Dying Blind: Those who have lost loved ones to overdoses say shame is abundant, info scarce

Regina Sullivan’s phone kept ringing as she worked from home on June 23, 2020, but she didn’t look, because she was on the clock. Then the knocking on her door started.

She walked up the stairs just before 11 a.m. and looked outside to see officers from the Lincoln Police Department. Immediately, she had a sick feeling that she knew what they would say: Marvin Lee Sullivan, her son, had died. 

“I was no good,” Regina said. She broke down in the doorway. Her daughter, who was sleeping upstairs, woke up to Regina’s screams and came out to finish the conversation with the police.

Her friends had been calling, trying to reach her, Regina said, because rumors that Marvin was dead were already circulating on social media. She was, she says, the last to find out. 

And in some ways, she never has. 

Paralyzed by shock on the day Marvin died, she listened as officers said she wasn’t allowed to see him. His body was already in transport to Omaha, they said, though no one ever explained why. 

There was no person to pull her aside and explain to her what was happening. She didn’t know where to direct her questions. She feared the answers. 

It wasn’t until this May, when she showed Marvin’s death certificate to a Flatwater Free Press reporter, that she learned the medical terminology of the substances that caused his death: Alprazolam, commonly known as Xanax. Diphenhydramine, or Benadryl. Cyclobenzaprine, a muscle relaxant. And methadone, a common treatment for opioid dependence. 

Regina’s experience in the aftermath of Marvin’s death fed a cycle of confusion, stigma and shame familiar to Nebraska families who have lost loved ones to an overdose.

Seven other families who spoke to the Flatwater Free Press echoed Regina: Nobody was there to answer their questions about what had killed their sons and brothers. 

That lack of clarity – that lack of help – stands in contrast to what happens in other states.

Nebraska is the only state in the country where county attorneys double as coroners, with no central body for oversight or support. And Nebraska, without that state medical examiner, lacks a dedicated team for helping the families of loved ones navigate a confusing system following an overdose death, unlike many other states.

Without clear answers or resources, some members of those Nebraska families wanted to close the door on that painful chapter by avoiding altogether the subject of why their loved one died. For Regina and others like her who want to talk about it, the uncertainty surrounding the death grew into isolation. It prevented healing. It felt to them like a story with the final page left blank.

That cycle of silence has real consequences, researchers have found. Stigmatized deaths, like suicide and overdose, are underreported in places where coroners determine cause of death. Without clear information on what’s happening, organizations can’t intervene as effectively to save lives. 

It’s especially hard to reach the most marginalized groups, who often have the most need, because poor data quality around those communities means they don’t know where to target outreach, said Ryan Carruthers, chief clinical officer at CenterPointe.

For years, Regina stayed paralyzed and isolated, she said, stuck in a deep, grief-fueled depression. Eventually, she found grief groups with other mothers who understood. She started to become her own investigator and advocate. She started peer support training to become the resource that she didn’t have.

“Had I had somebody in this exclusive club five years ago,” Regina said, “I would have probably done a lot better.” 

‘Who do you turn to for that information?‘

In the wake of Marvin’s death, Regina reeled, her mind racing with questions. Where did they take him? Why couldn’t she see him first? 

When she asked the officers who came to inform her that Marvin had died why he was taken to Omaha, Regina said, they told her it was standard procedure. 

Douglas County’s morgue is the only public autopsy facility in the state. Most county coroners send bodies to Omaha to be examined by one of Douglas County’s four contracted forensic pathologists.

But Regina didn’t know her son’s body had been autopsied because she said no one had explained to her what would happen after he died. 

“Who do you turn to for that information?” Regina said. She didn’t know who to talk to about the death certificate because she needed someone who would be sensitive. 

In those moments after his death, Regina said she felt like she had no rights over her own son. When she started meeting other grieving mothers, she found Karen Fangmeyer, who echoed the same sentiment about her son Dominic: “He didn’t even belong to me anymore.”

The Lincoln Police Department declined to speak about Sullivan and Fangmeyer’s specific cases, but Capt. Ben Miller said in a written statement that police generally explain the overall process to next of kin, specifically that they act on behalf of the county attorney to investigate deaths. If an autopsy was ordered, Miller said, LPD would share the date and time of the autopsy with the next of kin, as well as a timeline for results.

If the death is determined to be suspicious or a homicide, Miller said, much of the information would not be shared with the family to protect the investigation while fully assessing the circumstances.

Fangmeyer said, though, that her questions were rebuffed by police, who she said told her she couldn’t talk to the coroner. She persisted, collecting a binder full of documents and eventually reaching the forensic pathologist in Omaha who performed Dominic’s autopsy. 

“Anything I found out, I had to find out on my own,” Fangmeyer said. 

It brought her peace when the pathologist finally explained that her son, who took pride in his fitness and had a laugh she could never forget, likely passed out before his death and didn’t struggle. 

Families from across the state told the Flatwater Free Press about their confusion in the wake of losing a loved one, about not understanding what would come next, about feeling dismissed by officers because drugs were involved. 

“This isn’t something we go through all the time,” Regina said. “At least hand me some resources. Tell me who I can go talk to and they can help me process this. It was zero.”

Medical examiner and coroner offices at state, county and city levels in Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Washington and other states have dedicated staff for families navigating the death investigation process by answering questions and connecting families to resources like victims’ compensation and grief support groups.

LPD referrs families who lose loved ones to intentional suicide to an outreach team, and the Victim Assistance Unit’s phone number is on the back of the department’s business cards, public information officer Erika Thomas said. But in the case of an overdose, the unit “likely wouldn’t be highlighted as a resource since they typically assist victims of crimes, but a family could reach out if they choose.”

The City of Denver’s medical examiner office created a family advocate support team specifically to help people experiencing unexplained or suspicious deaths, because deaths like overdose fell into a gray area without the same resources that crime victims receive through other advocacy programs.

Some county attorneys, who serve as de facto coroners in Nebraska, said that they struggled with helping families understand the death investigation process when surveyed by the University of Nebraska at Omaha, said researcher Brittany Willmore. 

Hall County Attorney Martin Klein said that he recognizes the need for families to have their questions answered after an autopsy. His office releases results to a medical professional with whom the family is already familiar, like their loved one’s doctor, who can explain. 

“It’s a way to try to give the family members a way to go over the report and give some answers to the questions they almost always have,” Klein said.

An opportunity like that would have been helpful for Regina, she said, and Marvin, her son who was “so alive, so charming, so bold, so boisterous,” would have wanted the specifics of his death explained to give her closure. 

It’s comforting now, five years later, to finally understand what those drugs were, Regina said, because she now believes that Marvin had been taking his medication from treatment. He didn’t want to die that day, his mother thinks.

Stigma and silence

The weight of Marvin’s substance use and death devastated Regina’s family, driving them apart until they didn’t speak to each other.

While he was alive and struggling, Marvin’s extended family shunned him, Regina said. She remembers her brother saying, “I can’t help anybody like him cuz I don’t know nothing.” 

Regina didn’t understand how he could say that, because Marvin was still his nephew, not a stranger on the street.

“It was ugly … I was begging for help and people were just looking at me,” Regina said.

That shame around substance abuse affected even Regina’s own ability to help Marvin, because she didn’t believe that the son she loved could make the choices that he did. 

“I thought my son was too good for whatever they were saying he was doing,” Regina said. “I didn’t realize that this was a sickness.”

Her identity as a Black woman also played a role, Regina said, because she was taught not to talk about her mental health, even to doctors. In their community, Regina and Marvin didn’t have someone safe to sit down with and speak openly about what was happening, or learn their options for help.

“We’re not talking about it. We need to. It’s time, especially coming from my demographic,” Regina said. 

That culture of silence and shame hurts health workers’ ability to understand overdose trends and intervene. Public health researchers know that deaths that have stigma attached, like a drug overdose, tend to be poorly reported, especially in rural areas, said Michael Meit, director of East Tennessee State University’s Center for Rural Health and Research. 

“I think often it is coroners trying to ‘protect people in their community’ by not saying why their loved one really died because it will bring stigma to the families,” Meit said.

Recent studies on underreporting of suicide specifically have estimated that suicides are underreported by about 17.4% in states with coroner-only systems like Nebraska, Meit said. 

If Nebraska’s drug-involved deaths are undercounted at a similar rate, 220 deaths may have been missed between 2018 and 2023.

Without a medical examiner, who is a doctor beholden to a professional code of ethics and rigorous training, overseeing its death investigation system, Nebraska’s numbers are questionable, said Ryan Carruthers, chief clinical officer at CenterPointe, a treatment center in Lincoln and Omaha.

“Anywhere the stigma is higher, the potential for overdose undercounting is also as high,” Carruthers said. “I think there’s a definite correlation between the two.”

In Nebraska, where many counties’ populations are very small, coroners will often know the person who died, Carruthers said. These county attorneys can be susceptible to pressure not to determine that the cause was something stigmatized, like an overdose. Carruthers has heard from families who have lost loved ones to suicide and successfully asked a coroner to keep if off the death certificate. 

When UNO surveyed some of Nebraska’s county attorneys in 2019 and 2021, three listed family members’ requests that a death not be investigated further as a reason for not ordering toxicology tests. 

Paul Weishapl, a harm reduction instructor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, sees the silence around substance use in Omaha, too.  

“There’s just this weird psychological block with Nebraskans talking about stuff,” Weishapl said. “I don’t know if it’s some generational… trauma or if it’s the magnification of stigma, but everyone in Nebraska knows there’s drug problems everywhere. It’s impossible to not see it.”

An estimated 5.6% of adult Nebraskans know someone who experienced an overdose within the past year, said Patrick Habecker, a researcher at UNL’s Rural Drug Addiction Research Center. That’s roughly 80,000 people. 

“If people knew the scope, it wouldn’t be so stigmatized,” Weishapl said. 

Making recovery normal

After Marvin died, two of his best friends also died of accidental overdoses. They loved Marvin, Regina said. Their deaths led her to start asking why this kept happening in her community. And: What can I do?

“I had to spark up,” Regina said. She went back to school for business and graduated from Doane University on Mother’s Day in 2023, which felt like a kiss from Marvin in heaven, because he had cheered the loudest when she graduated from community college. 

Then Regina established the nonprofit Marvilee in her son’s name, which supports families struggling with addiction and at-risk youth through mentorship and events like Narcan, CPR and suicide prevention trainings. 

Each year, Marvilee throws a graduation party for all Lincoln schools with recruiters from universities, trade schools and employers alongside resources for addiction and mental health. She’s determined to make recovery normal, not shameful.

“Somebody said, ‘Well, are you only helping girls or Black people?’ I said, ‘No, I’m helping the purple people if they need my help,’” Regina said. “It ain’t just me and my community. Every mom can relate to this, not wanting to lose your child.”

Through her advocacy work, Regina met Joe LeDuc, who lost his son the same year that Marvin died. 

Eugene “Gene” LeDuc had fought hard against alcohol and substance use disorder and was in a good place at the beginning of 2020, his father says, working to coordinate in-home services for adults with disabilities. The pandemic brought it all crashing down, crushing Gene with anxiety.

He bought and took what he believed to be an oxycodone pill, LeDuc said. That pill was laced with fentanyl, his father said, and Gene died of a drug poisoning on April 19. 

“Gene didn’t die from COVID-19, but he died because of COVID-19,” LeDuc said. “Because he really was thriving. He was so excited he’d been promoted … the clients loved him.”

LeDuc remembers the officer who came to inform them of Gene’s death saying that there had been a lot of deaths that looked like his.

“Now five years later, I’m like, well, if there had been a lot of these in our little city of Lincoln, why wasn’t information about that coming out?” LeDuc said. 

When Gene died, his family didn’t know what Narcan was, even after meeting with staff at Gene’s treatment program when he finished in 2017.

Now LeDuc advocates for Narcan to be widely available, in parks and rec centers, golf courses and churches. He has gotten Narcan into Catholic schools across the Lincoln diocese, LeDuc said, though priests and parishioners tell him that it’s never going to happen there.

LeDuc knows it can happen anywhere. And if the passerby who had seen his son Gene slumped in his car and had ready access to Narcan, he believes things could have ended differently.

“Our loved one isn’t coming back … I don’t have a torch and a pitchfork for justice,” LeDuc said. “But everything that we’ve done is to try to keep other families from having a loved one die from opioid poisoning or overdose.”

Those efforts to spread accurate information about Narcan as an effective emergency treatment to combat an opioid overdose are making an impact, Carruthers said. Even if the specific numbers and percentages aren’t accurate, he is seeing an overall downward trend in overdose deaths.

Breaking the silence

Regina has struggled to keep Marvin’s memory alive — for herself, for Marvin’s sister and his daughter.

He spent the first five years of his life hanging off of Regina’s arm, crying if he thought she would leave the room. Then his little sister was born, and Regina remembers him petting her head and vowing to take care of her.

“He just was my baby, my son, my honey,” Regina said. “I miss him awful.”

Sometimes, she sits outside of the Lincoln apartment where he died and looks up at it. She posts pictures of him and information about Narcan. On special days, she goes to eat at Red Lobster because that’s where they went to catch up and laugh together. 

And at the end of August, for the first time, she told Marvin’s story, now her story, publicly at an overdose awareness and remembrance gathering held by CenterPointe in Lincoln. 

Marvin was never shy about standing up in front of a crowd and speaking, Regina said; his confidence came naturally. She raised him to be “groomed for greatness.” 

Regina believes that if Marvin hadn’t fallen into addiction, he would be a serious leader in their community. Instead, Regina says she’s trying to step up and take his place.

“Having to come and speak about this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life,” she said to the crowd. “I am a private person who was raised not to tell your business, and we swept things under the rug and we didn’t speak about it … but no more. No more today.”

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No-cost Narcan is available for all Nebraska residents through Stop Overdose Nebraska, at participating pharmacies or through the mail. If you’d like to request Narcan, visit https://stopodne.com/order-narcan/.