![]() ![]() Then, on the night of March 11, Serena collapsed on the bathroom floor of a treatment center in Minneapolis after taking fentanyl. "Other nights I would just pray to the Lord to take care of her, wherever she was." "There were times when Serena would call me at 2 or 3 in the morning and say, 'Mom, come get me,' and I would drop everything and come - no questions asked," Johnson said. Johnson would sometimes use a location-tracking app on her phone to rescue her from a dangerous home or hotel room, she said. At times, Serena would vanish for weeks at a time. Early this year, her daughter overdosed seven times in 10 days as she drifted from sober homes to the streets. When she began attending Thrive's support meetings, Johnson had already accepted the possibility that her daughter Serena might not live to her 24th birthday. For her mother, Deirdre, the Thrive support group “felt like I had come home to a safe place, like landing on a soft cloud.” "With fentanyl, 'rock bottom' usually means death."Ī video of Serena Johnson played in the background during her memorial service in March. "These days, it's irresponsible to say, 'Let that person hit rock bottom before getting them help,'" Lanhart said. Fentanyl poisoning has become the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 49, according to a Washington Post analysis of national death data. Several of the parents had children who were using fentanyl - a synthetic opioid that is cheap to make and up to 100 times more potent than morphine. Yet the specter of heartache looms over each of the group's Thursday night meetings.Įven in their happiest moments, parents acknowledged living with the awareness that, on any given day, their children could die from the increasingly potent pills being sold online and on the streets. "It was like a prayer had been answered," said the mother, Lynda Cannova, of the embrace. Another recounted how friends at her dancing class surprised her with hugs after learning that her son was struggling with substance abuse. There was applause when a mother announced that her son had reached the three-year mark of his recovery from opioid addiction. Lanhart broke the silence with a plea for everyone to describe their "personal wins" for the week. The circle kept widening to make room for newcomers, as Lanhart placed a box of tissues and chocolates at the center. They sat in a tight circle, each holding a thick lesson book with tips on how to communicate with loved ones struggling with substance abuse. On a warm spring evening, the mood was upbeat as a dozen parents filed into the Hometown Church, in a wooded subdivision of Lakeville. "This is a disease, and we would never shame a child of ours who was dying from cancer, would we?" ![]() "It has become abundantly clear that shaming and punishing people doesn't work," Lanhart said. Lanhart has turned her grief into activism, challenging views about how family members should respond to the opioid epidemic. Pam Lanhart's son Jake died of a fentanyl drug overdose in 2021. They point to grim statistics- including a near-tripling of overdose deaths in Minnesota over the four-year period ending in 2021 - as evidence that the old approach is failing to save lives. More than 3,000 people have joined workshops and family support groups led by Lanhart's nonprofit, Thrive Family Recovery Services, which has gained a passionate following among parents seeking ways to maintain contact with children in recovery or still using. They have abandoned the idea that people addicted to drugs need tough love and harsh consequences, and instead have embraced a strategy of empathy, love and unconditional support. Lanhart has turned her grief into activism, and now stands at the forefront of a movement that challenges long-held views about how family members should respond to the opioid epidemic. "I could breathe again."Īt the center of the circle was Pamela Lanhart, a family recovery coach who lost her 24-year-old son Jacob to a drug overdose in the fall of 2021. "It felt like I had come home to a safe place, like landing on a soft cloud," said the grieving mother, Deirdre Johnson, of Savage. All had children who were in the throes of addiction or recovery, or who had loved ones who had died from substance abuse. One by one, about 20 parents listening to Serena's beating heart rose from their chairs and gathered at the center of the room, where they enveloped the grieving mother in a large embrace and spoke words of support. In a church basement on the southern edge of the Twin Cities area, a teary-eyed mother held her smartphone in the air and played a recording of her daughter Serena's final heartbeats before a drug overdose killed her at age 23. ![]()
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