The 747 Falling Every Day: A Mother's Cry Against Addiction with Katie Rizzo

Today, we confront the heartbreaking reality of the opioid epidemic through the eyes of a mother who lived it. Katie Rizzo joins us to share her story of losing her son Nicholas, challenging the stigma and shame that often keep families suffering in silence. From the nuances of 'prescriptive' grief to the systemic failures of big pharma and the rehab industry, we dive into what it truly means to lose a child while they are still here. This is a raw look at vulnerability and the power of turning pain into a purposeful legacy. 

What You'll Learn: 

• The reality of 'the family disease' and how to survive it
• Why current rehabilitation systems are failing opioid users
• The truth about Kratom and other dangerous 'herbal' gas station drugs
• How to navigate the complex emotions of relief and guilt after a long battle
• The biological link between mothers and children that transcends death. 

It is time to stop hiding and start healing together. #GriefJourney #AddictionAwareness #FentanylCrisis #MothersAdvocacy #TruthHeals

Katie Rizzo holds two masters: one from Yale University and another from the University of Colorado School of Medicine. For the last fifteen years, Katie Rizzo taught Anatomy and Biology at her local community college and public high school. Her short stories have been published in literary journals and in anthologies.

Her memoir, The Trimesters of Grief, will be released on October 6 by Koehler Books, with Blackstone Publishing handling audio licensing. None of Them Are You - A book of Poems is being published by Extra Extra Publishing on Dia de los Muertos, November 1st. 

https://katierizzo.com

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This podcast dives deep into real, raw topics—think vulnerability, triggers, and childhood trauma. But just so we're super clear: I’m not a licensed therapist, mental health professional, or anything close. I’m just a human sharing stories, lessons, and life hacks based on personal experience and a whole lot of curiosity.

So, while you might find some golden nuggets here, this is not therapy and should never replace professional mental health care. If you or someone you love is going through it, please—seriously—reach out to a licensed therapist or healthcare provider. You deserve the real deal.

Need Help Now?
Here are a few amazing resources:

·         988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (U.S.): Call or text 988
·         NAMI HelpLine: 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or nami.org/help
·         Therapy Directory: psychologytoday.com
·         Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741 

The opinions expressed on this show are ours and ours alone—no official organizations are responsible for what we say (or how much we overshare).

This show is proudly produced at PS Studios — learn more https://www.psstudios.co

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hey everyone, I'm Anne. Welcome to the Let's Get Naked podcast, where we dive deep into vulnerability. In this space, we'll explore what triggers us, uncover the patterns holding us back, and discover how to take charge of our own growth. If you're ready to dig in, be vulnerable, and face the tough stuff, then buckle up. It's time to get naked. There are losses in life that break your heart, and then there are losses that rearrange your DNA. The loss of a child is one of those losses. It is not the natural order. Parents are not supposed to bury their children. We are supposed to go first. And when addiction is involved, there is an extra layer of suffering that very few people understand unless they have lived it. Because you don't just lose them the day they die, you lose them over and over and over again while they're still here. You watch someone you love disappear in pieces. You watch them battle. You hope. Because there is no handbook for standing on the sidelines while your child is drowning and your love cannot pull them out. And here is the part people do not talk about enough. Sometimes, when death finally comes after years of chaos, fear, relapse, and waiting for disaster, relief can show up beside the grief. Relief that they are no longer suffering. Relief that the waiting is over. Relief that the fight ended, and if that was your experience, that does not make you a bad parent. It makes you human. Because grief is not clean, it is love, rage, relief, guilt, longing, gratitude, devastation, all sitting at the same table. The goal is not to move on. I don't think parents move on from a child. The goal is to move forward, to learn how to hold love and loss in the same hand. To keep living while carrying what feels uncarryable. And maybe one of the most beautiful things we can do after loss is continue the relationship. Honor them. Speak their name. Build something in their memory. Turn pain into purpose. Turn love into legacy. Because death ends a life, it does not end love. And sometimes the biggest way we can honor the people we lost is by refusing to stop living. Let's get into it. Today I'm stripping it all off with Katie Rizzo. Katie's memoir, The Trimesters of Grief, a hybrid memoir and prescriptive guide, reframes the experiences, experience of losing a child to opioid addiction through the lens of gestation. She moves readers through invisible, undeniable, and public stages of grief toward the lifelong work of living with loss. Welcome to the show, Katie.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Thank you. I feel like we are done now. That's great. You did a great job.

SPEAKER_02 3:46

Thank you so much for coming and sharing and being willing to talk about such a heavy topic. And then we can kind of get into other things from there.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

So my husband and I met at grad school. We both went to Yale. I think we both came into this relationship thinking, you know, hard work and you know, putting the time in, you can solve anything. And we had three beautiful boys. We moved to the Gilbert area. I taught high school. Um, it was just, I feel like those were the perfect days of my life. Um I taught AP Bio and Honors Anatomy, and our oldest son, Nicholas, um, took both of those with me, which shows that he was either brave or just wanted an easy A. Um, Nicholas was really good at living in his body. He was one of those kids who he was on the trampoline always. He just understood the world with his body. And we signed him up for soccer. He got involved in club sports, and then, you know, he pretty it was obvious that this was something that spoke to him, and it was a way that the kid who was a little shy could speak to the world. Uh and with club sports came a lot of injuries. So he had some knee surgeries, he had some elbow surgeries, um, he had a lot of broken bones. Every time they would give him opioids, and looking back, I wish I would have stopped that. And when he came out of surgery, instead of being like, Yeah, give it to him, I wish I would have said no. Um, our family has pretty good genetics for addiction, and he knew that. And I should have, I guess there were regrets. So um, when he ended up going to college, he went to CMU on a D2 Soccer scholarship. I kind of knew something was wrong when the doctor called us. He had dislocated his elbow, and the doctor said, I can't give him enough pain meds. Like, no matter what, it's not touching it. And I know enough about receptors and the body to know that the doctor was giving him the normal amount, but Nicholas had uploaded his receptors. Like he had a really high tolerance. Uh he finished college and came home to us. Uh, he got a job where he was working remotely and he started saving some money, and it became really apparent to my husband and I that things were not good. Nick and I, my husband's name is Nick, our son's Nicholas, um, started going to Al-Anon because both of us were like, there was something, it felt evil like in our household. Uh, thank God for Al-Anon because it gave us some tools to just survive that it's a family disease. Yeah. I don't know if you know a lot about addiction, but I feel like we went to battle with uh a dragon and we lost. Um so yeah. Uh about two years ago or three years ago, we realized we couldn't live with Nicholas in the house doing drugs. So, and it was mostly opioids and benzodiazepines. And so we um did the tough love thing of like you need to move out. You can't we can't be around you with you using. Oh, you're gonna cry. I know, I'm so sorry. I just I love that you love Nicholas already. So thank you. It's it hits it's hit so close to home. Yeah. So well, it's um it's one of those diseases. Like I for a long time was so full of shame I didn't want anyone to know. And uh in Al Anon, I got a sponsor who I love, her name's Laura, and she would tell me, Katie, you need to go onto a um a street corner with a sign and say, My son's an addict, because she's like, You have so much shame. Yeah, and you feel like it it was it's on you, but it's just on all of us. Yeah, and now the irony of it is I'm posting on the internet 24-7, like my son had addiction, and we need to do something about it. Um, and it's too late. But uh for so Nicholas moved out, and I think he took he wanted to be with us, like he would say, like, family is everything, I want to be with you, and oh, like you're killing me here, kid. That's the worst. Yeah, that does rip. Yes, and he would he would uh come in the back. So he I think he thought, I can go in the back high, but not the front door. So um in September, uh he we put a 72-hour hold on him because we could tell like this wasn't going well, he was stealing quite huge sums of money from us. Um, and when he got on that hold, his brain swelled and he had to be an ICU for six days, and it was from coming off the benzodiazepemes and the opioids. So his brain is not functioning, right? And so if we as a culture are like, hey, we need to help people who are who their brain isn't working, because what we're doing isn't helpful. So, you know, ICU for six days, then he finally agreed to go to rehab, went to rehab, and I think rehabs are full of people who are have really great intentions, but most rehabs for opioids, the relapse rate is 70 to 90 percent. So here you're asking me to give you $60,000 of my money, which you know, take it all. For opioids, you can have everything. At that point, it's yeah, and you're guaranteeing me a maybe a 10% chance of sobriety for a year. Like it doesn't, like the numbers don't add up. Like nobody would sign up for that. We met kids who were like, oh yeah, I'm I'm at this place for my 14th time. Yeah, so this isn't what we are doing, is just not working. And I've heard that the relapse rates are worse for methamphetamines. Um, Nicholas started doing fentanyl on purpose, and he was so full of shame of it. And he came to us and was like, I can't get off of this on my own. I I don't want to be this person. And yeah, so he went to this rehab. Insurance things happened, and our interns said they would pay, but it wasn't fast enough, so they gave his bed away. And they let Nicholas go to their outpatient. Um, I don't know if you know a lot about gas station drugs or gas station herbal remedies.

SPEAKER_02 10:59

Is it like the um what is the name of it that they're gonna be? I actually had someone on recently that was talking about that. It's get it's savage.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

So Nicholas's rehab allowed kids to smoke nicotine and buy herbal gas station remedies like Kratom while they're inpatient and outpatient. And Kratom is actually an opioid drug, and it if it acts just like an opioid, and you can overdose from it since Nicholas passed. I've met a few moms whose kids who have overdosed from just kratom. So I think the kratom wasn't didn't help him get sober because there he is using again in rehab, and they're saying, yeah, that's okay to take. Um, he ended up getting kicked out of rehab for not participating. The rehab wouldn't let us know that, but um, we finally, once he passed away, they told us. Um, and he went home and he took some opioids and some benzodiazepines and texted me and said, I'm coming over, and I never showed up. So um the life that my husband and my two kids have now is not the life we wanted, and we're all trying to figure out how to live in this liminal space where I've got one hand reaching out to Nicholas, and I'm hoping somehow through that veil he can reach out and touch me back, and another hand here trying to love my kids and my husband and make things work through all of the codependency and mess that that kind of is left. So it feels like we are left in this big rubbly space. So that's kind of a little bit about me and kind of what I'm what I'm trying to move on with.

SPEAKER_02 12:57

Yeah, trying to navigate that's about as heavy as it gets, I think. Yeah, yeah. You know, I feel like I feel like when you say we're not doing the right thing, we're not doing our our people any service that are struggling with this, I think you're absolutely right. And I don't know how, I don't know what the solutions are, but I do know that uh trying to navigate in our own family stuff like this, it's the most helpless feeling on the planet. And you're battling when you said we'd battled the dragon and we lost. That's a perfect way to say that. You know, I've I've long told my my kiddos that um no math, no heroin, no exceptions, because if they get twisted up in that shit, I have to uh walk away from them because I will not uh fight a drug. I can't lose and destroy the rest of our family, right? Because they have siblings and and all of the things that go into that, and also how do you do that? Right, it's like it's like it affects so many people. What's happening? And to to know that we still have doctors prescribing that stuff, and we know how bad it is, and we know the devastation that it is. You know, you had mentioned before we started recording another episode that we had done where it was talking about just quantifying the amount of people, and it's like a a 737 going down every day.

SPEAKER_03 14:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

And and we wouldn't allow that to happen, and yet we allow this to happen, and people just move on, and and uh in your family is left in shambles, yeah, because like you said, this is not the family we thought it was going to be.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Or that Nicholas deserved, like a part of me is I'm mad. I want people to know he deserved a better, like he deserved a real life. Give him a chance. Yeah. When you talked about doctors are still prescribing, um, when Nicholas was in the ICU, my husband went to his apartment and found hundreds of prescription bottles. I don't know why he was saving them for benzodiazepines and opioids. And he came home like this like perverse Santa Claus with this bag full, and he was like, This is what our son's been doing to try to feel good. And um, I think the two things that really have hit me is that there are winners in having a 737 worth of kids go down every day, and those winners are people who are prescribing the drugs, and so the the pharmaceutical companies and the doctors. Um, I tried to go after the doctor that prescribed the the drugs to Nicholas for three years, and I was told he did the legally maximum amount for three years, so he was off the hook. Um, and and also we can talk about how my rage at him doesn't do me any good or anyone any good, right? Like what is justice? But the other person or entity that is winning in this is the rehab companies. I mean, even though they're filled with people with great intentions, when you have somebody come in 14 times and you can't get them clean, what's the point? I have a really good friend of mine whose son is addicted to fentanyl, and she is a nurse in uh kind of a bougie uh detox center, and they are $20,000 a day. And she says, I think we've got about a success rate of 1%.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Like it's outrageous.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

Yeah. And and so we as a society are saying, okay, you're the addict, we're gonna put this shame on you and your family. You guys go away and isolate, and that's what we do. Like that, all my friends who have kids with addiction, they're, you know, I'm not gonna tell anybody, I'm not gonna talk about this. Um, I can't tell you how many grief groups I'm in right now. It's quite a lot. Full of moms who, you know, they're sitting in dark rooms, they they're not going out because they're full of shame. So that 737 that went down, all those moms, they're somewhere. And if you don't know them, it's because they're hiding. And um back to the big pharma thing. My dad just recently had surgery for lung cancer, and he had it done at N shoots in Denver. So it's a really prestigious medical center. And when he woke up, he had this pump for um for oxycottin. And um, I said, could we not have that? Because he hasn't even woken up. We don't really know right. I mean, he probably is in pain, but I don't know. And my son just died of an addiction to this, so I'd rather not start this with my dad. And he he probably doesn't have an addictive personality. Um, and the doctor's like, nope, he's in too much pain. This is out of the question. My sister had just had knee surgery, and she tried a non-opioid um drug, I think it's juvenile, something like that, for knee pain. And it's not addictive. And so I said, Is there any way we could try this for my dad? I I'm not an herbalist, I'm not telling you, like, hey, we only do naturopathic things. I like science too, but could we try this? Right. And the doctor said, Oh, that is one of my newest favorite drugs of all time, but I can't prescribe it here because we don't have a relationship with that manufacturer. We do have one with the Pfizer company, and so we can prescribe it here. So, you know, we went back and forth and finally I got them to prescribe it outside of the hospital, and I brought it inside the hospital, and then the hospitalist doctor came in and said, You can't you can't give it to him here. And so it feels like the system is set up so that people are gonna become addicted, right? And certainly my dad is still struggling with getting off of it, and it's been more than three months, and I just I feel like the companies are winning and the people are losing. I think you're absolutely right.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

I think that's a great way to say that. It's uh your hands are tied in that situation, and it's scary, and and the shame and that people not talking about it doesn't help, right? Like I I feel exactly what you're saying because we had you know similar stuff in our house we're saying where it was like everybody else is talking about their kids doing all of these great things, and it's you know, everyone's doing this comparative game, and so no one wants to talk about the dirty secrets that live in behind people's doors. And to me, it's like uh obviously I do this show because I want to talk about a whole thing. Because you know, it's like I'm I'm shaking the rug. I'm shaking the rug of stuff where it's like we will not live in shame. Yeah, we will not live in shame for this because it happens in ways where you know, it starts with a surgery or somebody that's in pain, and now you have this whole slow burn of watching your son not be able to battle this dragon and you not having the resources. How would that even look? Like, how do you how do you go against the dragon? It doesn't, like you said, it doesn't matter about the money, it doesn't matter whatever. I'll give everything. Like you just want your kiddos to be okay, and and there's no options out there for them. And instead of okay, what are we going to do to come from a place of solutions? People just keep writing prescriptions. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

And saying, you know, this is your you need to hit bottom.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

Right.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

What what is that?

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

Like, how far down can you go? Like he hit bottom, like you want to bring him back to me? I would love that.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

Yeah. God, this is this is uh this is heavy stuff.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Yeah, I agree. There was a um before Nicholas passed, I I really liked Facebook and Instagram because I wanted everyone to see what a cute family. And I Nicholas was a cute kid, like he still is. Like, I am proud of that kid. And there was a woman who posted on Facebook a picture of her and her family, and they looked like they were gonna go to Bali or something. But instead it said, like, I'm so proud of my son. Today's he's going to rehab. And I was, it just took me, like, I was so impressed by that. And I had so much shame about what our family was dealing with. I was like, I could never in a million years do that. Now I'm writing a lot of poems about. Being sad about losing Nicholas, and I'm talking about it. So I'm hoping that that changes a little because one of the best support groups I've been in, um, it's called Love in the Trenches. It's for people who have lost a kid to addiction. There was a mom in there one of my first days, and she looked like she could be, she was just beautiful, she looked like a lawyer, she looked like she had her act together, and she had lost her son who had ended up living on the streets, and she had found him dead on the street. And she said, addicts come from good families. Addicts come from families that love them. And she said, if my love could have saved him, it would have. And I think that's real. That is like if we stroop around away everything else, like you love isn't enough to solve addiction.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

It's not, because you're right. Like you obviously love Nicholas enough to have him not.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

Al Anon helps. Like, I think Al-Anon, which is a program which you already know, but but it's a program for people who love somebody with addiction. That's been very helpful for my husband and I, and we still go. Um, but it's been great for us to look at our wanting to control the uncontrollable.

unknown 23:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

And also they talk about how um the way I see life is is based on what's inside. And so the same situation could be viewed a million different ways. And that's helpful to me because a lot of times with my codependency, especially I it's really easy to get angry and get stuck in things that aren't helpful for for me to really see Nicholas in in a good light and remember him as a as a kid who tried really hard and who loved his family.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

So you mentioned um the the poem. Well, you you said that you had a poem that you would like to read us. I would love for you to please do that.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

Well, first of all, um I never wrote poetry until Nicholas passed away. And then the when we found out that he was gone, I like words were coming in, and I was like, what does this mean? Like I my brain is not able to understand this. Right. And so I started writing what uh just down everything that was happening, just so I could go back and be like, did that person really say that? Like um, the mortuary called and said, um, we're ready for you to pick up Nicholas. And I was like, I mean, I don't know, it just felt like a you know, like from preschool, like come get him. And yeah, like I am imagined, like, what is he gonna? Is he gonna come running to me? Like, so I had to write that down, like um, and try to figure out those words. So I started during that time writing to Nicholas poems, which I'd never written poems before. So this one is called the Pelt. I carry my son with me because he can't carry himself. The fatty deposits and muscles that once held him up at almost six foot are gone. And so he is little more than dried up skin and the air inside his bones. Even so, this isn't the future I wanted for him, laying over my shoulder as we sift through what's left of life. Me, listening to his body dry up, this pelt carried a good person. Yeah, well I wish you could come to some of my grief groups. There's a lot of moms out there like me. And it it's amazing that they're all kind of sitting in the in the dark. Um so I wrote this book about my about like what happened. It's part memoir and part what I've been doing to help me, and um and part poems. And uh I decided I wanted it to be out there in the world because we were at a grief group in person, and there was a mom there who overdosed in the middle of it, and she just collapsed off of her seat, and as it happened, I was like, I watched it and I I remember seeing Nicholas when he was using, and I I knew like this is what's going on. She's taken a Xanax too, one too many, and uh I thought, how many of her are there out there? And I see them all the time, and I can be that way too, like feeling like curling up in bed, but um, but I'm kind of mad, like we can't all just go hide, right? Like these lives can't be forgotten, and and they deserve us to like figure out a way so this this stops.

SPEAKER_02 27:46

I agree, I agree, and I think that that's you know, when you talk about the shame and the uh everything that surrounds just kind of the nasty emotions of this, we have to be able to work through that. We have to be strong enough to work through that so that we can find solutions to be able to make this stop because it's it's the biggest of problems. You know, I look at the stuff that I watch people get outraged about on um out in the world on social media and all the things, and people spend so much time and energy screaming into the void where they have absolutely no impact whatsoever. And yet, what could be done if we spent that energy on coming up with solutions for fixing this problem? Because we can't all just sit here and go, oh, that's so sad. I know, right? Like, but we do kind of brush it off. We do, we do like like like it's normalized, or like, you know, an addict comes from a family that's not your family that's just right next door. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like, I look at what you're talking about in the picture that you've painted of, you know, my husband and I went to Yale, you're both successful people, you have this beautiful family with these three boys, you know, the one is gets on uh opioids because of the doctors prescribing that for surgeries and stuff like that. This is not a your story is not unique. This happens to people all the time, and yet I don't hear about here's the solutions that we're going to put out there. Let's try this, whatever that looks like, right? Like, I don't know what the answers are, but I will tell you that. Um let's try anything, right? What we're doing is what we're not working. Exactly. We we've established that. What we're doing, not working.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:43

Okay, so what are we going to try? And what does that look like? There's no one we need to ask permission from to try the new things, right? I think that that's where people get hung up, is because it's like, okay, well, this horrible thing is happening and everyone is looking for someone else to come save us. No one else is coming. Like people need to realize that no one else is coming, right? The government isn't going to step in and fix these things. Like the who you think doctors are going to, they're the ones that are prescribing the things, right? Right. So it's like they're not going to fix this. They're not going to say, oh, let us make less money or you know, whatever while we come up with solutions for this. So as the people, as the moms, right? As the moms, as the moms, let's come up with some solutions. Let's bring our ladies out of hiding because there's no shame associated with this. I realize that there is and that we feel that, but we have to really be able to get set that down and get rid of that. Because uh there is no shame in that. This is life. Life is real messy. Let's be real. Life doesn't come with a manual, but it does come with chaos. I wrote this book because I got tired of drowning and everyone else's noise and needed a way to fix my own shit. This isn't some sugar-coated self-help nonsense. It's rough, it's honest, and it's packed with tools that actually work in the middle of real life. If you're ready to stop playing small, take back your energy, and get unapologetically you again, this book is your playbook. You can pick up your copy of the Life Hack playbook on Amazon or on our podcast website, let's get nakedpodcast.com.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Um, something you said reminded me there's this person who she's living in, I saw her on Instagram, but she's living in South Africa, and somebody said to her, like, as she was walking down the street, like, thank you for caring for our baby. And she's like, here they believe this my kid isn't my kid. It's our kid. I agree. And I I wonder if if things would change if we started treating everyone as our kids. And you if you look at how many people are in prison who have addiction, the numbers are really high. It's above 75%. The homeless population, how many people are dealing with mental health and addiction? Huge numbers. And it feels like the way I used to treat moms, like if I had a kid who was, you know, who died of um of addiction or from suicide, I would be like, okay, my family's not gonna be there. We're gonna, we're gonna beat this, we can do this. We're we're you know, we're hard workers, we can think through this. Right. But all of that's out of our control, right? These are unique individuals. They are our kids are not balls of clay for us to mold. They're gonna come and have these um big, beautiful lives that are gonna be full of great things and terrible things. And maybe if we all can reach out and kind of support one another.

SPEAKER_01 32:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:58

I believe that the answer is connection. I do. I do, at my core. And I believe that um as women specifically and as mothers, we have to have a stronger voice. We have to be able to help one another set the shame down and really be able to support one another and come from a place of solutions because just trying to fit into what has been prescribed to us uh isn't working.

SPEAKER_03 33:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:24

And also, uh, so what's the worst that's gonna happen if somebody throws out an idea and it doesn't work? Okay, at least we're trying something different.

SPEAKER_03 33:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:32

And then let's throw out something else. And let's come from this place where we're going to keep throwing things out until we get this thing figured out because it it not only is it an airliner of people that go down that die every day because of this. Think about the families, right? So you talk about your husband and yourself and your two other sons who are completely devastated by the loss of Nicholas. And then how that spiders out from there, right? And the people that you guys touch and the people that you, you know, are affected by this. This is a really big problem. This is a much bigger problem than half of the shit that people are spending a bunch of energy on that doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_00 34:14

I wish I could show you. I I'm in this support group and it uh it is at night, but there's usually a lot of the moms who have their lights turned down, they're sitting in their bedrooms alone crying. And a lot of them have said, I haven't left the house today. So they've sat in their house alone crying, which obviously, yeah, you you have every right. There is not, you can't put a rose-colored glass on this and say, like, think of gratitude. No, yeah, right?

SPEAKER_02 34:43

Yeah, there's no there's no wrong way to grieve, I think.

SPEAKER_00 34:46

Right.

SPEAKER_02 34:46

And also I think being able to take that pain and turn it into purpose of okay, what are we going to do to honor Nicholas and know that he didn't die in vain? That there's, you know, that we're working on doing something so that families don't have to continue to deal with this. Not only the actual uh effects of it, but the shame and the other things that are just so devastating to a family because you don't feel like you can say what the things are, you know. I think, I think the stuff that has happened in our house and and being able to just say the things at full volume more so recently than earlier on, but same, like just because my daughter isn't the same that's on the cheerleading squad and like all of the things and whatever, that is something that I think we deal with a lot of shame, where it's like, oh, but she got twisted up in this, or oh, there was this that happened, or oh, whatever. And it's like life is messy, it's messy for all of us, and I think that lack of connection um just continues to cause problems, no matter whether you're Nicholas or whether you're Katie, or what you know, or whether you're any of these people, that that is the devastating, a devastating component of it.

SPEAKER_00 36:03

Colin Campbell, who wrote Finding the Words, which is a great book on grief, says that he suggests saying yes to everything. And um right after Nicholas passed, I my husband and I read his book, and I was like, Are you ready? And he was like, Yeah. And when people said, Hey, do you want to come get a pedicure? And I was like, I hate getting pedicures, but yes, I want to, or whatever it was, he and I started trying to build a community by saying yes to things. Um, and it's been interesting how much I need other people, yeah, and how much I don't want to need other people because I want, I have that in me that like I'm an independent woman and I've got this successful family, and look at me, look, I did it. Um and in saying yes, I feel like I mean, I we have a friend who is in L with us, and he has um cancer, and he said, I actually need somebody to drive me to my some appointments. Can you do that for me? And I was like, my son just died. I that is the the very last thing I want to do. Um, but I got in the car and I took him and I got to learn a little bit about him, and it opened my eyes up a little bit. I mean, I'm not the first woman to suffer a child loss. I'm not gonna be the last. I get to see that there is other pain in the world, and that it's not why me, but why why not me? Like that it does happen. And there's pain everywhere. There's yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:47

There is, I think a lot of people don't realize that. I think you know, there's an example of when the kids were younger and they were swimming in pools and I always came from this place of it could happen to me. I always have for everything as far as like child drowning and stuff like that. And I think the same thing with with you know the addiction and the loss of a child and all of that. I don't, I don't, I'm not above that. I'm not, just because that hasn't happened to me, um, doesn't mean that any of us are immune to those things happening. And um and they shouldn't have to happen to you in order for you to understand what a huge uh effect this has on us collectively. And when you say, you know, the thing about uh thank you for taking care of our kid, I believe we're all connected. And I believe that our kiddos are not ours, right? I think that we're stewards of helping our kiddos get to um, you know, help them develop into the humans that they are supposed to be, not by forcing our beliefs on them, um, but by just fostering them and really encouraging them to be their own. Uh and so when you see people that are hurting, I do think we're all connected, and I do think this is a problem that maybe it hasn't affected your household. Um, but we are all connected.

SPEAKER_01 39:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:08

You know, and so so being able to say, okay, we can't leave this to the government or to whatever entity we think is going to come save the day. As moms, let's come together, right? And and I'm not leaving dads out of this, but I think there is a different, there is a different bond that a mother has just because you made that other human being. You know, it's um I was telling you before we started that, you know, my 19-year-old son had surgery a week ago, and I'm the one that's like in the trenches with him as we deal with this. And he and I will joke around about different things because it's like he just doesn't understand, like, how did you know exactly where it hurt? Not from the surgery, but just from other stuff, or how did you know that I needed whatever that day or whatever? I'm like, boss, you don't get it. Like you and I are connected, like there's something about that motherhood, and I feel like just collectively, we need that energy, not just with this issue specifically, but we're sick. Yeah. Like as a planet, we're really, really sick. Like, I believe that to my core.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

Yeah, me too.

SPEAKER_02 40:12

Uh, and I believe that it's going to take uh us mamas to come together and kind of figure out what needs to be done to do this, and not because we asked somebody else permission, but because we said what's happening right now isn't working, and I don't need somebody else to be able to tell me what I can't and can't do as far as getting help for my kiddo. And I believe that collectively there are enough of us out there that can come up with some uh solutions, some things to try, some resources to pull together so that we can say, what are we going to do about this? And I don't know what that is yet, other than I'm going to say it now, that we need to be, we need to be doing this, whatever that looks like. So if you're listening and this is something that is on your heart or this hits you, please send us a message. Let's me especially. Exactly. Let's let's do something, right? I'm not, I'm not a big, yes, I'm a I'm a big talker, right? And I do this, but I back that shit up. I back that shit up with action and and we need to be able to do something. And so it's, you know, you have all of these individual people who are living in shame because of something that happened. Those are all people that are very resourceful, they have a lot of knowledge and a lot of power and a lot of passion. Let's bring those folks together, right? And and do something about this because it can't just be we go, oh God, that's terrible. Another one, exactly. Like another plane went down.

SPEAKER_00 41:40

Yes, and put that down. Exactly. Go go get in your house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I have um, I have been told by people, like, good for you for getting out. And I'm like, am I supposed to go high? Yeah, yeah. But one thing you said, I agree with everything you said, but one thing that kind of hit me is just biologically, you I think you probably know this, that um you have your kids' cells in you from pregnancy. And um when uh when Nicholas passed, I I feel like there's a like I'm the last pieces of him alive, right? And something good has to happen with with that. Um and I feel like, and it sounds kind of poetic, but I feel like those pieces are like calling out to like let's do something here. We got we're better than this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:37

This is very exciting. This is terrible and also very exciting, and I think it can be both because I just think you're absolutely right. I think there are so many people that are out there that have been affected by this and just don't know where to put that energy, where to put that passion, where to put that. And so let's figure it out.

SPEAKER_00 42:58

Well, I think the first step is just acknowledgement, right? Yeah and and telling people your stories. And I think the more people that say, hey, you know, our family is dealing with addiction and kind of getting that out of the closet and not um hiding. Yeah. Because I think it's a disease of isolation.

SPEAKER_02 43:21

I think the shame is the biggest component of it, and I and I and I look at that because I think that that's an underlying current that goes underneath all sorts of stuff that we don't talk about, right? Is is um the shame and the fear of what will other people think and like all of that stuff. But uh just I I come from this place of I I will not live in fear. I will not live in fear. I will not come from this place where I'm ashamed to talk about any of the hard, messy things that have been life.

SPEAKER_00 43:49

So, where does control go with the fear? Because to me, fear and control are very close to one another, right? Like I used to feel like I could control Nicholas's illness, like I would. And I, my husband and I would sit down and be like, okay, we've we need a new playbook. Like, you know, we're all we were constantly talking about like what are we gonna do next? And we were trying to control this. And it was so there was so much fear. So I'm wondering for you, if you disallow fear, what do you do with that control feeling? You don't have it. Okay. You don't have it.

SPEAKER_02 44:23

You don't have it.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

Yeah, surrendering is a very um, I think it's a it's a new thing for me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:34

I I have this um two years ago, this past February, I embarked on what I will call my surrender experiment. Uh I'm a big fan of Michael Singer and the Untethered Soul, and he has a book called The Surrender Experiment as well, and it goes into his surrender experiment. And the most crazy things have happened to me over those last two years since doing it. And I don't have control, right? So it's like I understand the addiction in your family, I have the same thing in my family, and also I can't I can't fix it, right? And I don't have control over it, and I could get a phone call, and like the phone call that you don't want to get, you know. Um, but I don't have control over any of that stuff. And when you surrender that, yeah, it's uh it feels like you're flopping in the breeze in the worst and best possible ways. Yeah. Because um anything is possible and I can't spend fear energy anywhere in my life because it just takes away from everything that I'm doing and everything that I'm able to have an impact on. Uh highly recommend. Scary as as hell, but highly recommend uh because I think we're able to stop wasting energy on being afraid because if you think it could happen to you, you're sitting here living proof on the couch next to me that it can.

SPEAKER_03 46:10

Yeah right?

SPEAKER_02 46:11

And so it's like, how did that work for you for being able to control it? It didn't. How do we come together and come from a place of acknowledgement, like you said, right? Because acknowledging that that's happening. I have addiction in my house, right? Uh and as a mother, I want to stand next to you and say, what are we gonna do about it? Because this can't keep happening. There cannot be a plane full of mothers every day that loses a child over something that is just senseless, right? But it just and that's after it tears your family, right? That's after. I mean, how long, how long did Nicholas battle with this?

SPEAKER_00 46:51

Five years. Five years. About five years.

SPEAKER_02 46:53

The longest five years of your life.

SPEAKER_00 46:55

I mean, that's sure.

SPEAKER_02 46:56

But yeah, it's like it's like if you've had that, if you've had addiction in your house, you understand the helplessness that this feels. And if you haven't, good for you. I'm so happy that you have haven't had that. But for those of us that have, it is grueling. It is rip your frickin' guts out.

SPEAKER_03 47:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:17

Devastating. How do we stop that, right? So it's like, I don't have the answers right now, but I'll tell you what, I'm happy to bring together, bring together some people that, you know, we have smart moms, smart moms that can come together and say, okay, what are we gonna do now? Because I don't come from a place of asking permission. I'm more of an ask for forgiveness kind of girl. You know, so it's like, hey, let's let's come together with something that that, you know, we can try. Maybe that, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. But what I'm not just gonna sit by the side, you know, on the sidelines and just watch it continue to devastate.

SPEAKER_00 47:49

There's a saying in Al Anon that's how free do you want to be?

SPEAKER_02 47:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:54

And whenever I get hooked into like anger or resentment or wanting justice, whatever justice would be, yeah, um, I think about, you know, what is it that I need so that I can be free right now? And I think for me to be free today, it's you know, spending time writing poems, thinking about Nicholas, and spending time thinking about how do I help the next kid who's like Nicholas.

SPEAKER_02 48:25

Yep. Yeah, because the quality of life as you watched him piece by piece.

SPEAKER_00 48:35

Yeah, I don't know. Um we have uh a frame that's connected to the to the internet and it will post pictures, and you can see like this is before the addiction, and like you can see that cute glimmer in his eye, and um then this is after that you you can just see when um it was hard to find for his obituary a picture where I like who wants to put an obituary picture of their kid. Like I didn't want to put his graduation picture, but I found a picture of him with his two brothers, so it's him with his two brothers next to him. And he looks pretty clear-eyed, but he might not have been by then. But you can just see in their the other two's faces, like we're at war, you know?

SPEAKER_02 49:38

How are your other two sons?

SPEAKER_00 49:42

Um they're not doing what I think they should do about grief work, they're doing their own thing, and I'm really trying to support them in that, and just trust that they know what's best for them. Um, both of them are in graduate schools, not in Arizona, and I'm missing them. Um my middle son is coming home in a week and he's bringing his girlfriend and they're living together, which is adorable. And uh I'm just trying to be there for him. I think I think he misses Nicholas with all his heart. I mean, those three boys, they were like they were they were tight. And I don't know how you you m move forward with this loss. I think you just sit in it, and I um I my book of poetry um is getting published in November, and Max's girlfriend, Anya, is doing some of the pictures for for it. I know. Isn't that beautiful? Yeah, yeah. Wow. And uh a little bit dreading them getting married, not that they I don't want them to, and I hope they're not listening because I hope they get married and get married.

SPEAKER_02 51:05

Don't worry, kids don't listen. None of my kids listen to either.

SPEAKER_00 51:08

But don't let them know I feel that way. But um, but yeah, I um I just hope they do what Nicholas's death wiped like all my like I want him to be like Max is is in is is in a PhD for astrophysics, and I'm like, forget it, I don't care. Like, do it, don't do it, just be happy, find love and hold on really tight to love. And um, a younger son, Joey, he is at Columbia in grad school, and when I took him there, they were having a um a graduation, and the guy got on and it was like, Congratulations, parents, you've done it. You got your kids to Columbia, and I wanted to get up and be like, F you. You know, like I did nothing for this. And if if you're gonna give me credit for this, give me credit for Nicholas's death, too, right? Like, we just have this mixed up vision of what parents do and don't. And Joey getting to Columbia was Joey, and and so I hope he's doing well. Um, I'm I'm gonna go out for the 4th of July, and he's like, I'm never going back to Arizona. You you guys have to move to New York, that's where he is. And I think I think he's I think he's doing well, but I I know his like vision of what is important is completely different than it was before. His he called the other day and he'd broken up with his girlfriend, and he had said he called and was like, this is nothing compared to Nicholas. So I it just our measuring sticks are different, right? Like car accent? Uh okay.

SPEAKER_02 53:05

It's just wild to me. This whole ride, it's so wild. You know, when you talk about we have things mixed up, I think we have a lot of things mixed up. Not just in this, in uh in all of the things, you know?

SPEAKER_03 53:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:18

I feel like um I feel like we're gonna have to do something.

SPEAKER_00 53:24

Well, I'm waiting. I can't wait. Um, I'm on Instagram, Katie RizoW007. Let me know. Tell me, show me. Like, I've written to um our district attorney and I've said, you know, what's coming down the pike for like laws? Like, let me talk about uh gas station drugs and yeah, and how and let's get let's stop our kids. Like, that's I can't believe that is a thing, and it's like a quote herbal remedy. Like, there are so many stupid things like this that are, you know.

SPEAKER_02 53:59

Parents need to understand that because that's something that the Kratom, yeah, that if so here's the PSA to parents if if you don't know what Kratom is, uh and you have young kids, do your research, ask your questions, that stuff that, like you said, you can get at the gas station. And I have I know people in my life that have gone to rehab after destroying their lives on shit like that.

SPEAKER_03 54:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:22

So it's like, how is that what we're allowing? And again, why are we not doing something about it?

SPEAKER_00 54:30

I know. There are cultures like we went to a grief retreat in Sweden. Um, and while we were there, I was just flabbergasted by the culture there because they I the word family friendly sounds so terrible because I it's never family friendly. But it there it really is, like they have this culture that really values humans and they don't have problems with you know, quote, herbal remedies in in the gas station. Like, and I think if we took a whole bunch of kratom there, I mean, don't anybody do this, but I don't think they would do it because I think they value one another, and I think they're living in a community where they look out for one another. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:18

I I I think I think it goes back to again the whole just we're sick collectively, we're really sick. You know, the the fact that people would put other things over human life, over just humanity, and people do it all the time, right? It's the reason why we can't figure out and solve different problems because people are so worried about the money that's going to be made or how they're going to look or what that judgment is going to look like. And it's like these are messy problems. We're in the trenches, you guys. We're in the trenches hardcore. Like the topics that we continue to talk about on this show uh are things that are outrageous. And and I talk to people, and a lot of people don't realize certain things are happening, and it's like, no, no, no, we're not in a great place at all anywhere. And it's not surface level problems, you know. This is root, root problem stuff that we have going on.

SPEAKER_00 56:08

And it's been here for a long time.

SPEAKER_02 56:09

It has been here for a long time, and we're gonna have to do something way more drastic than just, oh, let's get a law passed for something. Or do you know what I mean? Like we're we're at a place in in our time where we gotta go big.

SPEAKER_00 56:24

Um, with Nicholas's obituary, I it was really important to me that we say that he had suffered from addiction and because we'd hidden it for so long and just been like so ashamed and him and just full of you know horror about it. And I my mom, who is a great person and I love her, was like, please don't put that in there. I don't want anyone to know. And I I think that that's her generation a little bit, but I think that's our culture. Like, oh my gosh, that's so embarrassing. Why would you do that? And it was really important to me. And um at his memorial, a lot of people showed up and they'd obviously read that. Uh, and I it felt really good for me to be clear with kids Nicholas's age. Like, this killed him. Yeah. And if that's the path you're on, like, let's do something about it. And their parents, like, we're not gonna pretend that this was something different. And um a bunch of my grief groups, there are moms who haven't told their family that their kids died. Can you imagine that? Like, it's been two years. They're like, Well, what how would I tell them? And that it was addiction, like, what am I gonna say? Or they have told people that they that he died, but it was like of a heart defect, which is fine. Like, I think we gotta talk about this stuff.

SPEAKER_02 57:50

Yeah. That just further compounds the shame. Yeah, yeah. Like you gotta you gotta talk about what does freedom look like. I guarantee you it doesn't it doesn't live under a pile of shame. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:00

And who gives a shit what other people think? Yeah, or living for two years, not being able to mourn. I it's it's it's an epidemic, and it would be great if if we weren't about profit, if we were about like what is true and honest.

SPEAKER_02 58:19

We have to get back to just the the human component of things. Yeah, right. And and and we're gonna talk about this afterwards because we're gonna figure some stuff out. Like I I have a lot of piss and vinegar for anyone that knows me. I have a lot. I know, I just and and I'm not afraid to say all the things because um because I'm tired. I'm tired of people bleeding in the dark. You know, I don't think that that's what we're meant to do in this life, and people that live in this place where they're, you know, your mom and nothing against her, but that that is the generation of just we don't talk about it. And I have listened to my mom and and aunties talk about the things that they don't talk about as well, and it's like, no, no, I call bullshit and I'm a disruptor, and I'm happy to talk about all the things, and I'm happy to get in there and get messy with all the things.

SPEAKER_00 59:13

Well, I'm glad I met you. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 59:14

And I don't ask permission, yeah. I barely ask forgiveness. Yeah, you know, that's on somebody else, but uh yeah, we I I look forward to what we're gonna talk about. Is there anything else that you want to say before we wrap this up? Tell people how to connect you or uh otherwise share anything.

SPEAKER_00 59:33

So my website is katyrizzo.com. Um there you can learn about my book, The Trimesters of Grief, which is part memoir and part prescriptive elements and some poems. And my other book, None of Them Are You, is on there too. Um you can find me at KatieRizzo 007 at Instagram on Instagram if you want to give me suggestions or I would love to work with a community of women to end the the 747 going down every day. I guess my one thing is to your listeners that if you are struggling with addiction, that you know that there's a mom here who doesn't want you to hide anymore, and this is a life or death situation. I think it's easy every day to get up with addiction and think, oh, I've got it right now, but by five o'clock in the afternoon you don't have it, and that you need to treat this like an emergency, and it is, and to get help. And I know that rehabs aren't the best, but I think AA has a pretty good track record, and I think reaching out to me, like we we gotta we gotta hold on to one another. 100%.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:56

We have to be in community in this in any of the things that we're we're doing. I think that's really, really important.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:03

Thank you so much, Katie, for coming and spending time with me. Thank you. Um, that's our time for today. If something hit, stirred, or lit a fire under you and you've got thoughts, questions, or a story you're ready to share. Slide into our DMs or email us at ladies at let's get naked podcast.com. If you believe in these conversations, help us keep rolling. Follow, share, rate, review, do all the things. We'll catch you next time. That's about