Answer Addiction

Tag: losing a loved one

  • Marie Osmond Still Coping with 'Ripple Effect' of Son's Suicide

    Marie Osmond Still Coping with 'Ripple Effect' of Son's Suicide

    Marie Osmond opened up about her son Michael Blosil’s death on CBS Sunday Morning.

    Singer Marie Osmond is still haunted by her son’s suicide nearly ten years after it happened, she revealed over the weekend. 

    Osmond’s son Michael was 18 in February of 2010 when he killed himself by leaping from the eighth-story balcony of his home in Los Angeles. Osmond said on CBS Sunday Morning that most days she relives the pain of that moment. 

    “You know, I don’t think you’re ever through it,” she said, according to People. “I think God gives you respites, and then all of a sudden it’ll hit you like the day it did. The ripple effect is so huge, what you leave behind.”

    Reflecting on Loss

    Osmond wrote about Michael’s death in her 2013 book The Key Is Love. “You cry until you can’t cry, and then you cry some more,” she wrote, according to People. 

    Osmond revealed that six months before Micheal’s death, she had a moment with a fan that would be significant to look back on. “A woman gave me a hug and said, ‘Oh, Marie. You’ve been through depression, divorce, kids in rehab… What haven’t you been through?’” Osmond wrote. “I answered, ‘I haven’t lost a child. That would be the worst thing.’”

    Osmond said she was at the Flamingo hotel with her daughter Rachael when her phone rang at 1:30 a.m. It was the security guard from Osmond’s gated neighborhood.  

    “He said, ‘Someone is here from the coroner’s office. They are coming to the Flamingo to see you,’” she wrote. “My heart dropped to the floor. I said to Rachael, ‘It has to be Michael.’”

    When the officer arrived at the hotel and confirmed that Michael had died by suicide, Osmond was gutted. “I thought someone had run a knife into my heart,” she wrote. 

    Rehab and Depression

    Michael had attended rehab in 2007, but it was not made public what he was being treated for. “My son Michael is an amazing young man, shown through his courage in facing his issues,” Osmond said at the time. 

    However, after his high school graduation, Osmond knew that Michael was depressed. She says that she replays the “what ifs” in her head, and wonders if there is anything she could have done to save her son.

    “When I heard him say to me, I have no friends, it brought back when I went through depression, because you really feel so alone,” she told Oprah nine months after Michael’s death. “I’m not a depressed person, but I understand that place, that darkness… I told him, I said, ‘Mike, I’m gonna be there Monday and it’s gonna be OK.’ But depression doesn’t wait ‘til Monday.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Daniel Baldwin's New Documentary Spotlights Loved Ones Of Overdose Victims

    Daniel Baldwin's New Documentary Spotlights Loved Ones Of Overdose Victims

    The idea for the documentary came to Baldwin after he learned about the overdose death of his friend PJ Raynor.

    An upcoming documentary will focus on an area of the drug epidemic that isn’t often talked about: the experiences of friends and family members who are left behind when someone overdoses. 

    The documentary, called My Promise To PJ is being produced by Daniel Baldwin, the brother of Alec, Stephen and William Baldwin. 

    Losing PJ

    The idea for the documentary came after Baldwin, who is in recovery, learned about the overdose of P.J. Raynor. Baldwin had helped Raynor get sober, but after more than three years in recovery, Raynor relapsed and died on June 28, 2017.

    “I felt robbed,” Baldwin told WECT News about Raynor’s death. “I felt this is not the way the script was written by me. He finally got it, he had three and a half years sober and then I got a phone call that the first time he went back out and used heroin again it was laced with fentanyl and he overdosed.”

    Raynor’s parents, Patrick and Barbara Raynor, will participate in the film, and share how their lives have been changed since their son’s death. 

    “I’m a different person now,” said Patrick Raynor. “Not always a good thing when you’re changed by something like this. Never a good thing actually.” 

    Long-Term Sobriety

    Baldwin hopes that the film project will help other people with substance use disorder and their families.

    He said that it is healing for him to work on the project. “The service portion of my sobriety in my program is imperative for my staying sober,” he said. “So, another reason I’m doing this film is because unlike the one kid I’m going to take to coffee and take to a meeting and try to help him, I might reach five million people by doing this movie, and that’s part of what keeps me sober.”

    Baldwin pointed out that long-term sobriety is a challenge, especially in communities that have been heavily-impacted by the opioid epidemic. 

    “You have such a concentrated problem, when they come back from rehab, they’re thrust with the same people, places, and things that they were around and they don’t have long-term sobriety,” he said. 

    It’s a problem that Baldwin knows firsthand. He did nine stints in rehab before he successfully got sober in 2006. Since then, he has used his celebrity status to work on projects about addiction. 

    “By my taking those actions and being of service, it keeps my disease right in front of me and allows me to give away what was so freely given to me when I was in need,” he told The Fix in 2016. “It’s the cycle of life.”

    Filming of My Promise to PJ recently began, but a release date hasn’t yet been set for the film. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Chef Ludo Lefebvre’s Daughter Films Touching Drunk Driving PSA 

    Chef Ludo Lefebvre’s Daughter Films Touching Drunk Driving PSA 

    The eight-year-old made the PSA after losing her grandmother to a drunk-driving incident back in February.

    The daughter of Ludo Lefebvre, the French chef known for his innovative influence in the Los Angeles dining scene, shared a PSA about the dangers of drunk driving.

    Eight-year-old Rêve made the PSA after losing her grandmother, Peggy Stewart Braun, to a drunk-driving incident in February.

    “Over 29 people a day die from drunk driving,” said Rêve in the PSA. “You do the math, that’s too many. One of those persons was my grandmother and I miss her very much.”

    Powerful Moment

    Rêve  presented her PSA to the judge at the time of the sentencing of the driver who caused the fatal accident. There was not a “dry eye in the house” according to her mother Krissy.

    “The judge later stated that in her many years on the bench, she had never seen anything like Rêve’s message,” said Krissy. “Rêve hopes and we all hope that hearing what drinking and driving can do from the mouth of a child will really make people think before they drink.”

    In the video, Rêve also sings a song she wrote for her Nana. “The power of [Rêve’s] words was so strong. She was saying/singing exactly what the entire family was feeling,” said Krissy.

    The Accident

    Peggy Stewart Braun was in the car with her husband Bill and two other family members at the time of the accident in Golden, Colorado on February 22. Braun died at the scene, while the crash inflicted serious injuries including broken ribs and vertebrae on the other family members.

    William Randolph Lenox, the driver who caused the accident, registered a blood alcohol level of .136 at the time. 

    On July 2, Lenox was sentenced to 25 years in prison after pleading guilty to all charges related to the accident, including vehicular homicide and reckless driving.

    Drunk-driving crashes cause more than 10,000 deaths each year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Approximately one-third of all traffic accident deaths in the U.S. involve drunk drivers.

    View the original article at thefix.com