Mother spearheads lawsuit against Snapchat in wake of teen's fentanyl fatality

From FOX News to CNN and ABC, Amy Neville has found herself under the national news spotlight, but it's for a cause she wishes never existed. Amy faced the heart-wrenching loss of her 14-year-old son, who, on the brink of his first year in high school, ingested what he thought was oxycodone, a purchase made through Snapchat. Now, Amy is on a mission, challenging the social media giant, striving to prevent other families from enduring the same devastating loss.

Amy says David Kessler's online grief therapy has helped her heal. You can find more information about the program here.

Also, please leave a positive review for this episode and share it with friends and family. Your support helps further Emily's Hope's mission to remove the stigma of substance use disorder and get more people the treatment they desperately need. Together, we can make a difference.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Angela Kennecke: Listeners, I want to take a moment to recommend Sagely Speaking with Mary Bono, a podcast that offers insightful conversations on a range of important topics. Mary, a former Congresswoman and my guest on Grieving Out Loud hosts this thought provoking show. It features expert interviews on social issues, politics, and personal development.

Join the enlightening discussions on Sagely Speaking with Mary Bono, available on your favorite podcast platform.

Have you lost a loved one to overdose or fentanyl poisoning? I'd like to invite you to share their story on our new Emily's Hope Memorial website called More Than Just a Number. They were our children, siblings, cousins, husbands, wives, aunts, uncles. And friends, so much more than just a number. You can submit a memorial today on more than just a number.org.

[00:01:00] ABC News: Turn now to the Deadly Fentanyl crisis. A group of parents fighting for change after suffering. Unimaginable loss. 

[00:01:08] FOX News: Amy Neville lost her 14-year-old son, Alexander to Fentanyl poisoning, and she joins us now. Amy, good to see you. 

[00:01:14] ABC News: They filed a lawsuit against. Snapchat, accusing the social media giant of enabling drug dealers

[00:01:30] Angela Kennecke: from Fox News to CNN and A. B. C. Amy Neville is no stranger to the national news spotlight, but it's for a reason she wishes never existed. 

[00:01:41] Amy Neville: I can still see him going, but I reluctant thinking to myself. If he's breathing on his own, we're going to be okay. Of course he wasn't. 

[00:01:50] Angela Kennecke: Amy lost her son when he was just 14 years old, gearing up for his freshman year of high school.

He took what he believed to be oxycodone purchased through Snapchat. Now, Amy is on a mission, taking on the social media giant, hoping to spare other families from suffering a similar loss. 

[00:02:12] Amy Neville: Snapchat has the ability to dial up the protections on their platform, right? But if they do that, they lose profitability.

And so money's everything at this point, right? So they choose not to, so they can maintain profitability.

[00:02:36] Angela Kennecke: Welcome to Grieving Out Loud. I'm your host, Angela Kennecke. A surge of fake prescription pills laced with fentanyl has contributed to the alarming rise in drug overdose deaths. We hope this episode leaves you not only informed about this crisis, but but also inspired to take action and make a meaningful difference.

Amy, thank you so much for joining me. We were actually at the same meeting at the white house on international overdose awareness day this year, but we didn't really get a chance to meet or to talk. And so I'm really glad we have this time now and that you can tell your son's story and a little bit about what you're doing in the Southwest to try to make a difference in what's happening with this horrible fentanyl crisis.

Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me. And we are going to talk today about your son, Alex. Can you tell me a little bit about Alex? First of all, he was incredibly young. 

[00:03:40] Amy Neville: Yeah. He was barely 14 when he died from fentanyl poisoning back in June of 2020. He was a very adventuresome kid. He loved to experience life, play video games, skateboard.

He had always been a Boy Scout. He was in Cub Scouts from, you know, first grade on. Love that. He loved the adventure side of all of those things. Not so much the merit badge side of Boy Scouts. That felt a little too much like school for Alex. And Alex had a love hate relationship with school, that's for sure.

He's the kid that could go in, pass all the tests, but didn't want to study, didn't want to do any homework, and failed to see the reason behind it if he could pass the test. And so, hard to argue with that. F'em. Kind of agree with him on that point. But he also had, An entrepreneurial spirit. He always had business ideas.

His first business idea when he was about seven years old was to sell original artworks outside of our house. And so he and his, our neighbor friend, they went outside one day and they did that for a couple of days. So that was fun for them. When he passed away, he had an eBay business. And in that little eBay business, he was selling off his toys, which was really sad, but you know, he had outgrown these things and so it did make sense and he was good at it.

He was very organized with it and very responsible about handling that. But like I said, Alex was very adventuresome.

[00:05:00] Angela Kennecke: Amy shares that her son's curious and adventurous spirit also drew him toward the world of illicit drugs. She was well aware of this and took proactive steps to steer him away from substance use disorder at a young age. 

[00:05:17] Amy Neville: He came home from that first drug prevention week in elementary school and wanted to know more about drugs.

Like what it did to his brain and his body and it was a fascinating idea to him. Rather than being deterred at seven years old, it turned him on to it. And so we set out to learn everything we could. You know, as parents, we went to every, community event. We went to everything that happened at school. We read every piece of material that came home about these things and talked to Alex about these things.

And as he got older, those conversations became more and more mature. 

[00:05:47] Angela Kennecke: So it's really interesting to me because you're saying you did those drug prevention efforts starting at a very young age. I think the very thing we at Emily's Hope are doing with our elementary school curriculum, we're teaching kids about their bodies and their brains and how substances affect the brain in very age appropriate ways and ways that are developmentally appropriate.

But we want kids to understand the effects of these substances on the brain because we believe that kids will want to protect their bodies and their brains. And I'm sure when you were educating Alex on all this, you thought that would also be the case. 

[00:06:21] Amy Neville: That was exactly what we talked about. What it would do to his brain and his body and the long term effects of that, right?

Because. That was a time when people had long term effects from drug use or substance use, but unfortunately, we learned the hard way that that path to What maybe is more of a traditional drug use has been cut off by this fentanyl and that, that goes for people who are dealing with substance use disorder.

And experimentation. Yeah. 

[00:06:46] Angela Kennecke: Yeah. And I think when you talk about Alex, you know, being a risk taker, Emily certainly was a risk taker. She was a gymnast on the balance beam. You know, you don't get bigger risk taking than that, right? And she loved to longboard and all the things that personality traits and the curiosity and the intelligence, I think that can lead kids to experiment.

But you're right. Even in Emily's case, because she was 21 when she died of fentanyl poisoning, when she started experimenting with Xanax in high school, there were not the laced pills that we're seeing today. She had that chance to experiment until she didn't any longer, but I'm just saying, like, can't take a pill.

And that is one of the things that our curriculum really does stress to young children. is that there's nothing safe out there. You can't take anything from anybody other than a trusted adult. Right. But that message is a relatively new message as well. 

[00:07:42] Amy Neville: It is. It's, it's almost back. You know, we don't want to get out there and start doing that whole just say no campaign again, because what happened, you know, right, that backfired.

It didn't work. It became a joke. But here we are at a time where, no, really, we need to just say no. And and we have to find a different way to talk and get that point across without saying those words.

[00:08:09] Angela Kennecke: The moment Amy feared happened when her son turned 13. In 2020, she found out that he had started experimenting with marijuana.

[00:08:23] Amy Neville: That was a struggle in the winter that year, as, you know, lockdowns were happening and things were going on, but we thought we had kind of gotten over that hump, and it wasn't happening or was happening less frequently or, or maybe not at all. 

[00:08:37] Angela Kennecke: I have often found that marijuana is the precursor for most of these kids, especially opioid users.

almost everybody who I've talked to, that's what it started with. And they found such relief by using the marijuana initially. 

[00:08:50] Amy Neville: Well, and you're probably finding too, when you're talking to these middle schoolers and high schoolers that these dealers, maybe they're getting marijuana from this dealer and they offer them a free pill and that, you know, it's this little, Hey, try this out.

I've got this new thing. Why don't you try it?

[00:09:07] Angela Kennecke: Unfortunately, Alex was not done with experimentation either. Just a few months after Amy found out about the marijuana. She started noticing more significant changes in her son.

[00:09:21] Amy Neville: The day came where something was really off and so I asked him, like, what is going on? I want to take you to the doctor. Are you using something? How old was he? He was 14. Okay. It was June of 2020. It was about six weeks after his 14th birthday. I asked what was going on and he said, Oh, I was up late. I ate something bad.

And then of course, 14 being the height of puberty, mood swings were on par for him, you know, big mood swings for part of his personality. And so I let it go that day, but he did come back to me a day and a half later and he told his dad and I, okay, I need to talk to you guys. And he sat us down at the kitchen table.

It's late on a Sunday evening. And he said, three key things. Yeah, it was a long conversation, but the three key things that came out of it were, I wanted to experiment with Oxy, I got some from a dealer on Snapchat, it has a hold on me and I don't know why. And so we knew what to do, right? We thought we were prepared for this situation.

And so I called the treatment place the next morning and they needed to call me back with their recommendation. And so we went about our business that day, all the normal things, haircut, out to lunch, Delivered eBay packages, Plucky played video games. skateboarded, went and hung out with friends. He came home about nine o'clock that night and we said goodnight to him.

And that was the last time we saw him alive.

[00:10:46] Angela Kennecke: On that fateful night, Alex innocently made the decision he believed to be harmless. He took what he thought was oxycodone. A purchase he made through Snapchat. Tragically, that fake prescription pill actually contained a deadly dose. You guessed it. Fentanyl.

And I've talked to several parents whose child bought a pill on Snapchat. And they are the one who found them. Usually the next morning. Thought they were home and safe. Home and safe in their beds, right? You think they're at home, they're safe. Let's talk about, um, the trauma of you finding him because you're not the only one and, and I was there after my daughter died.

So I was with her. It's a very traumatic thing to carry that every day. 

[00:11:34] Amy Neville: It is. It is. That's the stuff that shows up in my mind when I wake up in the middle of the night. It's those images, you know, and you have to, you remember, oh, yeah, this thing happened and like, you know, felt like a normal morning.

We're waiting to hear back from the treatment place. I thought Alex was sleeping in a little bit. It wasn't uncommon for him to sleep in at 14 years old and summer break was happening. And so the only thing that struck me as odd is that I didn't hear him up in the night, you know? And so I went up to his room to wake him up to take him to the orthodontist and that was it.

I mean, I knocked on that door. He didn't respond and I instantly panicked before even opening up the door. And his dad came running up there from the sound of my voice yelling out Alexander's name. Um, Came running up, immediately started CPR while I called 9 1 1. Now, there's like these different flashes of what I remember about that day.

One is, you know, seeing Alex on his beanbag chair. Two is, when my daughter went to run up the stairs to go help administer CPR, yelling to her to stop and that she couldn't go up there. And she's like, but mom, I can help. I just can't help, can't be here. And so she came to me and I did not, like, go with her.

I, like, poor child, I'm surprised I didn't suffocate her. I was holding onto her so tight. You know, and then we went outside and they, they brought Alex down the stairs on the stretcher to the ambulance. And I just remember holding my daughter's head into my chest so she wouldn't see him. I could still see him going, and I remember thinking to myself, if he's breathing on his own, we're going to be okay.

Of course he wasn't. We were still administering life saving measures, but you know, I mean, I knew it was too late when I saw him. I remember a police officer or sheriff's deputy saying to me, you know, trying to tell me I don't know what he was trying to do. He wanted to get information from me, I guess, but he said something to me to the effect of, well, you know, like for me not to be so worried because usually the, if something is, it's really bad, the body's further along than it is.

Alex was. I'm like, well, I don't even know what that means. And I looked at him and I'm like, don't say that to me. I know what I saw. 

[00:13:45] Angela Kennecke: Right. How old was your daughter at the time? 

[00:13:47] Amy Neville: Twelve. She was twelve at the time. 

[00:13:49] Angela Kennecke: Twelve. Oh. And so how has this affected her? I don't know. 

[00:13:53] Amy Neville: She's very outspoken. She's always been an outspoken kiddo to begin with, but she has been involved with our awareness and advocacy work all on her own, like anything that she gets involved with is completely up to her.

It is her decision. There's absolutely no pressure for her to, to participate. However, she's chosen to speak in front of Snapchat at some of our rallies at Snapchat headquarters. She has spoke on the steps at the California legislature. She actually filmed a PSA here in Arizona now, and, and that plays before movies all over the valley and on the radio, I get texts all the time, Oh, I just heard your daughter on the radio.

[00:14:29] Angela Kennecke: Well, it's, it's powerful, and it's also important. to remember that these deaths affect everybody in the family. Emily had three siblings all in high school at the time. They are all super involved in the advocacy work as well now. I think it helps them. I think it probably helps your daughter to be involved in the advocacy work, but they shouldn't be forced into that position and you shouldn't have to walk up into your son's room and find him dead.

I mean, it's just. Unintentional, he was not intending to die, my daughter was not intending to die, and the fact that we're not more outraged about all these murders just based on the fact that someone chose to take something not knowing what they were getting, right? Like they deserved to die somehow.

[00:15:16] Amy Neville: Death blindsided us, like, death was not on the radar. We thought we were still dealing with the narrative that was still being promoted at the time that, you know, someone is stealing grandma's pills and selling it to friends. 

[00:15:26] Angela Kennecke: So, your story is remarkably similar to my family's story in the fact that we were three days away from holding an intervention.

We knew Emily had not admitted, although I had known about weed use and Xanax use. I did not know that she had graduated to heroin. I did not know that. It makes sense now in hindsight, but we knew something was wrong, right? And she wasn't willing to admit it to us. She didn't, wasn't asking for treatment like your son had come to you and told you.

We didn't get that, but we knew so we were working and three days away from holding an intervention is when she died of fentanyl poisoning. So very similar, like you think you're taking the right step. And so people always ask me, like, what would you do differently? And I always say, well, I guess I would have admitted her immediately.

I would have just the minute I thought there was a problem. I would have just thrown her in the car and I mean, but I don't know that that would have 

[00:16:19] Amy Neville: worked. Yeah. Right. And that question, when people ask the question, I always tell them, like, you're not allowed to ask me. 

[00:16:25] Angela Kennecke: That's, that's a good answer. I'm going to start using, can I borrow that and start using that?

Absolutely. 

[00:16:29] Amy Neville: Cause there's so many things I do differently, but you know what? I didn't have the knowledge. No one was talking about the reality of drugs at the time Alex died. And we didn't know we were operating on the information that was given to us at the time. And unfortunately we had to learn the hard way.

[00:16:45] Angela Kennecke: Well, that surprises me because it was 2020. And I have been talking about this since 2018, and I know others have been talking about it even before that, and I just, it drives me insane that the message has not permeated, but although, I have to say, Amy, and I wonder if you'll agree with me on this, do you think that enough families have been affected now that we've reached a tipping point where everybody has to know there's fentanyl in everything?

[00:17:11] Amy Neville: You know, I wish that was the case. But, I don't think it is yet. I hold quarterly listening sessions with teens. And they give me all the latest and greatest information, you know, they've got this ground level view of these things that are happening in their life, you know. What they're telling me, what they started telling me three years ago is they didn't know anything about Fentanyl, and that these drug dealers are their friends, right?

They'd never do this to them. Nowadays, what I'm hearing from them consistently is they know about Fentanyl, but they still think it's its own drug. So, Fentanyl, Oxy, Adderall, Vicodin, Xanax, whatever's being advertised. They don't realize all of that is actually fenced up. They don't understand the deception behind it.

But still, the thing that hasn't changed is that, well, the drug dealer is my friend. They'd never do that. And so, as much as I'd like to think, We're informed in our communities. We really aren't. And there's still, for families and for teens, that's never going to happen to me. Or you have to have a drug problem to die from drugs.

We don't have a drug problem in our house. Change the channel when the news comes on about 

[00:18:09] Angela Kennecke: it. It doesn't hit people. Until it's too late. And it's really interesting to me, we've been doing focus groups with middle schoolers right now because we developed our elementary curriculum first. Thinking all the research shows you've got to start these conversations as you did young in age appropriate ways.

And so we thought, well, there are other middle and high school curriculums out there, so let's do the elementary first. And now we're sitting down with focus groups of middle schoolers, you know, to see what they know. They don't know very much, but it's interesting to me as we progress with high school is that they think the drug dealers are their friends.

Yeah, I mean, that's really interesting. And the fact that they don't know that fentanyl is in everything. Yeah. 

[00:18:46] Amy Neville: And we can't compete with these drug dealers, right? They have a hold on our kids that I can't combat, you know, these kids that I'm meeting in this one afternoon of spending time with them. So we just have to keep chipping away at it.

[00:19:04] Angela Kennecke: In addition to raising awareness about the fentanyl crisis, Amy is also trying to hold social media companies that allow drug trafficking accountable. In a groundbreaking move, the Nevels became the first family to sue Snapchat's parent company over its alleged role in illicit drug sales. Since their filing in October of 2022, more than 60 other families have joined the case.

[00:19:32] Amy Neville: You know, Alex told us it was Snapchat, a friend of his told me later it was Snapchat, and then a mom came along shortly after that and showed me some pictures of this drug dealer talking about my kid, right? Meanwhile, there is a dad that we're working with from another organization, we're all working together, all of us have lost our kids from Snapchat, and he keeps saying you can't sue Snapchat, you can't sue Snapchat, you can't sue Snapchat.

And so, I don't think anything of it, right? Fast forward a few months, I meet with Gretchen Peters, we are in the same news article together, Gretchen Peters from the Alliance to Counter Crime Online. She wants to meet me, we meet, and she says, Have you thought about suing Snapchat? And I'm like, Oh, I've been told time and time again by this person that you can't sue Snapchat.

And she goes, What? You can sue whoever you want. And in that moment, it clicks for me. I'm like, I think this dad means we can't sue Snapchat and win, but we can sue Snapchat and cause a ruckus, and I'm down with that. Like, I'm okay with that. You start right 

[00:20:29] Angela Kennecke: now with some major news involving a lawsuit against Snapchat.

Despite Snap's attempts to get the lawsuits dismissed, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled earlier this year that the lawsuit may continue to trial. What do you believe Snapchat should have done, could have been doing, should be doing? 

[00:20:48] Amy Neville: Oh, so Snapchat has the ability to dial up the protections on their platform, right?

But if they do that, they lose profitability. And so Money is everything at this point, right? So they choose not to, so they can maintain profitability, is really what it boils down to. They got the algorithms to pull these different emojis off of there. They know, based on people's activities, whether or not they're a drug dealer or selling drugs, or how they're connecting with their kids in these spaces.

They've known for a long time. You can see it in the news in 2017, say, Snap, you got a drug problem on your platform, it's going to get out of control, you better do something. And Snap ignores it. 2021, we have a meeting with them in the spring and they tell us, so sorry for your loss, this is obviously a very short version, they tell us, so sorry for your loss, uh, but we didn't know this was such a problem.

[00:21:35] Angela Kennecke: And you don't believe that at all? 

[00:21:37] Amy Neville: Oh, not at all. 

[00:21:39] Angela Kennecke: And what ultimately do you hope to accomplish with the lawsuit? 

[00:21:43] Amy Neville: I really want snap to just be tried in public opinion, right? So people can see what's happening on this platform and make good choices for their families. So shaming them into it, whatever it is, and I want them to change.

I want them to do the right thing and make it safe for our kids.

[00:22:03] Angela Kennecke: While some parents like Amy are suing Snapchat to try to bring about change, others are working with social media companies. The founder of Song for Charlie, whose son Charlie also died after taking a fake prescription pill he bought on Snapchat, is partnering with the company to curb the online distribution of deadly pills.

He sat down with me in a previous episode of Grieving Out Loud. 

[00:22:28] Ed Ternan: By March of 2021, we broke through and we got through the people, the executives at Snap. And we said to them, you have a problem. And we were kind of direct with them and very tough on them. We said, Your platform is being used to sell these pills and I know that you and all social media platforms believe you have guardrails on your app to prevent drug dealing and drug dealing is not allowed.

We get that. What you don't know is the Percocets being sold on your app are not Percocets. So the idea of this counterfeiting these pills was not widely known by anyone in 2020 21. And so they kind of took that in. And came back to us within a week and they said, we've looked across scan the horizon and your little Humpty Dumpty website that you built pretty much is the only place we can find good information about these fake pills.

But we're convinced this is a problem. And so will you partner with us to help us figure this out? So we've been working actively with the people at Snap since that time, say March, April of 2021. We do PSA campaigns. We had hundreds of millions of views. We participate with CDC and others in a portal that they've built.

So when kids search for a drug term, this heads up portal comes up, interrupts the search and comes up first. And it has information about drugs and drug use. Songproof Charlie focuses on the fentanyl crisis. I serve now on their Global Safety Advisory Board, which is a group of experts from around the globe dealing with all kinds of concerns about safety and harm to children online.

Songproof Charlie. And I serve on that board. The two people on that board who are charged with keeping the drug issue top of mind with the executive of SNAP are myself and former drug czar Jim Carroll. So we attend quarterly meetings and we're in on the progress they're making and the efforts they're taking on to make their app just as hostile as they possibly can for drug dealers.

So I have a lot of opinions about what's going on with social media and in general, I think when you want change. There are two roads you can take, and they're not necessarily mutually exclusive. You can coerce, or you can convince. So, I have been able to convince the people at Snap, and through them, they have made introductions at Meta and TikTok, and we know people at WeUp, someone from Google on our board of directors, someone at YouTube on our board of directors.

We have been able to convince the tech companies and the social media platforms that we need an all of internet solution. 

[00:25:12] Angela Kennecke: But Amy is convinced that the solution isn't unfolding quickly enough. Despite heightened awareness, people continue to die after buying illicit drugs through social media. 

[00:25:23] Amy Neville: In my opinion, working with the social media companies is dancing with the devil.

They are, they have proven time and time again that they cannot be trusted. And I think that they use other people to kind of run cover for them. And unfortunately, I think that they have fallen into that trap. 

[00:25:41] Angela Kennecke: Is it costing you a lot of money to sue Snapchat? 

[00:25:45] Amy Neville: No, no. Oh my gosh. The Social Media Victims Law Center.

They're incredible. We haven't put a dime into this. Tell me about that. Tell me how that works. So, Matt, who is our lead attorney, he was about to basically retire and saw this need for families in this space. And so he's taken his retirement and is spending it on, on the Social Media Victims Law Center.

fighting for us. 

[00:26:11] Angela Kennecke: And what about the dealer that sold through Snapchat to your son? What happened to him? 

[00:26:16] Amy Neville: Nothing. My kid is not the only kid. So this mom that had reached out to me and showed me some snaps off of this guy's Snapchat page where he's talking about my kid, her kid died two weeks after Alex.

And through those Snapchat messages, I can see that another kid has died two weeks before Alex. And is it another kid who's doing the dealing? No, it's an adult, an adult. It's an adult, in fact, but it took almost a year for Snapchat to even reply to subpoenas 

[00:26:43] Angela Kennecke: for 

[00:26:43] Amy Neville: Alex's 

[00:26:43] Angela Kennecke: account. Do you know why that person has never been charged?

Adult male? 

[00:26:48] Amy Neville: Adult male, I don't know. It, I mean, I could go down a crazy path with that and probably really cause myself a lot of emotional distress and so I just choose not to, you know? The E DEA assures me, oh, we'll get him on something, but my thought is how many people have to die before you do that?

No kidding. No 

[00:27:06] Angela Kennecke: kidding. 

[00:27:07] Amy Neville: Frustrating.

[00:27:12] Angela Kennecke: In addition to frustration, Amy also battles profound depths of grief. Every day, she's not just fighting the battles we all see, she's also grappling with the deep, heavy punches of loss.

[00:27:28] Amy Neville: It still doesn't feel real some days, you know? Well, 

[00:27:31] Angela Kennecke: you're only 

[00:27:31] Amy Neville: a couple years out. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, and there's like, there's this life where Alex was here, and there's this life where he's Right. They're two very different lives. I started out looking to grief yoga was my first outlet. I am a yoga teacher by trade.

I had a yoga studio in Mission Viejo, California at the time Alex passed away. There's a fabulous Paul Denniston grief yoga. He's amazing. I love him so much. Love his teachings. And so I ended up taking his grief yoga certification, teacher certifications, not necessarily so I could teach it, but so I could just kind of continue on for myself.

[00:28:07] Angela Kennecke: And we do store a lot of grief in our bodies. I would say that that's for yoga is effective, right? And releasing that. Is that what you found to be the case? Can you kind of explain how that's worked for you? 

[00:28:18] Amy Neville: It's definitely a release. So Paul always has different theme classes, but you take the class At some point, you might not feel like you're just doing your thing, and all of a sudden it just floods out of you, you know, and you cry.

I always have a picture of Alex with me. Um, sometimes my mom, when I'm thinking about my mom, she passed away shortly after Alex. And so, just letting those things out in those moment, in those moments, moving is freedom, right? We, we all have control of our bodies and how it moves, and it gives me that sense of, it's a confidence, if you will.

Maybe that's a weird way to describe it, but, I am in control of how this arm is moving, how this leg is moving, and how I want it to feel in my body, and how I want to remember Alex in those moments, and how I want to dedicate that practice, and whatever comes out comes out. in that space. I'm not a talk therapy.

That's not for me right now. Doesn't mean it won't be at some point. That's where my husband has found help is through traditional talk therapy. And so I start going to David Kessler's online groups because I like to, I fly on the wall. Absorbing information that's being given to other people works well for me.

[00:29:25] Angela Kennecke: And I know the Chapmans who lost, that was a very highly publicized case in California, who lost 16 year old Sammy in the same way you lost Alex. They told me David Kessler had really helped them as well. Oh, I love David Kessler. He's amazing. 

[00:29:38] Amy Neville: If you don't have the insurance to cover going to traditional talk therapy or if you're just not ready for that, those are great outlets to go through.

[00:29:49] Angela Kennecke: If you'd like to learn more about David Kessler's online grief therapy, we've posted a link in the show notes of this podcast. While you're checking out the show notes, please consider leaving us a positive review for this episode and share it with friends and family. It does help to further our mission to remove the stigma of substance use disorder and get more people into the treatment they desperately need.

Together, we can make a difference.

You know you're not alone, right? When you talk to me or when you go to these events that we've both been at, I mean, we know we're not alone. 

[00:30:25] Amy Neville: No, we're not. And those are the times where you feel normal. Like, I feel, talking to you, you know, I feel like a normal person right now. It's those, going to my daughter's.

marching band practice when there's all these other parents that don't know me or know our history and you know those questions are going to come up like do you have other kids and you feel like an enigma in those moments because a lot of times people will ask about our life and I'll talk and I'll give them a little bit of information and then it's like you know that shock and then the next time I see them maybe they don't even approach me.

Because 

[00:30:56] Angela Kennecke: it's weird. It's just a weird place. And you also feel judged. I've even felt judged by other parents who've lost someone. I've wrote a blog about it. Because they've looked them up and say, I lost my child too, but not from drugs. You know. Not from drugs, like you. So you sometimes even among bereaved parents, you can feel alone.

It can be a very isolating thing to lose a child to a stigmatized death. I think suicide has been as stigmatized as this kind of thing. And I've met families who, 

[00:31:24] Amy Neville: who won't talk 

[00:31:24] Angela Kennecke: about it. 

[00:31:25] Amy Neville: Oh, I, me too. And that's their choice. Right. But I think ultimately they're, they're bottling it up. You know, I met one family who child died two months after Alex in the same area.

My DEA agent reached out to me to get more information about one story there on Alex's step and I'm like, oh, yeah I know this girl just died and I ended up through somebody else who was her neighbor reaching out to her The family and say hey Let's connect and they told this person that I was lying and that their daughter had an allergic reaction to medicine.

I can see it on the coroner's report. Oh my gosh. 

[00:32:00] Angela Kennecke: That's, that's a deep, deep denial, right? 

[00:32:03] Amy Neville: That's very deep, but I'm, you know, it makes me worry about the kids in that household, you know, because they know, 

[00:32:08] Angela Kennecke: kids, they know. Well, and I've even had families that were separated, you know, the mother and father were divorced or whatever and the mother told her child's story to me, which you think, okay, the mother is telling the story, you have permission.

And the father and his family be outraged, outraged, you know, at me, and I think the mother has every right to tell the story, but it's just been a lot of those types of scenarios have happened over the last few years. The stigma runs so deep, and it's so painful. And I also know someone rather well, they lost their son in the same way and they've never spoken about it.

So, It happens. It happens. For those of us that are as vocal as you and I are, there's probably three or four families that are hiding it. 

[00:32:52] Amy Neville: Yeah, 

[00:32:53] Angela Kennecke: absolutely. And there's a lot of us out there now, as we've seen. Yeah, there's no shortage. That's unfortunate, isn't it? It's just, at what point, what do you think it's going to take?

We were both in D. C. in end of August and heard about a lot of money being thrown at the problem. What do you think it's going to take to end this? 

[00:33:13] Amy Neville: I think as far as the community as a whole, it's going to take first overcoming stigma and then getting this education and awareness up like to me, education, awareness is everything right?

Like, we can do laws and do all these other things, but ultimately, we're still going to have people seeking drugs. The dangers are still going to exist. And so we need to give people the information so they can make informed choices. But we also need, and I, I'm not wishing this on anyone, but I think it's going to take somebody higher up the food chain than us, to experience this tragedy and see it firsthand before something 

[00:33:47] Angela Kennecke: really significant happens.

There've been a lot of even members of Congress that have lost family members. And I mean, there've been a lot of people in a lot of positions and people of wealth and means and, and status who have lost someone. So I don't know. But they 

[00:34:03] Amy Neville: don't stay with the fight. I don't see them staying with the fight, right?

It seems like these things happen. And then. Fizzles out. 

[00:34:11] Angela Kennecke: I agree. I think ending the demand is key and turning around and pointing fingers like you would live in Arizona, a border state, right? So, 

[00:34:20] Amy Neville: but guess who has our fentanyl related deaths have gone down. And I really think that's due to education and awareness.

We're one of the few in the country. 

[00:34:29] Angela Kennecke: Not because of how the border is being. 

[00:34:32] Amy Neville: No, they're still interdicting pills all the time. No, it's still, it's still the same thing going on over there. 

[00:34:38] Angela Kennecke: They'll never get ahead of that problem. Right. And as soon as we figure out, okay, so there's a antidote for fentanyl if you get there in time, but there isn't for xylosine, right?

So then the next thing comes along and the next thing comes along and the next more deadly potent thing comes along and we'll never stay ahead of it as long as there's a demand. And some people's brains are just wired for once they try this stuff, they need to have more. And we need to understand that if we could just in some way, make sure nobody ever.

took a pill or smoked something or whatever. 

[00:35:14] Amy Neville: Yeah. And then we need to have more compassion for when they do. 

[00:35:18] Angela Kennecke: Yeah. Oh, for sure. 

[00:35:20] Amy Neville: 100%. I feel like it's an all hands on deck approach that we really need. And when people are ready to reach out to you or I, we'll give them that space, we'll give them that platform to tell their story, to impact others.

[00:35:33] Angela Kennecke: Right. There's no shortage of stories out there now. You know, I think when I first started this podcast, I didn't know how I would fill every single, you know, I was only doing it once a month then, or twice a month at one point, but now we do it every week. You can't keep up. There are so many stories. We don't just cover fentanyl poisoning, we cover addiction and we cover grief and loss since we have a kind of a wide topic here, but there are no shortage of parents now willing to, are wanting to talk about their child's story and what they're doing because of it.

[00:36:02] Amy Neville: Yeah. Yeah. It's incredible. I mean, I have a dear friend who I met in this space. She was drug prevention resource officer out here in Arizona and. We don't even know each other here, and I'm getting a message from her, she's like, I just lost my baby, and I'm like, what do you mean? She's like, I don't know, what do I do?

What am I, what do I do? How do I wake up tomorrow? Her son had drowned, her four year old son had drowned, and like, who would have thought we would need each other in that way, you know? Here we had met over this drug prevention work, and we're needing each other in a very different way. 

[00:36:33] Angela Kennecke: Yeah, and there are no easy answers to tell newly grieving.

I don't really know how I got through it, and I'm sure you don't either, somehow, you just did. I just did. I just had to wake up the next 

[00:36:44] Amy Neville: day. And I have to talk to people about it. Talking to people about it is almost a compulsion. 

[00:36:49] Angela Kennecke: Oh, I feel the same way. I think we're alike on that because I feel like I don't have another choice.

What people always say, yes, of course you have another choice. And we've talked about that other choice, but I just think, no, I had no choice. This is all I could do. Yeah. Well, thanks, Amy, and thank you for sharing Alex with us, and thank you for all the good work you're doing. 

[00:37:08] Amy Neville: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

[00:37:19] Angela Kennecke: And thank you for taking the time to learn more about one of the biggest crises facing our nation. Join us again next week for a captivating conversation with Neil Jackson, a resilient man who not only survived a rare form of cancer, but also faced the unforeseen battle of fentanyl addiction after a risky, life saving surgery.

[00:37:39] Neil Jackson: There was one day there that I had a whisper in my heart, and it's a, it's an emotional whisper. That whisper said, Neil, you need to end the use of your drugs. Because I had been in such a depressed state that life had no meaning. 

[00:37:54] Angela Kennecke: Now, at 74, Neil is living a meaningful life. He's invented a device to control the flow of fentanyl from patches.

His hope? That it will help others struggling with opioid addiction find recovery. That's next week on Grieving Out Loud. Thank you again for listening. Until next time, wishing you faith, hope, and courage. This podcast is produced by Casey Wannenberg King and Anna Fye.