Love. Addiction. Sobriety. Trauma. Death. Grief. Each of these six seemingly simple words holds vast meaning and power, yet – when absorbed collectively – they pack a powerful punch that can bring us to our knees. Most of us have loved someone – or have been that someone – who has struggled with addiction. And some of us have felt that shattering pain of losing a loved one to the force of addiction. When this occurs, the suffering and guilt can feel too much to bear. Can love, creativity, and self-growth be enough to pull us through?  Join Dr. Carla Manly and best-selling author and award-winning advocate Alicia Cook for a heartfelt journey into the world of love, addiction, death, grief, and healing.  

Listener discretion is advised as this interview addresses addiction, death, and other highly sensitive topics. It also discusses factors related to addiction such as abuse, PTSD, alcoholism, opioids (e.g., heroin), fentanyl, and recovery.

Note: If you or someone you know needs immediate support, please call your emergency services. In the US, 24/7 help is available by calling “911,” “988” (Suicide and Crisis Hotline), or SAMSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).  Additional links are in the show notes.

Books by Dr. Carla Manly:

Joy from Fear: https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Fear-Carla-Marie-Manly/dp/1641701218

Date Smart: https://www.amazon.com/Date-Smart-Transform-Relationships-Fearlessly/dp/1641704675

Aging Joyfully: https://www.amazon.com/Aging-Joyfully-Optimal-Relationships-Fulfillment/dp/1641701412

The Joy of Imperfect Love: https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Imperfect-Love-Creating-Relationships/dp/1641709057

Oracle decks by Dr. Carla Manly:

Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1757477615/imperfect-love-reflection-oracle-cards

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Imperfect-Love-Reflection-Oracle-Cards/dp/B0D1Z5M4YK

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Watch the episode here

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The Intricate Web of Addiction, Love, Loss, Grief, and Healing with Expert Alicia Cook

Love, addiction, sobriety, trauma, death, grief. Each one of these six seemingly simple words holds a vast amount of meaning and power. Yet, when absorbed collectively, they pack a powerful punch that can bring us to our knees. Most of us have loved someone or been someone who has struggled with addiction. Some of us have felt the shattering pain of losing a loved one to the force of an addiction. When this occurs, the suffering and guilt can feel like too much to bear. Can love, creativity, and self-growth be enough to pull us through?

We’ll focus on this listener’s real-life question. “It’s been two years since my brother died. His death was unexpected but expected at the same time. He battled with addiction since he was in college and it got worse. Fentanyl finally got him. I tried to help, but I didn’t do enough. Can you help me stop the overwhelming guilt?” That question is the focus of this episode. Please note that this episode contains sensitive information. Listener discretion is advised. If you need support, please see the special links in the show notes.

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I am joined by a very special guest, Alicia Cook, who will be sharing her expertise on addiction, sobriety, grief, and healing. Welcome to the show, Alicia. It’s so lovely to have you with us. 

Thank you so much for thinking of having me on. 

Looking Back

It’s such a joy and a blessing. I know this interview is not going to maybe be the easiest for us, but I appreciate you being here. Before we launch into looking at what you have come to know and experience and how that can respond to the question of the day, could you tell our audience a little bit about what makes you, you? 

What makes me, me? My entire life I have used writing. As soon as I knew how to write, I was a storyteller or documenter, I guess, because I pulled from my real life. My whole life I’ve used writing as a way to work things out, figure stuff out, and deal with life around me. Life around me at times was chaotic and out of my control. I have an addiction in my family. I’ll speak to one aspect of addiction in my family. My cousin Jessica, many years ago now, in 2006 when we were 19, overdosed and died. She was addicted to heroin and we lost her to heroin. 

This was before fentanyl was in everything. Nowadays the frequency of overdose is astronomical even compared to back then, but the pain is the same for families and 2006 was a different time. I couldn’t Google anything. There wasn’t a mass amount of family or writers talking about something that was so stigmatized. A few years went by and I was educating myself on the disease of addiction, I was trying to figure out a way to use my voice for good, and I decided that I was going to be that voice for families back then. 

Now, there are so many voices and I’m a very small part of this awareness spreading in solidarity. Back then, there weren’t many. I had a lot of my writings on, I was speaking about how addiction impacts the entire family, what it did to my mental health, how it changed the course of my entire life, and how I function as a human being, to begin with. A lot of those essays were published in major publications and went viral. I became almost like a poster child at the time for addiction in families.

I want to be clear, it’s addiction in families that look like me. It was always in families. The press seemed to cling to me because here I was talking about suburban America and addiction. All of that spiraled into book deals and prominence online, and becoming this poster child for addiction. As the years went by, I brought in the scope because the more I learned, the more I realized that there’s so much that intersects with addiction, mental health being one major one. I brought in the scope to speak more candidly about how anxiety, depression, grief, and everything like that all intersect together. As you said, combined, it creates a big punch to the face of families. That’s who I am. I’m a writer and I tell the truth.

Disease Of Addiction

Thank you. First, I’m very sorry for your loss and such a painful loss. I am very fortunate that you have agreed to bring your message to us. It’s also beautiful to see pain channeled into growth and using creativity as a tool for your healing, which has in turn healed so many people and supported so many people around the world. Thank you for the work that you do. I do have a question for you because some of our listeners may not understand when you say the disease of addiction. Often, we might look at addiction as a personality defect and not see it in the medical model of disease. Could you explain that in layman’s terms for people who might have been raised to see addiction as a weakness?

I was of that group that went to school and was told to say no. It’s that easy to say no to drugs and you’ll be able to easily recognize or identify a “drug user” or “drug dealer” because they look like a bad guy. It’s like an us and them thing, and that’s not the case at all. Addiction is not a moral failing. Addiction is not a weakness. Addiction is a trauma response in a lot of ways. How do people become addicted or why do people become addicted to certain substances? We’re not just talking about heroin. It could be alcohol, which is a normalized poison. There are a lot of reasons. We never looked into the why when I was growing up, why are we making these “choices” to use drugs? 

A lot of it is, going back to the trauma response, something that happened to this individual when they were younger or something traumatic. It could range. I know you put a trigger warning at the top of the podcast, so I’m going to go for it. Were they sexually assaulted as a child? Did they watch their parent be abused? Did they have drugs already in the family? The overarching understanding now, which has been a fact and it’s not my opinion, is that addiction is a chronic, but treatable disease. It does not have to be a death sentence.

Does that mean I’m comparing it to childhood cancer? No. A lot of people that want to debate me or anyone that says addiction is a disease, the first thing that they shoot back with is, “What about childhood leukemia?” Addiction could coexist as a disease without negating the fact that it might not be the same type of heart disease, cancer, or something like that. It doesn’t have to fit in the same body as those unfortunate illnesses as well, but addiction is an illness. You quickly realize it once it unfortunately enters your world. These days, it’s almost impossible to find someone who isn’t somehow impacted by the disease of addiction.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. I love the background information for our listeners because you take it down to the foundational level of trauma and intergenerational transmission of violence and trauma. That’s often what we’re looking at with addiction. People might think, “No, I wasn’t sexually abused but my dad was constantly critical of me or constantly downgrading me,” or “My dad was an alcoholic,” or “My mom was addicted to this substance over here.” 

We can see that addiction can leak into that child’s early life in so many ways. It doesn’t have to be constant physical assault or sexual assault. Not that we want any of those things, but addiction is a response to the body, the mind, the spirit saying, “I cannot deal with this. I need something to soothe the pain.” 

You are absolutely right. You succinctly said what I was trying to say. No one factor can predict if a person will become addicted to a substance. A combination of factors influences the risk for addiction. The more risk factors a person has, the greater the chance they’ll have the decision to cope by using drugs, which ultimately will lead to an addiction. 

There are so many types of addiction. As you said, some are more normal in society than others, but they are all addictions, alcohol addiction, marijuana addiction, work addiction, sex addiction, eating addiction, all of these addictions and some are more silent than others. Some are more socially acceptable than others and even prized. Somebody who has a work addiction is a great success, whereas somebody who gets caught in the throes of heroin addiction, cocaine addiction, or something like that is often put as, “This is a less than person,” simply because sometimes is much more obvious, especially with something like meth, where you can see the physical effects so rapidly. 

Thank you for exploring that with me and for our listeners who might be struggling with something other than the kind of drug addictions that we tend to in our suburban world, not see them or feel where they are stigmatized. Even now, we feel very stigmatized for a child or friend. It’s one thing if it’s an alcohol addiction or a food addiction. We can deal with that, but if it’s heroin or meth, no, it cannot be happening here in middle-class or upper-middle-class life. Indeed, it does. It happens all the time. 

What’s heartbreaking about that is a lot of upper-middle-class families that are impacted specifically by opioid addiction, including heroin. They have the means to get the help they need, to afford the resources, but sometimes they spend so long being in denial that by the time they’re finally like, “Yes, this is happening,” you’re in a whole different ball game with where the addiction is now or the extremity of the addiction. Every day that you go, it’s that much harder. Forget it if maybe, for example, the child in the house is 18-plus, because then you cannot drag them to rehab or something like that.

They have to want to admit that they need help or they have to want to stop drugs. I’ve spoken to some drug users in active addiction for different projects and they’ll straight up tell me, “I know that I’m addicted. I’m not ready to stop yet.” They like it too much. I know as the family member hearing that, it feels so helpless but it’s all a part of it. It’s everywhere. Being in denial doesn’t mean that it’s not happening in your neighborhood or that it’s not going to lower your property value if you admit that this is happening. Stigma, you lose time when you’re in denial.

Denial And Guilt

I appreciate that you brought up the piece about denial because there are some addictions that you can put your finger on like food. It’s one of the ones that can be worn on the outside. We see it and there’s a big stigma around it. Yet for so many other addictions, especially if somebody’s high functioning, high functioning alcoholic, high functioning coke use or whatever it is, it is easy for not only the individual who is addicted but for the family and friends to say, “It cannot be happening. He or she is functioning well.” 

To the outside world, they’re making money. They’re a great boss. They’re a great coworker. Let’s not talk about it. Let’s not see it. These implicit agreements that we make to not see the addiction, not act on the addiction. The other part of that, which can be equally as damaging, is to try to become invested in having the addiction shift, getting treatment, and then going into that place of such helplessness where you feel like you cannot do anything so you let it go.

That’s a very common cross to bear for families. That question of the day, part of it was about how do I not feel guilty? Your listener who wrote that didn’t say explicitly about what they feel guilty about. I could assume that it could be they didn’t do much or enough. They feel that they didn’t do enough. They feel like they could have done more. Something interesting happens as time goes on and you start feeling guilty for it still existing. It’s called survivor’s guilt. My mother used to tell me, that we have bad days and good days, but never normal days. The first step was acceptance, at least for me, like moving on from denial. 

We didn’t ask for this, we didn’t deserve it, but it was happening. Nothing was going to change the fact that it was happening, and then I had to reckon with the fact that even though some of my life was a complete mess, another part of my life was still experiencing moments of joy. How do you deal with both of those conflicting emotions? I told myself, eventually, I shouldn’t feel guilty for smiling or laughing in those moments because it didn’t negate the pain. It existed simultaneously. I learned how to balance my life in this way and it took me years to not feel guilty in my happiest moments. 

That makes sense because reconciling those emotions, those two, or giving them space that we can grieve, we can feel very sad, but as we progress through the stages of grief, there will be more and more moments of joy. We don’t have to show our regret, our sense of responsibility, and our sense of grief by living in a deeply dark place for the rest of our lives. 

Five Stages Of Grief

I do fundamentally disagree that the stages of grief have been helpful to people because I think we were fed a lie. I say we were fed a five-stage lie because it almost makes you feel if you don’t go through these steps, one, it insinuates that there’s a cure for grief and there isn’t. Grief is with you always, especially a loss like the listener’s loss of a sibling. That grief stays with you and changes you. Chemically, you’re different. I think that doesn’t imply there’s a cure for grief because when people cannot navigate those steps in the “right way,” all of a sudden, they’re failing at something else. 

They’re perceived to have failed, “Why am I not over this yet? Why am I not this or that?” They feel guilty if they think that they feel joy too soon in the process. I remember it was so jarring for me, but necessary. When my cousin was alive, I was a nanny for two kids who are well in their 20s these days, but I was a nanny for them for a decade. In that decade, my cousin passed away. Instead, I would go to the wake and then instead of going home, I would go to their house and I would watch them overnight because their parents were away. I still wanted to do that because I knew I wanted a break from my family at that moment.

I would be at a wake for my 19-year-old cousin and then I would go and watch these nine-year-old kids. I would be laughing with them, singing with them, playing with them, because they didn’t get it. They didn’t know. I wasn’t going to explain it to them. I had to be happy for them but that laughter wasn’t fake. They were funny kids and they were making me laugh. I found myself having fun with them, like compartmentalizing. Even back then, I was like, “I’m such a crappy cousin. I cannot believe I’m laughing now and tomorrow is her funeral.” One would argue that I was failing at those five steps of grief because I was laughing the day of her funeral.

I appreciate you pausing on this point of the stages of grief because Kubler-Ross’s theory, which is the one that people have held on to for so long, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It’s a lovely paradigm for what it was. Recent research debunks it in many ways, but for those who are going through grief, if that model at all helps someone, realizing that the stages might pop up. You might feel one or two of them. You might feel the denial, you might go to the bargaining, you might go to the anger, you might go back to the bargaining, you might go back to the anger again and again. 

The idea of acceptance, I agree with you that I think it’s so important for us to look at that. Acceptance doesn’t mean we’re ever over the loss because I personally don’t believe in the concept of closure. That’s where I connect with you on this because I’ve lost people in my life where I’m not even sure I would want closure. That would be I’ve put them in a box and they’re somehow behind me with a big ribbon on it on the shelf. To me, the degree to which you love and care about someone and you’ve lost them is the degree that you don’t put them in that box forever because you feel the pain. 

Of course, it can get less and less over time, but the concept of closure is the one I have a very difficult time with because I think if somebody then puts that person they’re not feeling the loss every day, or as in your case, you were able to compartmentalize the loss and go and play. I believe that’s ever so healthy and to not feel any guilt about that, realize that we all process grief in different ways. We all have a different way of dealing with it. 

The only, in my mind, unhealthy way to deal with it is to put it in a box and never allow the box to be opened. To never feel the pain, to never look at whatever it is that comes up because our emotions are all messengers. If we’re feeling sad, it’s okay to open that box of grief and look at the sadness, be with the sadness, and feel the sadness. If joy comes up because we’re seeing a bird or playing with children, it doesn’t matter when the loss happened. If you’re feeling a bit of joy, dive into it. That doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It means you’re a person who’s alive and who’s feeling their feelings.

I love that the emotions are messengers and you approach the five steps differently because you have an enlightened view that closure is different than acceptance, and then understanding that they don’t go in a particular order and things like that. My cousin has been gone almost 20 years, 18 years. I’m doing it in my head but not 20 yet.

It’s getting there.

I’m not worried because I’m very self-aware and transparent in my grief person. Next year, I believe, next September, not this coming September, it’ll be 19 years. She was only alive for 19 years. When that 20-year hits, she’ll be dead longer than she’s alive. I’m wondering how my mind is going to figure that out and think about that. Her mother passed away two years ago from a brief, but brutal brain cancer.

She hated Mother’s Day after Jess died. Jess was her only biological child. She died the day before Mother’s Day. We took almost joy in that because we were like, “She didn’t have to experience another Mother’s Day on Earth, wherever she might be now.” It was a nice thought. She exited before her least favorite day of the year. It was always me, her, and Jess. 

If I couldn’t recall something, I was able to ask her over the years like, “Where did we go? What did we do that day?” She could jar my memory. She was gone. I felt something I didn’t expect, honestly. It was this newfound grief of being like the memory keeper. I’m the only one now out of the trio. That unearthed the whole thing where I’m 18 years into this grief and another loss upended that. 

I’m so glad you brought that up because I found that in my own life, the part about the memory keeper. When you have someone whom you can go to because of this trio, as you call it, it can be a duo, depending on how big the family is. When that last person goes, you realize no one knows the story, who shares the story, who can fill in the gaps, who can confirm the gaps, who is a living breathing partner in that journey. It’s another aspect of the pain that comes with loss because we don’t anticipate that. 

When we’re alive and we’re sharing stories, we don’t think, “I’m going to be the last or this person is going to be the last person who remembers this. Yet one by one, and especially with the power of addiction to strip people out of our lives unexpectedly, that person who shared our stories with us can be gone in the blink of an eye. That adds to the grief. You also brought up the piece on anniversaries. Mother’s Day is an anniversary in a certain way. The time when she died is an anniversary on the calendar, but also the psyche tends to remember these things and process them in very different ways on anniversaries. 

Growth And Treatment

It will be interesting to find out how this manifests for you, that mark when she is gone for more years than she was alive with you here. It’s all very painful, yet you talk about growth. Let’s pivot to your growth and look at the listener’s question as this individual looks at the brother’s passing and the guilt that comes with it. How can we use your experience to help this person move through the guilt, whether it’s guilt that he or she didn’t do enough guilt that maybe they put their head in the sand and ignored the addiction? 

Guilt that they didn’t press for that third or fourth stint in rehab or first stint in rehab, guilt that they didn’t force AA meetings, whatever the guilt is. Guilt that they were dad’s favorite or mom’s favorite and that somehow in their mind led to the addiction or fostered the addiction. What are your thoughts on that, of how to help the listener? I imagine this isn’t a very unfamiliar question to you. This is very much a question of the day, but I imagine you see this question a lot in various forms in your work. 

I get almost an identical verbatim message from people, strangers all over the world over the last almost ten years. I started publishing my essays on addiction in 2014. I get identical messages, brother, sibling, parent, best friend, cousin, anything, friend, if I didn’t say that, overdose and died, and now I feel X, Y, Z. I know it’s a trope or a cliche to say you’re not alone in those feelings, but the numbers speak for themselves. I get at least one message a day, every day for ten years that says something along those lines. 

That’s such a reminder of how we are all much more alike than we are different, that our human experiences are as painful and uniquely painful as they are, and we aren’t alone in these struggles. 

Everyone’s story is unique, but it’s so unique. I find that the more personal I write or the more personal I am, the more universal my message becomes. That’s the first thing I want to say to the listener. You’re not alone. The guilt will follow you and it’ll start eating at you from the inside out. By that I mean, it’s going to start, if it hasn’t already, impacting your mental health and your own wellness, and to make yourself sick over this serves no good. We must coexist with our grief and our guilt because we can channel it for good when we’re able to do that. 

That’s what I have been able to do. I said this all cannot be for nothing. I became an advocate for families. I’m not saying this person has to jump into action and exert themselves in any way but there are ways to channel what you’re feeling. There are resources to help you work out what you’re feeling as well. You don’t have to suffer in silence. For every person addicted to a substance who might be suffering in silence, there’s a spider web of people around them who are also suffering in silence, and that’s how we stay sick. 

I’m not going to tell you not to feel guilty or that you have nothing to feel guilty about because I don’t know your specific story, but I know the story enough to know that this was going to play out, unfortunately, how it was going to play out. We have this tendency to want to be superheroes and swoop in and save our loved ones. I was not immune to that but that’s not the case. You could you could be there for them. You can love them through some pretty horrific seasons. 

You could support them. You could let them know that you’re in their corner. You could do everything, but you cannot save them. They have to save themselves. A lot of times, especially with fentanyl now, it’s a time game. They don’t have as much time as historically as some people with addictions had to get their lives back together and get help. That timeline has shrunk so much because fentanyl is so potent and so in everything. Some people who use cocaine are dying of opioid overdoses because there’s fentanyl in it. I’m speaking a lot around the question, I think.

I think you’re doing a magnificent job. You bring up so many important points, but the piece too that I’ve had to come to terms with and help my clients with is a person who is addicted, as much as we want to be the superhero, as much as we want to be there to talk them through it, to support them, to offer options, to offer financial resources. The truth is sometimes we even offer consequences like, “You do this or that, I will do this, you do this or I will leave, you do that or I won’t talk to you.” That’s often meaningless. 

I remember at the beginning of my career, I did a course with the sheriff’s department and I remember being stunned because the sheriff who was leading the presentation said, “The addiction is more important than anything to the addict. It is their best friend. They will do anything. They will lie, cheat, and steal to keep their friendship with that addiction, to keep that.” I thought, “It’s that powerful?” I remember my eyes big, mouth agape. Yes, it is. 

Once you come to be with an addict or know an addict intimately, you realize that you cannot be the superhero. It is up to them. You can be there to support them, but it is up to them to get to that point where they want to get treatment. Like any disease, I agree with you, we’re not comparing it to leukemia, we’re not comparing it to cancer. It doesn’t need any comparison. It is its own disease. Every disease needs a specific treatment. Within that treatment are the specifics of what that individual needs. 

If we look at it through the medical model and help people understand that this is a disease that’s often based on trauma, genetic predisposition, so many factors, and intergenerational transmission of violence, bad habits, kids who grow up with alcoholic parents. All of these things. It doesn’t mean that we can fix it. As much love as we give, as much hope, as much patience, it doesn’t mean that we can make a person who is addicted want to get well. 

Amen. It’s an unfortunate lesson that every family learns, whether their loved one recovers or not. It’s something in hindsight, of course, I talk about all of this all the time now. When I had active addiction in my family, all I thought about was heroin. My most viral essay has been translated into three different languages now through HuffPost. The title was Heroin is the Worst Thing to Ever Happen To Me. I would describe heroin as the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s all I think about. It’s all I focus on. 

At the end of the essay, it says, “But I never used heroin.” It drew parallels between the user and the family member and how much the family becomes obsessed with this drug. I was addicted by proxy. That article struck a chord with a lot of people. That’s still to this day, usually, the essay I read out loud when I’m doing a keynote or something because we’re not too far away. I’ve had people, and loved ones say to me, “You don’t know what it’s like.” Yes, I don’t know what it’s like, but I know I’m sick to my stomach. You’re dope sick, I’m heart sick. We’re both sick here. It’s always going to be something I think about.

There’s that piece where when you’re talking about being heartsick. When you’re on that other side of it, I think you can be sick from the helplessness, sick from the worry. As you say, you see it everywhere, whatever the drug of choice is. You’re faced with it. There’s often not much support there because as you said earlier, people aren’t talking about it. People aren’t sharing because they’re afraid of the stigma, “What will people think of me because I’m married to an addict or my kid is an addict?” People don’t talk about it and they suffer the shame of the other person’s addiction in silence. Anytime we carry that load of anxiety and stress, we are harming our mental, physical, and spiritual health.

I don’t have a presence on TikTok, but I have TikTok. One of the best things I’ve seen come out of that app specifically is that there are so many young people openly talking about either their addiction or the addiction of a loved one, whether they passed or not. People are talking about their own recovery, their own sobriety. I love seeing that now. It goes back to what I said in the beginning like I’m a small piece of this now. 

Anticipatory Grief

My hope is maybe in my lifetime, but if not, I hope that one day there is no shame and stigma around it, as there’s not much pain shame, or stigma around a lot of other diseases and mental, spiritual. You’re so right because my sleep, my weight, my health, everything was impacted during someone else’s active addiction. Honestly, I think this is going to answer one of the last parts of the listener’s question. Grief is the main culprit I think to my mental health. Not just grief caused by death, but more specifically anticipatory grief. That messed me up. 

If anyone doesn’t know what that is, its feelings of loss vanish before an actual death occurs and they are just waiting. What happens to our brains when the person we are grieving is here but not here? I was in a state of anticipatory grief for years, which meant every time my phone rang, I thought it was the phone call telling me someone died. Every time I saw this person, I made sure if those were our last words, that they were meaningful. I wrote eulogies for someone who is still alive today in therapy. My sleep was impacted, my relationship was impacted, my work was impacted, my health and wellness, my dental health was impacted, and my brain was impacted. 

We are a species that doesn’t do well with ambiguity. My brain broke under that pressure, and it took me a long time to start feeling better again, and sometimes even still, something would trigger me if I got a missed call at an odd hour. I have kept my phone muted for years now to avoid being startled by a ring or a ping. I am not reactive to my phone because of what transpired in my life in the past.

I’m so glad and grateful that you explained anticipatory grief because anyone who has lost someone or is afraid of losing someone will understand how awful it is to live in that hypervigilant state where you are anticipating that phone call. It’s not only with addiction. It’s if somebody has a partner who engages in high-risk activities, or high-risk hobbies, or who is a police officer or a firefighter. You’re anticipating that phone call and your stress response is chronically elevated. Bringing it back to the addiction piece, absolutely. 

When you know you have an addict on your hands, you don’t know if it is going to be the car crash that does it. Is it going to be an overdose that does it? What is it going to be? It’s not that you want it or are willing for it. You then feel guilty that it’s even on your radar. There are so many pieces of it that you’re highlighting and thank you for illuminating that piece for the listener’s question because the guilt is not an easy thing to move through. Sometimes support groups are helpful, grief support groups, sometimes Al-Anon is helpful, those types. I would recommend, and I’d like your feedback on this, to move through the grief. 

Helpful Tools

It doesn’t work to be stagnant and hope it goes away. What does work is doing the work, whatever form calls to you, support groups, grief groups. As in your case, it sounds like you were doing many things, outreach, advocacy, as well as a lot of writing. Speaking of your writing, be sure to link to some of Alicia’s beautiful work or all of her work in the show notes so that you can find it and absorb her wonderful affirming messages. What do you think, Alicia, are a few things that we can offer the listener to use as tools for moving forward? 

What you listed is a place to start. Therapy, specifically traumatic grief and traumatic loss therapy. There are so many qualified therapists out there. I try not to do too much therapy speak because I leave it to the experts but there are so many nuanced types of therapy now. It’s not just therapy. You could test drive what might work for you there. There is Al-Anon. That is usually focused on families of alcoholics, but there’s also Nar-Anon for families of narcotics users. 

Social media could be a dank hellscape, but there are amazing support groups, a lot of which are free where you could find solidarity and connect with people who are in the same unfortunate club that you are, then it’s to live for that person, which is sounds so broad. As I said earlier, I knew it could not be for nothing. I have to help the person behind me lift as I climb, as they say. When I first set out on this journey, I thought numbers were going to drop, awareness was going to spread. When I was much younger, I thought if enough voices spoke up, we could cure addiction. 

I’m not in that school of thought anymore, but I do know that there are so many people in recovery living full lives too. It’s not just a sad story either. For anyone who did unfortunately experience that sad ending with someone, there are so many resources out there. It depends on where you’re at in your life. I’m not going to try to specify things, and then finding something that interests you. Writing saved my life. I talk about that constantly, ever since I was little like, writing was a lifeline for me. I’m so grateful that I was able to articulate myself in a way that kept my life a bit together because who knows where I would be.

I’m not laughing at what you said, but you said something earlier about getting the phone call, and then you feel guilty because it’s not the phone call and you’re not willing it. There were times when I did. I was like, “If this is going to continue and not change for the better, let it end. I want finality because I couldn’t take the back and forth.” There were times when I let it be over. 

I’ve had other people in my life where I was like, “If I suffocate them in their sleep, I’ll be more merciful than the drugs are.” Those thoughts enter your head and I know I’m not unique in that thought. That’s why I feel like I don’t sound like a psychopath to people who get it. I didn’t feel guilty about that thought. I wanted to revisit that because I wanted to almost normalize those intrusive thoughts that come in are normal. That stress response, you don’t want it to go on forever. I don’t want people to feel guilty for maybe having those a little more dark thoughts. 

Thank you, Alicia, for that genuine, honest, and likely universal thought pattern. When we feel enough pain from whatever the source is, we do want the pain to stop. It is normal to have those thoughts that say, “Please, let it stop.” Not that you want the person to die. You want the pain that’s resulting from whatever source to stop. You want the pain to stop. Thus it’s like, “If you’re going to die, just die so I can move on with my life.”

Something worse doesn’t happen to you before your own death. There are so many situations where people with an addiction find themselves that dehumanize them more. My cousin had a list that she wrote in rehab. The last time she was in rehab were like 10 reasons she was happy to be alive or 10 things she was grateful for. One of them was that she hadn’t been raped yet.

Episode Wrap-up

I understood and that is that part where as you said, sometimes the wish for a reprieve is a reprieve not just for you but a reprieve for that downward spiral that can get very dark and very sad. The person leaves us when they’re in a state of even deeper, darker shame and sadness than we would want for anyone. Alicia, thank you for your time, your energy, your honesty. I only wanted to add one bit to something you said. You said, “Live for the other person.” I get that very deeply and truly. I’d like to add one bit to that. 

Live for yourself and the other person. Take it to that next level where you’re living for you. Yet you let their energy what they weren’t able to accomplish, lift your wings to help you to help the world because that’s what you and I are all about, making the world a better place. One baby step at a time, that’s all we can do. It’s such a joy and a privilege to spend time with you. Thank you for gracing us with your honesty, your energy, and your beautiful way of being. Thank you listeners for being with us on this journey today. Alicia, where can our listeners find you? 

They can find me on the internet. Instagram is @TheAliciaCook. My website is TheAliciaCook.com. You can find me in bookstores. My books are in most bookstores in the poetry section. I have a newsletter that you can find on my website if you want to hear from me on a more frequent basis.

Splendid, and Alicia’s name is Alicia Cook. Her website is fabulous. Thanks again. It has been a joy and a privilege. This is Imperfect Love.

Important Links:

• Alicia Cook
• Heroin is the Worst Thing to Ever Happen To Me
• Al-Anon
• Nar-Anon
• @TheAliciaCook – Instagram
• https://Publishing.andrewsmcmeel.com/book/the-music-was-just-getting-good/
• https://Publishing.andrewsmcmeel.com/book/sorry-i-havent-texted-you-back/
• https://Publishing.andrewsmcmeel.com/book/i-hope-my-voice-doesnt-skip/
• https://Publishing.andrewsmcmeel.com/book/stuff-ive-been-feeling-lately/
• https://www.Samhsa.gov/find-help/national-helpline
• https://988lifeline.org/
• https://na.org/
• https://www.aa.org/
• Website: https://www.DrCarlaManly.com
• Instagram: https://www.Instagram.com/drcarlamanly/
• Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/drcarlamanly/
• Facebook: https://www.Facebook.com/drcarlamanly
• LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/carla-marie-manly-8682362b/
• Youtube: https://www.YouTube.com/@dr.carlamariemanly8543
• TikTok: https://www.TikTok.com/@dr_carla_manly

About Alicia Cook

Alicia Cook is a multi-award-winning writer and mental health and addiction awareness advocate based in Newark, New Jersey. Her writing often focuses on addiction, mental health, and grief – sometimes all at once. She is the poet behind Stuff I’ve Been Feeling Lately (2016, Goodreads Choice Awards Finalist), I Hope My Voice Doesn’t Skip (2018), Sorry I Haven’t Texted You Back (2020, Goodreads Choice Awards Semi-Finalist), and The Music Was Just Getting Good (2024). Her work has also been published in numerous anthologies and outlets including The New York Times. Cook’s advocacy began years ago following the fatal heroin overdose of her 19-year-old cousin. Through her writing, she started shedding light on how drug addiction impacts the mental health of families. An essayist and speaker, her activism to fight the opioid epidemic is far-reaching and has garnered a worldwide readership. She has her own episode on the Emmy-nominated American PBS series Here’s the Story. She has since broadened the scope of her work to include other sensitive topics impacting our lives today.