Grieving Out Loud: A Mother Coping with Loss in the Opioid Epidemic

Today’s guest on Grieving Out Loud found success early in life. Mark Ehrenkranz built a career in the entertainment industry in California and New York, taking on a range of roles. But beneath that success, he was quietly fighting a battle with addiction.

Over the years, Mark says recovery would come in long stretches, sometimes years before everything would unravel again. In one case, he says it was triggered by a medication ...

She’s walked the runway at New York Fashion Week, won titles like Miss Mt. Rushmore, and may soon have a documentary made about her life. But just a few years ago, Danica Miller was on a very different path.

At just 13, she entered treatment for the first time, struggling with an addiction to inhalants. That struggle deepened over the years, leading to harder drugs, including meth, and at 19, a prison sentence after assaulting...

Imagine losing your child to an opioid overdose and then spending years fighting to hold those responsible accountable: the manufacturers, the distributors, the pharmacies. All of it driven by grief too heavy to put down and a determination that refused to quit.

And then, you finally win in court. But the money meant to prevent other overdoses isn’t always used the way it was intended.

Today’s guest on Grieving Out Loud, ...

After a traumatic loss, like the death of someone we love, it can be tempting to avoid the hard work of grieving. Instead of facing that pain, people often try to numb it through drugs, alcohol or acting out. Others throw themselves into distractions, anything to avoid what’s really going on underneath. For today’s guest on Grieving Out Loud, Hakeem Bourne McFarlane, that outlet was sports.

After his younger brother died...

Grief can feel incredibly isolating, and it's something our society still struggles to talk about openly. The full range of emotions, the unexpected reactions, the weight of it all. In this episode of Grieving Out Loud, we're leaning into the conversations that too often go unspoken.

Stephanie Peirolo’s story is one of both loss and resilience. After losing her father as a teenager, she battled substance use disorder. Years la...

It’s often said there’s no greater pain than losing a child. Today’s guest on Grieving Out Loud, Kym Hinchey, knows that devastation all too well. After helping her son through recovery from substance use disorder, she lost him to a sudden overdose.

Just a few months after finding her 27-year-old son, Adrian, dead, Kym returned home to another unimaginable loss-her husband, also found dead on their bedroom floor.

In...

When you grow up in a home where alcohol and drugs are part of everyday life, it can be difficult to avoid being pulled into a generational cycle of addiction. It becomes your normal, what you know, what surrounds you. And too often, it’s intertwined with mental health struggles and abuse, making substances feel like a way to numb or escape the pain.

That was the reality for today’s guest on Grieving Out Loud, Toni Handb...

With the number of drug overdose deaths dropping, some are celebrating. But is there a risk in declaring victory too early and cutting funding for prevention? Today’s guest on Grieving Out Loud, an addiction researcher at Stanford, says not so fast. About 72,000 overdose deaths a year still exceeds the total number of Americans who died in the Vietnam War.

Dr. Wayne Kepner says not only are far too many people still dying, but...

If you haven’t experienced alcohol addiction yourself, chances are someone close to you has. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, roughly 29 million people in the United States are living with alcohol use disorder. It affects people from every walk of life, including many who never expected to struggle with substance use.

Today’s guest on Grieving Out Loud, Katie Lain, says her path into addiction was...

When faced with a large crisis, taking the first step can feel daunting, especially when the companies involved hold significant money and power. That was the reality at the start of the opioid epidemic.

Mississippi was one of the first states in the nation to take on opioid manufacturers in court. Now, the state’s attorney general joins us to talk about that fight, and the evolving threats still facing communities across the ...

Over the past two decades, suicide rates have steadily risen across the United States. Even when family and friends notice the warning signs and try to get help, the outcome can still be devastating.

That’s the heartbreaking story of today’s guest on Grieving Out Loud. Larissa Strong’s daughter, Hailey, had been receiving care in an inpatient mental health facility after a suicide attempt. Despite that, Larissa say...

One struggled with mental health growing up. The other battled addiction. But Greg Vorst and Michael Nolan say that despite having different diagnoses, many of the struggles underneath were surprisingly similar.

After years of doing their own work, the two not only found recovery and stronger mental health, they also teamed up to open a treatment center together in Silicon Valley, Embodied Recovery, blending their personal experienc...

If you love, you will likely grieve. That isn’t meant to sound heavy; it’s simply human. And most of us, if we haven’t already, will one day lose someone we love.

For today’s guest on Grieving Out Loud, those losses came much earlier than they do for many. Sylvia Wolfer was just seven years old when her father died suddenly from a heart attack. At 17, she lost her younger brother in a car crash. Several years...

Every life carries a purpose. But when a child dies young, it can feel as if that purpose was cut short, or even stolen. We’re left with questions that don’t have easy answers: What was their life meant to be? What impact did they have? How did they leave their mark on the world?

Andrea Magder knows that feeling all too well. She lost her artistic son, Ethan, suddenly to an opioid overdose. From music to poetry to even a...

When President Trump signed an executive order classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, some who have lost loved ones to the powerful synthetic opioid applauded the decision. But a drug historian argues The White House is making serious mistakes in its approach to the crisis.

In this episode of Grieving Out Loud, historian Dr. David Herzberg looks back at earlier substance crises in the United States and discusses what ...

In this episode of Grieving Out Loud, hear from the new CEO of Shatterproof, a national nonprofit working to reverse the addiction crisis. Pam Jenkins recently stepped into the organization’s top role after more than three decades in public health.

Jenkins is widely recognized for creating bold, award-winning health campaigns that break through the noise. She led the team that introduced the Red Dress as the national symbol fo...

Lori Kellar is one of the more than 48 million Americans who have struggled with addiction. Like so many people, it began with something that didn’t seem dangerous at all: casual, social drinking. Over time, though, alcohol slowly took control, unraveling her life and putting strain on her relationships with her children, grandchildren and her husband, Dennis.

For years, Lori battled her disease in silence, doing everything sh...

Patricia Roos was a sociology professor at Rutgers University when she lost her 25-year-old son, Alex, to a heroin overdose. In the aftermath of that loss, she redirected her life’s work by examining the systemic forces that fuel addiction and the shortcomings of how the nation responds to the overdose crisis, particularly the heavy reliance on the criminal justice system.

Her new book, Surviving Alex: A Mother’s Story o...

You may know her as the voice of Sally Brown in Peanuts, but by the time she was just 11 years old, Hilary Momberger-Powers had already appeared in dozens of commercials. Behind that familiar voice, though, was a child quietly struggling — with the voices in her own head and the ones she couldn’t escape at home, where she endured emotional abuse from a mother battling alcohol addiction.

That early trauma set Hilary on a ...