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To friends of friends who have died from drug overdoses


As someone older, I can’t fathom why you continue to use/abuse drugs if your friend has just died from an overdose.

But then drugs such as heroin and cocaine weren’t really around my school when I was in high school.

I did was pickup smoking cigarettes, which stayed with me a long time. But I gave that up when my own son was 15 in an effort to get him to stop smoking. That didn’t work. As a matter of fact his smoking cigarettes was the least of our worries as he became addicted to meth.

After lots of research and helping teens and their parents, I’ve learned there are other ways to help you out of your depression and grief after your friend has died.

And it’s NOT using drugs to take the pain away.

Being active gets the endorphins in your brain working and it makes you feel better almost immediately. I don’t mean super active but a simple walk in a relaxing park or along some water works. If you like to run, go for it!

If you like to play soccer, go kick a ball. If throwing a ball is more your speed, get a friend or parent (they’ll love that!) to be on the receiving end.

Yoga is fantastic too to calm your mind and stretch your muscles that have gotten tense. If you belong to a gym, go lift some weights.

So you’ve tried that but now you’re angry as hell and want to demolish something. I understand that feeling, too. Not a problem.

Go buy a dozen eggs from the grocery store ($2 cheap!), find a vacant building or even an underused parking lot, and thrash those eggs!

You may also want to find your local dump and go throw some stuff around. Just try not to destroy stuff in your house though that you might need to use later. (I know these things from experience – trust me.)

I’ll be returning with more ideas in the next blog. Now go out there and shake some of that grief-related depression off.

Till next time,

Carolyn Zahnow

The Shore Grief Center

Mom to Cameron 5/29/87 – 8/11/05