International Overdose Awareness Day, Aug. 31, is the world's largest annual campaign to end overdose, remember without stigma those who have died from overdose and acknowledge the grief of the family and friends left behind.
Its theme: Recognizing and acknowledging those in our communities who are affected by overdose but might go unseen in the crisis.
Cody Bivin was a natural athlete who competed in basketball, baseball, football and diving; he excelled in wrestling with skills and talent that took him to the State Championships.
"He loved to fish; he'd have lived in a lake if he could," says his mom, Seana Bell, a modest, sincere woman who works as a certified nurse assistant.
During wrestling practice, at the beginning of his senior year at Ukiah High in 2009, he broke his tibia and fibula and was given a prescription for Percocet.
"I believe that's when his addiction started," she says. "In my heart that is what I believe happened."
He stopped wrestling.
After graduation, no longer living at home, he became addicted to methamphetamines and then to opiates, getting his pills illegally on the street.
"I had no idea this was going on until I got a bill in the mail from an ER in Petaluma for $30,000."
He was at a party and was found on the stairway, foaming at the mouth, overdosed on opiates, pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital and brought back to life.
When Seana asked him about it, he told her he had taken too many pills, never admitting that he had been DOA.
"He made it sound like it was not a big deal and that it was a freak accident. He hid it very well."
She felt helpless, scared, guilty, not knowing what to do – "all those feelings that come with something like this."
At 24, no longer able to deny his condition, he went into rehab for 30 days at the Ukiah Recovery Center and, for the next four years, stayed clean and sober.
He got a good job and his own apartment and began doing all the things he once loved to do — especially fishing.
"He had a big heart; he would give the shirt off his back to anybody."
He began attending recovery meetings with his mom.
"He used to ask me why I bothered going to those meetings, what did they do for me and then he started asking if he could come with me."
She is not sure when the opioid use disorder began again. She noticed something was not right; he wasn't coming around much anymore and when he did, he wasn't present. He began having problems at work.
"I asked him if he had relapsed and he said no, that it was from the medications he had been prescribed by his therapist, benzodiazepines and anti-depressants."
She gave him the benefit of the doubt because she knew medications had side effects.
A month or so later, on March 8, 2021 at 10 p.m., she got a call from her friend telling her to get down to the hospital.
He had overdosed on a M30 pill laced with fentanyl.
(Counterfeit oxycodone M30 pills are fake medications and have different ingredients than the actual medication. Counterfeit pills may contain lethal amounts of fentanyl or methamphetamine and are extremely dangerous because they often appear identical to legitimate prescription pills. The user is likely unaware of how lethal they can be.)
"We talked with him; he told me he had relapsed on pills. He said he couldn't go back; he couldn't start over. I wasn't sure what he meant at the time, but I think he meant that his addiction was so bad that he believed he couldn't fix it.
"I didn't understand how bad the issue was; I thought he had slipped."
The following Sunday evening, on the 14th, they attended a recovery meeting together and on the way to his place, she asked if he had any drugs or paraphernalia that would trigger him to want to use. He said no, that he had gotten rid of it all."
She dropped him off at 7:45 and asked if he wanted to come over for dinner. He said no, he was in bed and would pick her up in the morning for a meeting.
At 10 p.m. she got a call from her friend, that she needed to get to his house, that his heart had stopped beating, that he was gone.
The paramedics' attempt to resuscitate him were to no avail. He was 28 years old.
"He was fun, loving, smart; he loved his grandparents, his siblings. He had hopes and dreams of having a family one day. Drugs were never part of that picture."
She takes out the journal she had given him and reads from an entry he made two days before his death. It says he is ready to restart his recovery program, relearn what it means to be sober again after relapsing with four years of sobriety.
He writes of self-destructive feelings of failure and self-pity, how he feels he does not deserve to succeed; the support he has received from his mom and his own disappointment in hurting her; and his hopes for the future.
"I wish he would have asked to come home; I would have helped him through this – there are so many resources out there and people who care.
"Don't be ashamed of being in your addiction; the last thing family and loved ones want is for someone to not be here anymore."
She started a grief group, stays connected to her husband, her children but says there are some days when nothing works.
"Pretty much every day I feel broken and it's just there; but some days are worse than others. I'm starting to move forward, trying to find the positive and reach out with what I can do. I would love for his story to get out there so it could help save others. I feel honored you asked me to do this."
The feeling is mutual.
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