Denise Cullen has lived through one of the worst tragedies a mother can experience – losing a child. But if there is anything worse than losing a child, it is losing a child to a drug overdose, because grief is accompanied by stigma and blame.

Denise lost her only son, Jeff, when he was 27 years old to a fatal combination of morphine and Xanax. She remembers him as “warm, open, loving, bright and stubborn. He had a huge laugh and a fabulous smile,” she says. He was also impulsive and suffered from ADD.

Following is an interview with April, a Durham sex worker. This is her story.
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When I was growing up Mom nodded off all the time [on opiate pills] and in the morning I’d find her lying on the floor or wherever she’d passed out high the night before… My father was drunk all the time, my mother high on pills, so my brother and I raised ourselves. I learned to cook for myself when I was three and got myself up to get ready for school at age five. [My brother and I] were abused mentally a lot, and my Dad abused us physically too. We terrorized the neighborhood. We played with knives and ripped the shingles off houses.

Bob Scott, a former Captain of the Macon County Sheriff’s Office, spent 15 years in law enforcement working to keep our communities safe, and he used his unique vantage point as an officer to speak out against America’s costly and ineffective war on drugs.