COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Like many grieving mothers, I dread the holidays. Last year, my son Eli bought the family a Monopoly game, and the six of us played, while outside Ohio surrendered to its first white Christmas in years. It was stunning, as pristine as I’ve ever seen. Later, we met friends at the moonlit park and the dogs raced across the snow.
We were giddy, either from the surprising landscape or the temporary relief from COVID isolation. Eli wore sneakers, and I remember saying “I told you your feet would get cold.”
Three months later, he would collapse in his off-campus apartment at American University, another victim of unintentional fentanyl ingestion. He was 20 years old, now a statistic in the greatest public health crisis of his generation.
Eli, our beautiful boy, is one of the thousands of Americans who die every month from fentanyl poisoning; the story repeats itself over and over in homes and high schools and college apartments across our country.
The scale of this tragedy is incomprehensible; 2020 was the deadliest year on record for opioid-related deaths — nearly 70,000 people — with fentanyl-related deaths driving that trend. To allow the “nearly 70,000″ to sink in, consider that the Vietnam War Memorial wall holds 58,281 names. Consider that at the 1995 peak of the AIDS epidemic, fatalities totaled about 50,000 lives,
This year could set another record. In the 12 months ended March 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention records nearly 61,500 fatalities from fentanyl alone.
We’ve reached a cultural pivot point; Eli is part of the “fentanyl generation.” This rapid escalation of fatalities has hit every corner of American life. From the student who tries a counterfeit Adderall, to the young professional who tries a line of cocaine, to the anxious teen who takes “Xanax” (but not Xanax at all, but rather a counterfeit pressed with fentanyl), our children are dying.
Eli didn’t want to die and he didn’t struggle with addiction. He was on his way to a bright future, but fentanyl kills indiscriminately with one mistake. One bad decision.
Yet so many Americans associate fentanyl with addiction. I see it in people’s eyes — hear it in their voices — when I tell them Eli died from fentanyl ingestion; a slight shift happens, and I sense their internal dialogue questioning if Eli had an addiction struggle.
He didn’t, to answer their question, but plenty with substance use disorder die from accidental fentanyl ingestion, as well; we have enough tragedy to go around in this never-ending opioid epidemic. And, while no demographic is untouched, the fastest rise in fatalities is seen in ages 15-24, and in communities of color.
How to save these young lives? The first task: Move the fentanyl conversation into the open and talk to young people about the hidden fentanyl in cocaine, methamphetamine, pills, and ecstasy/Molly. Quick and commonsense measures to save young lives won’t be effective until we are honest with them about fentanyl.
Second, life-saving tools exist, such as fentanyl test strips and Narcan, and should be easily available to any young person. These tools don’t encourage kids to try drugs, just like condom distribution didn’t encourage sex in the 1980s. We made a cultural shift then; let’s do it again now with harm reduction.
Thankfully, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently announced increased funding for harm-reduction efforts. But it’s only a start; the distribution of fentanyl test strips should be decriminalized where such laws exist, and high schools and institutions of higher education should integrate fentanyl education into their curriculum.
This Christmas, we’ll have one empty seat around the Monopoly board. The devastated landscape my family now inhabits is hard to comprehend, but we have hope. Hope that Eli shines his light down upon us, hope the snow will return for another midnight moonlit walk, and hope that, in 2022, we will do better to keep our kids safe. As the poet Marie Howe wrote, in her exploration of grief and loss: “This is what the living do.” The living walk forward.
Dr. Beth Weinstock is a poet and physician, as well as a mother of four whose eldest son Eli was murdered in March 2021 when he unintentionally ingested fentanyl. In honor of Eli, she and her family founded BirdieLight, an organization dedicated to ending the senseless loss of young people due to fentanyl poisoning. A graduate of the Ohio State University College of Medicine, she primarily cares for individuals infected with HIV and Hepatitis C.
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