[00:00:00] Angela Kennecke: I first met Melissa Flynn a few months after losing my daughter, Emily. She contacted me to see how she could help with my newly formed charity. Emily's Hope. She had lost her 25 year old stepson, Nicholas, to Fentanyl poisoning. Just 10 days after Emily died, we met and together we have been doing advocacy work every since.

In this episode of Grieving Out Loud, Melissa shares Nicholas's story. Thank you for being here. 

[00:00:28] Melissa Flynn: Thanks for having me. 

[00:00:29] Angela Kennecke: Melissa, can you tell me a little bit first just tell me about Nicholas. Like what kind of kid was he? 

[00:00:35] Melissa Flynn: Nicholas was such a smart kid. He was funny, hilarious.

He was musically talented. He was a natural at every sport that he tried, and he could make us laugh so hard. He would imitate actors and recite lines from a movie we watched. He just was full of life all the. 

[00:00:54] Angela Kennecke: So when did he start using, Can you tell me a little bit about when did you know that he had been using drugs?

[00:01:00] Melissa Flynn: That is such a hard question to answer because we noticed that he was starting to get into trouble. That was kind of the first sign, and we found out about some of the drug use after the fact. I know early on he started with marijuana, but we found out after the fact that he'd been using ecstasy spice much later. The fentanyl. 

[00:01:23] Angela Kennecke: Don't you think that most parents are kind of in the dark? They're pretty naive. They think, Oh, it might just be marijuana when there's a lot more going on. 

[00:01:29] Melissa Flynn: Yes. I think that's one of the biggest issues is that we're not educated on the signs to look for, and also there's a lot of fear and denial.

[00:01:39] Angela Kennecke: So at what point did you know you had a real problem on your hands? 

[00:01:43] Melissa Flynn: That's also a difficult question to answer because even when we knew we had a real problem on our hands, we didn't 100% know what we were dealing with. I had never heard of Fentanyl talk about naive. I had no clue what it even was. 

[00:01:54] Angela Kennecke: Had he been getting into trouble with the law, I mean, you talk about this being a 10 year period that he'd been using and you found out things along the way. It wasn't like you found everything out at once, but when did you know it was how serious it. 

[00:02:08] Melissa Flynn: Well, yes, he'd been getting in trouble with the law at a fairly young age, and we knew that it was serious when he was. Sent to Custer and then after he was out of Custer, it was like he felt, he acted like he had learned some things, but then went right back into the same type of behavior and his, There was a drastic personality change.

It was no longer the fun loving kid. It was just like this completely different person. That's when we knew there was something seriously. 

[00:02:39] Angela Kennecke: You know, I think it's so hard as a parent cuz we're told to do that tough love and we're hoping we can shock them or scare them straight basically. Right? 

[00:02:46] Melissa Flynn: Yes.

[00:02:46] Angela Kennecke: We, we want them to change what they're doing, but. It didn't work. In Emily's case, when I used Tough Love, when I invoked the law, it didn't work. She kept continuing down this path of use, and I think that sounds like it was the same for Nicholas. So why do you think that is? Or what did you learn from that experience? 

[00:03:04] Melissa Flynn: What I've learned the most is when we started going to face it together for help, I realized that. What I was doing was tough love, and my husband was more enabling and I found that we were both wrong, and it's kind of like meeting in the middle and doing something in between of those two things and being unified in how you're handling it. That's when it started to make a difference, plus handling it with compassion and love and care versus there was a lot of anger and a lot of misunderstanding prior.

[00:03:38] Angela Kennecke: Well, you do get angry as a parent. I think when you keep trying different things with your kid and it's not working, it's not working. I mean, anger is a natural reaction, right? Yes. Uh, but you're right. I think compassion and love, those are the things, uh, toward the end of Emily's life that I was really focusing on.

Rather cuz when I got angry, I would just drive her away and that didn't do anybody any good because really punishment doesn't.

[00:04:00] Melissa Flynn: Well, I think too, they already feel so horrible about themselves and then when we're mad at them, it just adds to the shame and it adds to the problem in my opinion. But we didn't know that of course, at the time.

[00:04:12] Angela Kennecke: Right? It's so hard. So in retrospect, there's a lot that you can look at, and yet you were changing your approach with Nicholas and he's still overdosed. How frustrating. 

[00:04:22] Melissa Flynn: It's extremely frustrating because I feel knowing what I know now, that he didn't stand a chance. I believe that for the first time in many, many years, he truly, truly, truly was making a change.

But the, chances of an overdose after a prolonged period of absence are so high and we had no clue. Relapse is so common. So had he had some type of medically assisted treatment or something like that along with the treatment that he was going through, he, I believe he'd still be here. 

[00:04:55] Angela Kennecke: Let's talk about that for a minute, because medically assisted treatment is still really hard for people to find. It's not a common practice. Tell me why you think that would've helped Nicholas. 

[00:05:05] Melissa Flynn: Well, I think especially with the type of addiction, the opioid addiction, because relapse is death. sometimes it's not like another type of addiction. With alcohol. Yes. Alcoholism and all the other types of addictions, yes, they're serious, but with opioid addiction especially is so life threatening.

So I feel like that with a combination, depending upon how long the person has been using, how severe their addiction is. If you have the medically assisted treatment along with other treatment, counseling, and, and the traditional treatment methods, they have a better chance of prolong. Recovery 

[00:05:42] Angela Kennecke: you often talk about, I've heard you say this before because we've known each other for a while now. The deaths of our children brought us together as friends, and we're both working on this mission together, but I've heard you say it was like being in a tornado. Can you give me that analogy? Let people know what you mean by that. 

[00:05:58] Melissa Flynn: What I mean by that is that anytime you're, you are watching your loved ones suffer and you cannot do anything about it. And every time you try to do something about it, it either makes things worse or doesn't help at all. And then you add the complexity of the criminal. Side of it. It's so you're, you do feel out of control. You feel helpless, you feel scared. You feel like you're being spun around and you have no idea what direction to take.

So that's what I mean by that tornado analogy. 

[00:06:28] Angela Kennecke: After Nicholas died, did you learn anything that surprised you? 

[00:06:32] Melissa Flynn: Yes. The thing that surprised me the most, and actually it occurred before Nicholas passed away, but it, it's even. In, I'm more enlightened now at how completely 100% wrong I was in my views on addiction and how 99%, and that's probably too high of a percentage, but how 99% of the population really has no idea what they're actually dealing with When, when they talk about addiction, people look at it as a moral failing.

These people are criminals. There's something wrong with them. How come they can. Stop. It's not that it's a mental health issue and it's not something that these people are choosing to do, and I think that's what surprised me the most is how I didn't, How could I not understand that when I was watching my loved one go through this?

[00:07:23] Angela Kennecke: I think the general population. A majority of people don't understand it's the disease of the brain. I think that's where the education is really missing out there, and that's, we don't treat it within the medical system. We treat addiction outside of the medical system, and we need to change that because so many lives are being lost every single day in this country.

So we need screenings when people come into their primary doctor. We need to, to get this recognized as a disease of the brain. By the medical field, and we need a lot more training of medical professionals. I wonder if you could tell me a little bit when you were searching for answers. When I was trying to help Emily starting back in high school, you know, I took her from counselor to counselor, trying to figure out what is going on with her.

Why is she rebelling to this extent? Why is she doing the things that she's doing? I couldn't really get any answers or any real help. I felt like nothing worked. Did you feel that way too? Because I feel like the system sort of. Parents, Well and their children down. 

[00:08:17] Melissa Flynn: One of the things that was so maddening for me is that we went to, I think Nicholas went to countless outpatient treatment and he was in treatment five or six or seven times.

One thing that bothers me is that treatment is not a one size fits all, and there isn't a lot of different types of treatments. It's all very similar, and every person is different. Therefore, their treatment options need to be geared towards that individual person. It wasn't until we found face it together that we started to see a change in Nicholas.

because we, it's a family illness. We had to change the dance. Therefore, Nicholas could see that he needed help. So I think it's really a, a complex issue. 

[00:09:03] Angela Kennecke: Yeah, it's super complex. But also we don't treat, uh, two cancers the same. I mean, we don't, There are many diseases out there where everyone's not getting the same, a cookie cutter treatment. So it would make sense that addiction is another one of those diseases that needs personalized treatment. Let's talk a little bit about fentanyl because I, a lot of people don't really understand what it is. Was it Nicholas's drug of choice? Did he know he was getting fentanyl, or tell me about the background with Nicholas and Fentanyl.

[00:09:30] Melissa Flynn: Nicholas was prescribed a pain medication in high school for a back injury. And I honestly don't know if that's what started the addiction. 

[00:09:39] Angela Kennecke: Well, I feel the same way because Emily was prescribed pain medication after she had surgery for a broken nose, and I don't know either. I mean, you just don't know because they're not here to tell us.

[00:09:49] Melissa Flynn: Well, and I think it started out. I mean as far as the opioids, I think it started out with fentanyl, but then it turned to heroin because the fentanyl was harder To get more expensive. Heroin is cheaper and easier to get, which is a very sad state of affairs. But I, and I don't know as far as the overdose, if he intentionally.

Fentanyl. I don't know that I wish I, I don't know that it would make any difference, but I wish I knew what led him to buy Fentanyl because it was, he knew how dangerous it was.

[00:10:24] Angela Kennecke: Was it a hundred percent fentanyl? 

[00:10:26] Melissa Flynn: Yes. 

[00:10:27] Angela Kennecke: Like in Emily's case it was, uh, heroin mixed with Fentanyl, and I believe she didn't know the fentanyl was in. Like you said, Nicholas could have thought he was buying heroin, but the fentanyl is what is so potent and so deadly, and the supply that's out there that keeps popping up and all kinds of drugs, I mean, it's just really frightening right now. 

[00:10:45] Melissa Flynn: Well, and he was on probation and they were testing him, but Mayan in this could, I don't wanna say this cuz I don't know that this is factual because I've had a hard time digging into this since he passed away.

But my understanding is that they weren't testing him for, for fentanyl and. I think, or maybe it's, it, it's harder to show up in the tests, so I'm wondering if that's why 

[00:11:07] Angela Kennecke: it does seem like people who are addicted, who are suffering from substance use disorder will find whatever it is because they need something to get them through that day.

[00:11:16] Melissa Flynn: Mm-hmm. , 

[00:11:17] Angela Kennecke: whatever it is that they can take that will allow them to pass the test and, and they're clever, you know, they can figure it out. So that wouldn't be surpris. Is there anything that you would've done differently? And this is so hard to talk about because I think as moms, I'm sure you do what I do.

You go over and over and over in your head like, Maybe I should have done this, uh, five years ago. Maybe I should have approached this this way. And we don't wanna beat ourselves up about it either because we can't go back and change the past. But the reason why I ask you this question is so that other parents can learn from what happened to us, and maybe they will take a different approach if they have a child who's starting to use substances.

Maybe we can just help one other person look at things differently. So is there anything, 

[00:11:59] Melissa Flynn: Well, I wanna go back to something that you talked about in terms of the risk factors we have in the medical community. We have risk factors for diabetes, we have risk factors for heart. Where are the, where's the education in terms of risk factors for addiction?

That's where I think it needs to start. And then secondly, looking back, there were things that I thought, Well, that's weird. Weird things that were happening in the house. Weird smells, weird things I was seeing and I didn't. Put two and two together. I think part of it was because I was afraid and part of it was being naive.

I think there needs to be a lot more education to know what to look for and, and trust. Moms know, trust your gut when you know your kid isn't right, your kid isn't right, and you need to take action right away. 

[00:12:48] Angela Kennecke: Right. People always ask me that, and one of the things I say, because we were planning an intervention for Emily and she died, we had all met on a Saturday.

She died on a Wednesday, or the intervention itself was planned for the following Saturday. And I always say, Don't wait until Saturday. Act immediately because. I didn't know how deadly this epidemic was. I knew a lot about it because of the reporting that I'd been doing, but I didn't know. And so how are other people that aren't even immersed in this the way I already had been?

How are they supposed to know? And so what I say is act as soon as you realize something is wrong, you need to act and you need to act immediately. And that's why we need to change a lot of things in this country to get people more help more quickly, what do you think would be one, a couple maybe of the biggest things that we need to do to solve the opioid epidemic?

 I think of it as an addiction epidemic more than an opioid epidemic because I feel like there's so many things that need to change. First and foremost, we need to develop the risk factors, educate parents. We need to get the criminal justice system to look at, we can't arrest our way out. And we cannot criminalize these people when they are having a serious mental health issue.

[00:14:03] Melissa Flynn: We need to work with doctors in emergency rooms instead of getting them well and kicking them out the door. Having those intervention methods there at the hospital treatment centers, we need to have more than just a one. I'm not, We do have different options and I'm not trying to bash the treatment community in any way, but I feel like there needs to be different treatment.

To help people in different ways than because the traditional treatment methods don't always work for every person. They didn't work for Nicholas. So I think it's a very complex issue with a multifaceted solution. 

[00:14:37] Angela Kennecke: When parents ask me for advice, sometimes it makes me stop and think if I had good advice, my child would still be alive. do people ask you for advice and what advice would you give a parent one-on-one? 

[00:14:48] Melissa Flynn: People do ask me for advice, and what I always tell them is to lead with love because first and foremost, they need to remember that their loved one is still there. That is still the person that they know and love, but they have something has taken over their brain and they're not the same person and to not be, to have compassion and kindness and understanding.

One of the things that I learned going back to what I learned, another aha moment for me was at one point I was talking to somebody at Face It Together about, I was so irritated because Nicholas was manipulating and lying and he. You know, the symptoms of addiction are maddening, and it was like this light bulb moment.

That is not my son. He is not a liar. He is not a manipulative person. He, he didn't grow up that way. That's a symptom of his addiction, and I think people need to understand that. They need to understand there's a person there that's suffering.

[00:15:49] Angela Kennecke: Well, it's so great that you've been able to talk about this. You've, you've been really strong and you're doing everything you can. I know you're, you're talking in churches and you're involved in different groups and really trying to get the word. What compels you to, to talk publicly about it? 

[00:16:04] Melissa Flynn: You know, I never thought that I would do this. I. It's just a weird thing.

Literally at Nicholas's funeral, I was talking to our pastor and saying, I have got to do something about this because I feel like what I've learned this magic answer. In terms of how to reframe the way we look at addiction. And I feel like if everybody understood what we now know, we could really make a difference.

And I feel like there's other families out there that are going in that tornado, going around in that tornado, and they have nowhere to turn. I just wanna let them know that they do have, there is hope, there is help. And they do have people that understand what they're going. 

[00:16:48] Angela Kennecke: And we've put a lot of resources on our website, 

We wanna give people some tools to try to get help, and sometimes it is a bit of a journey. You may try one thing and that doesn't work because it's so individualized, and then try another thing. But keep trying. I think that that's a, don't give up on those people. The one thing I always think about is I don't want my daughter to be remembered for how she died.

I want her to be remembered for who she was and I'm sure you feel the same way about Nicholas. It's so hard when it's such a a thing like overdose, which carries so much stigma. You don't want that to be their death to be what their life was all about. What would you like Nicholas's legacy to be?

[00:17:26] Melissa Flynn: Well, I would like his legacy to be what all of his friends and family have said about.

That he was always the first person to show up when somebody needed help, that he was a kind, loving, caring person, That he had this amazing sense of humor. He also, um, had this amazing sense of making other people that maybe were less outgoing as him feel comfortable, and that's what I want people to remember him for the truly amazing person that he was.

[00:17:57] Angela Kennecke: I have another question about you, Melissa. Because I hope some of the people listening to this podcast are just looking to try to figure out ways to deal with their own grief and their own loss. That wouldn't necessarily have to be from overdose, but just losing someone who's so close to you like this, especially a child.

Do you have any advice or has there been anything in this grieving process? That you feel has been most beneficial to you or that you've learned? 

[00:18:22] Melissa Flynn: I have been going to a grief counselor, and at first I was thinking, I won't need a counselor. I won't need that. But I'm so grateful that I have chosen to do that, simply because grief is different for everyone, and the way that you get through it is different for everyone.

And. Having somebody that deals specifically with grief who can say, You know, when I can't remember how to get dressed in the morning as an example, that's normal, Melissa. It's okay. Just being kind to yourself and realizing that you're never, ever, ever going to be the same person again, and that it's okay.

And just putting one step in one foot in front of the the other every day and moving forward, I guess. That's all you can do. 

[00:19:14] Angela Kennecke: I always say that it's something you're never gonna get over. It's not like you can just get over the loss of your child. You have to learn to live with the pain. and I hope over time that it begins to lessen a little bit.

That's what I'm told by parents who've been on this journey as well, you know, been, are farther down the road than what we are because our children both died in the same month, almost a year ago. We have to keep living. I've seen other parents that wanna stop living and, and we have those moments too. I know both of us do, but it's just figuring out how to go on and take it one day at a time while you have this heavy burden of. It's like an extra weight on your shoulders, don't you think? 

[00:19:55] Melissa Flynn: Yes. And I, I wanna kind of go back to, you asked me why I feel called to help. One of the things that I feel I owe Nicholas to keep on living because he would want me to, because he lived life to the fullest every day that he was alive. And also I feel like I owe it to him to help other people that were suffering from the same.

That he suffered from. I owe it to, I owe it to teach people. I just feel very called to teach. 

[00:20:23] Angela Kennecke: Right. And, And I feel very strongly that I don't want any other parents. I mean, I would like to get to a point where there were no other moms to interview about this problem. I. We belong to a club now neither one of us wanna belong to.

[00:20:34] Melissa Flynn: Right. 

[00:20:35] Angela Kennecke: And all we can do is try to help other people. 

[00:20:37] Melissa Flynn: I hope that by sharing and talking and making it okay to talk about these things, that it helps. That's the main goal. 

[00:20:45] Angela Kennecke: We're gonna keep talking. . 

[00:20:47] Melissa Flynn: Yes. 

[00:20:47] Angela Kennecke: Keep on talking about it. Thank you so much for all the work that you're doing. I really, really appreciate it.

We all do. 

[00:20:53] Melissa Flynn: Thank you. 

[00:20:54] Angela Kennecke: Thank you for joining me for this latest episode of Grieving Out Loud. You can listen to more episodes and read my blogs on our website, Emily's Hope Charity. Thank you for listening. Until next time, wishing you faith, hope, and courage.