better at home.” That we, his parents, could provide more “consistency,” “structure,” or “discipline.”

I have thought a thousand times about what I could have done differently.

Should I have let him smoke weed if it meant he wouldn’t seek something worse?
Should I have been more strict? Less?
Should I have ignored my gut and sent him to that “end-of-the-road” facility I’d heard horror stories about? Would terror have saved him?

Parents—if you’re reading this and your kid is struggling, or you lost your child like I did: this is not your failure.

You made mistakes. So did I. You loved your child. So did I.
And still—we are not the reason they died.
We are not the reason they suffer.

The reason is a society that punishes pain instead of treating it.
That criminalizes kids instead of protecting them.
That lets insurance companies decide who gets to live.

After his death, we learned that the teenager who gave Jack the fentanyl was too afraid to cooperate with law enforcement. He feared arrest. He feared prosecution. He feared the system that already treats drug users as disposable. The result? The dealer stayed active. Another young person died.

This is what happens when you criminalize substance use. Kids go silent. Grief turns to shame. Families are left not only mourning—but doubting:
“What if we had done more?”

But this isn’t just about parenting. It’s about policy.
And our policies are killing kids.

We need a full reimagining of how this country approaches addiction in young people.

That starts with policy, funding, and accountability:

• Universal access to long-term, trauma-informed, adolescent-specific treatment—not just short-term fixes that cycle kids in and out

• Insurance reform that removes arbitrary treatment limits and prioritizes evidence-based care over cost containment

• Workplace protections and caregiver support for families navigating adolescent addiction—this crisis is as lethal as cancer and just as complex to manage

• Regulation and accountability for treatment facilities, especially those advertising dual diagnosis or trauma-informed services; outcomes and compliance should not be optional

• Harm reduction strategies backed by research, such as those outlined by SAMHSA, including access to naloxone, fentanyl test strips, and compassionate care

• School-based education that works—we must fund and implement programs that meet kids where they are, not where we wish they were. Abstinence-only models like D.A.R.E. have been proven ineffective. A 2006 meta-analysis found that the program had “little or no long-term effect on drug use.”¹

We must stop pretending that this is an individual problem or a family failure.
It’s a systemic crisis.
And the bodies are piling up.

This is what happens when we treat addiction like a crime instead of a health crisis.
This is what happens when we shame people for using instead of creating space for healing.
This is what happens when we let the powerful off the hook and punish the vulnerable.

To anyone out there thinking “this could never happen to me” or “what can I do?”—let me say this clearly:

It doesn’t matter who you are.
It doesn’t matter how good your family is, how loved your kid is, how smart or kind or brave or supported they are.
And it doesn’t matter how powerless you think you are.
Because we all have a role to play.

If you’re a parent: fight.
If you’re a student: speak up.
If you’re a health worker, teacher, cop, lawyer, therapist: protect.
If you’re someone with power—use it.
If you think you have none—find it.

This fight belongs to all of us.
And every time we lose a child, we have failed.
But we can still choose to do better for the next one.

Jack wanted to help people recover. He didn’t get the chance.
But we do.
You do.

Please—don’t waste it.