Today ... I helped my best friend retrieve a truck out of of impound in Holyoke Mass that her brother odeed in. After that we retrieved some belongings and papers.... I found his Living Sober and Big Book and fourth step .... whenI saw the writing he had begun and no not the first time by any means... once I saw THAT i just utterly collapsed in grief. It is so unbelievably sad. The Korean culture says this is shameful and a disgrace. That part of her family BLOWS my mind. Someone in that lineage told her mother he died because she didn't love him enough. There IS this much stigma and ignorance STILL about addiction. On the positive side a woman I know is testifying literally today in Congress on behalf of her daughter or step daughter and has begun an alternative respite spot for addicts in recovery or awaiting treatment in Manchester NH. Like I have said prior I stayed away from opiates because my relatives in NY were addicted and afflicted... All I knew was I had HIV + uncle who pushed my Italin grandmother in a wheelchair in front of a car for insurance money, due to desperation for heroin. Being raised away from them and by a jazz pianist I also knew heroin killed Jazz musicians don't do it for all of the above. Instead drink yourself to death or do coke till you kirby that was my early youth . ...and yet here I am am processing survivor GUILT and pain for my oldest friend who supported me in ym recovery who's parents love me pretty much like their own. And they lose their son and I am in my twentieth YEAR of sobriety, feeling supremely grateful and utterly emotional that I made it.