By: Ryan Kiser, Senior Director of Recovery Services at Family & Children’s Association
Over the past 10 years in recovery, I have lost a myriad of people to the disease of addiction. During 2017 alone, I lost four close friends to heroin overdoses within a 3-month span. I felt like my entire existence was sleepwalking, in a daze as I went from funeral homes to grave sites.
Friends. People I lived with. People I shared parts of my life with. People whose laughter, stories, struggles, and memories remain with me long after they are gone.
Loss can feel impossible in the moment. It is still hard to wrap the mind around.
There is a unique powerlessness that comes with losing a friend or loved one. No matter how much we wish we could change what happened, we cannot return to the life we knew before. Grief can bring sadness, but it can also bring anger, fear, guilt, confusion, regret, numbness, and devastation. Sometimes those emotions arrive all at once. Sometimes they return unexpectedly years later.
For me, one of the most difficult things to imagine was having to heal alone.
During some of the hardest moments of my journey, I had to turn toward people who understood. I needed connection with people who knew what it was like to experience the cascade of emotions that follows loss, people who could sit with the anger, acknowledge the fear, and validate the devastation without trying to explain it away or rush me toward feeling better.
Through community, I began to understand that every emotion I was experiencing had a place.
There is no single way to grieve, and there is no timeline for healing. Grief does not always move in a straight line. It changes and manifests in different ways throughout our lives. A song may bring back a memory. A familiar place may create an unexpected feeling. A milestone may remind us of someone who is no longer here to share it with us.
The pain does not necessarily disappear.
But through connection, remembrance, and the support of others, we can learn how to carry it differently.
Healing does not mean forgetting. It does not mean that the sadness disappears or that the memories stop affecting us. Healing can mean allowing those we have lost to remain part of our lives while finding ways to move forward with the love, lessons, and memories they left behind.
For me, some of that grief has become purpose.
The people I have lost continue to influence the work I do, the way I support others, and the importance I place on creating welcoming spaces where people can be honest about their experiences. Their lives remind me why recovery support, compassion, and community matter.
Their stories remind me that people are never defined by their substance use, their struggles, or the way they died.
They are people. They are loved. They are remembered.
And their lives matter.
If you have experienced this kind of loss, please know that every emotion you carry is valid. You do not have to explain your grief, minimize it, or heal according to someone else’s timeline.
You also do not have to carry it alone.
Together, we can turn pain into purpose, remembrance into action, and community into a place where healing has room to begin.
We remember. We honor. We continue.
