Shame & the Pill-Popping Culture: What Parents Don't Know and What That Silence Is Costing Our Kids with Michelle Kullman
About this episode
Michelle Kullmann shares her son's tragic story of fentanyl poisoning and discusses the stigma surrounding substance use and grief.
Please note: this episode covers substance use, fentanyl poisoning, child loss, and grief. Take care while listening. If you're struggling, you can call or text 988 (Suicide and Crisis Lifeline) or reach SAMHSA at 1-800-662-4357. Michelle Kullmann was sure it would never be her kid. Then her 18-year-old son Cade took one pill at college, a fake Percocet that was 100% fentanyl, and he never came home. In this episode, Michelle tells Cade's full story: who he was, the night he died in his UW-Milwaukee dorm, the warning signs nobody in the room recognized, and the judgment she faced afterward. Strangers called her son a junkie. This conversation is about the grief, and the second wound that stigma piles on top of it. Michelle refuses to call what happened an overdose. It was a fentanyl poisoning. It only takes two milligrams of fentanyl to kill you, enough to fit on the tip of a pencil. Today she fights to put Narcan on every college campus and to tell young people the truth about what the fentanyl crisis really looks like. In this conversation: Why "fentanyl poisoning" is not the same as "overdose" The warning signs of an opioid emergency that could save a life How fake pills are…
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