Meet Nora… a stay at home mom of 4 children ages 18-11. Two boys two girls. Nora is happily married to her husband Dan who works at a firm on Wall Street as a financial analyst. Nora and Dan met at a bar in the city soon after graduating from Grad school.
After a few years they got married and welcome their first child, Finn. Finn had always been their easy one. Smart, compliant, good athlete, lots of friends and very responsible. It was Finn’s senior year when they noticed him coming home a little later and seeming intoxicated a bit more often. They lived in a nice suburban upper middle-class town in NJ, where “kids would be kids” and substance use was part of the fabric growing up there. Nora and Dan just shrugged these behaviors off as “senioritis.” It was spring, and the kids were all ready to graduate. Finn was off to U Penn in the fall (his father’s alma mater).
At about 3 AM on a Saturday two weeks before graduation: Nora and Dan received a call from the local police department that Finn has just been Narcanned and was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. His parents rushed to his bedside and learned of Finn’s recent pill experimentation at parties over the last few months. The doctor explained that Finn had overdosed on a drug called fentanyl and had to be brought back to life using a Narcan spray. All of this was like a different language to Nora and Dan…they never saw the signs.
