Coping with Addiction-Related Deaths

Some of the funerals at funeral homes in Tallahassee, FL will be for people who died from some kind of addiction. Whether the addiction is to drugs, to alcohol, to food, to risky activities, etc., it most likely took a life sooner rather than later.

Despite the fact that the obituaries of many older people say death was unexpected, the reality is that we do expect people to die when they begin to get up in years. However, it’s always a shock when younger people die.

When younger people die as the result of accidents, their deaths are both sudden and unexpected and the shock hits hard. However, when people died as a result of addiction, although we feel shock, we have to acknowledge that the expectation was always hovering in the background. It was never a matter of if, but a matter of when.

That being said, coping with addiction-related deaths is just as hard, if not harder in some ways, as coping with any other death of someone we love and care about.

Addiction-related deaths have more baggage left behind for the people who are grieving their loved one. Those are the things that we have to navigate through in addition to the normal emotional upheaval of grief and loss.

One thing that almost everyone who loses a loved one as a result of addiction has to deal with is guilt. Head knowledge about addiction goes out the window when we’re grieving, and we have to wrestle with the idea that “if we had just [fill in the blank] more,” we could have saved our loved one from addiction and from death.

Nothing is further from the truth, but guilt can be a hard thing to work through to return to that knowledge that our loved one’s addiction was not only bigger than they were, but it was also bigger than we were.

Another hard part of coping with an addiction-related death is children. Perhaps our loved one was a parent. Perhaps they were a beloved aunt or uncle. Maybe they were a grandparent. Maybe they were an older brother or sister.

When children are left behind after addiction-related deaths, two things must be addressed.

One of those things is explaining the death to the children in an age-appropriate way that doesn’t overload them emotionally or give them more information than they’re ready to handle. That can be a very hard line to walk successfully for family members of the loved one who died.

The other thing that must be addressed with children in regard to addiction-related deaths is self-blame. Self-blame is common in children, especially when their parents have died as a result of addiction. They come to see themselves as the reason why their parents were addicted and, therefore, why they died. It’s important to get professional counseling, if needed, to take this burden of the shoulders of children.

Another very slippery slope in coping with an addiction-related death is whether to explain the cause of death to the outside world of coworkers, teachers, friends who aren’t close to your family, and others whom you and your family know, but not well.

Many people are now choosing to tell the stories of how their loved one’s addiction killed them, hoping that it will remove the stigma and shame. Others decide to keep the cause of death private. Either choice is okay, and we don’t have to feel obligated to divulge more than we are comfortable with.

If you want to know more about grief resources at funeral homes in Tallahassee, FL, our compassionate and experienced staff at Lifesong Funerals & Cremations can help. You can come by our funeral home at 20 S. Duval St., Quincy, FL 32351, or you can contact us today at (850) 627-1111.