Sherrie Kolb-Cassel

Love Songs to a Junkie Son Sherrie Kolb-Cassel

Opioid addiction kills 18,893 people annually in the United States; 10,574 of those are from heroin. (The American Society of Addiction Medicine, 2016). My son represents an integer in those statistics. I wrote love songs to him after he died. I wish I had written more for him while he was alive. Addiction not only kills people, it breaks hearts and damages the Souls of family members left in its wake. The grieving process is different for everyone. Some process their grief through activism for causes which speak closely to their hearts. It is my hope that my poetry brings awareness to the heroin epidemic in the United States, and that my work might fall into the hands of those who might benefit from my son's story.