Father reflects on his son’s overdose death and ways to battle opioid crisis

Editor’s note: October is National Drug Prevention Month, making an essay on the ongoing opioid epidemic both timely and pertinent. Mississippi Today Ideas publishes guest essays on the issues impacting the state.

On April 6th, 2015, I discovered my son, Jeffrey, non-responsive in his living room. I called 911 then performed CPR until paramedics arrived. Two hours later, the emergency room doctor confirmed our greatest fear. He was 24 years old and the cause of death was a heroin/fentanyl overdose.

I frequently speak in recovery centers as a father who witnessed his son struggle through a decade of opioid addiction that began in junior high.

In my son, I saw the shame he felt as a result of his addiction and the actions he felt he had to take to keep the dope sickness at bay. The impact