The Losses We Don’t See
Content Warning: Death and Drugs
August 31st is International Overdose Awareness Day, where people come together to remember those lost to drug use. The following story is true. Names and other identifying details have been changed for the sake of privacy.
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The first night my roommate, Devin, didn’t come home, I assumed he had met a girl and been invited to sleep over at her place.
It wouldn’t have been the first time. Devin was charming, funny, and fairly good-looking in a Shaggy from Scooby Doo sort of way – a young artist in a city that has always adored art. He never lacked for romantic attention.
He also had a history of substance use. I don’t know the details from that chapter of his life. He never offered, and I didn’t pry. When I met him, he hadn’t used in three years, and in the year or so we shared a house, I never saw him touch anything stronger than alcohol. A few times a month, I would come home to find him sitting on the porch enjoying a huge pile of boiled crawfish and a cold bottle of beer. Sometimes I joined him, and we would chat until the sun set and mosquitoes drove us indoors.
When he didn’t return the second night, I thought “Gee, this girl must be really special.”
Only after the third night did I begin to worry. Devin had a dog, a sweet little spaniel mix named Melvin, and while he trusted us to take care of Melvin for a night or two, he never left him longer than that without making formal arrangements.
I called Devin’s phone, and it went straight to voicemail.
He and our other roommate, Amber, worked at the same company, so I decided to check in with her when she came home that night. Before I could say a word, though, she asked me the same question I was about to ask her. “Have you seen Devin? He hasn’t shown up to work the past couple days.”
We compared notes and confirmed that neither of us had seen him in several days.
“Do…do you think we should check his room?” I asked.
Amber laughed. “What? You think he’s dead on the floor in there?”
I remember her exact words because she remembered her exact words. She remembered her exact words because they turned out to be correct – a careless joke that will haunt her forever. He was, indeed, dead on the floor in there, the evidence of his relapse still embedded in his arm.
If the weather had been warm that week, we probably would have found him sooner. Instead, he lay there even as we cheerfully went to work and came home and prepared meals and played with the dogs and went about all the mundane activities of daily life, just a door’s breadth away.
The police showed up with a resigned air of “not this again.” They explained there had been an unusually high number of similar overdose deaths that year. The drugs on the market had been quietly changing, laced with stronger drugs like Fentanyl. People would take their usual dose, only to discover that “usual” was now “lethal.”
That was how I first learned of the burgeoning opioid epidemic, although I wouldn’t hear that exact phrase for a few more years. It took time for what the police knew to percolate into the public eye via the headlines, and the CDC didn’t coin the term “epidemic” in references to opioid overdoses until 2011. It’s an accurate description, but like all epidemics, the term is one of faceless numbers and statistics, not individual people with hopes and dreams and strengths and flaws, people who are remembered and missed, and who should still be around.
This particular “faceless number”, Devin, was my friend. To me, he will always be a fond memory of lazy summer afternoons on the porch, talking loudly to be heard over the buzzing cicadas and pausing whenever a plane from the nearby airport roared overhead and drowned out all other sound. Conversations of everything and nothing, work and friends and art and music and always, always laughter.
I could go on. I could tell you how his family loved him and grieved him, but also viewed his death as shameful and instructed us to lie about the cause. I write this, in part, to finally lift the veil of that lie and speak the truth. I could talk about how I ended up adopting his dog, Melvin, who lived to the ripe old age of 16.
But instead, I’d simply like to share that Devin was a brilliant painter. He spent countless hours working in the studio behind the house we rented. Before he died, he had already amassed a large collection of completed work – stacks of beautiful abstract pieces leaned along the walls of his studio and bedroom. His parents let each of his friends choose one piece to keep as a memento, and mine will forever occupy a place of honor in my living room. It should have been one of his early works. Instead, it was one of his last.
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In 2022, there were nearly 107,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States. Over 75% involved an opioid.* If each were remembered in a brief text the length of this one, their stories would fill three novels every single day.
Since our founding in 2019, Cypress Resilience Project has trained over 5,000 people in Mental Health First Aid, which includes training in how to identify, understand, and respond to signs of substance use challenges. We have partnered with SAMHSA to train thousands more.
If you or someone you care about is struggling with substance abuse, you can call 988 or SAMHSA’s National Helpline: 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
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