August is overdose awareness month, and a new book about America's opioid crisis is out this week.
Last Day: How to Stop Losing Our Loved Ones to the Opioid Crisis is written by local author, podcast host and CEO Stephanie Wittels Wachs.
More than a decade ago, she lost her brother, Harris Wittels, a writer, producer and comedian, to an opioid overdose. In the years that followed, she turned her deep grief into a search for answers, co-creating a podcast called Last Day and now launching her book.
Wittels Wachs recently stopped by KAZU, where she first read from her book’s introduction.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs ( SWW): “On February 19th, 2015, I lost my brother, Harris Wittels, to a heroin overdose. As many times as I've repeated those words since, it still somehow doesn't seem real, even though I know concretely that he is no longer here. For over 10 years, I haven't been able to text him hilarious videos of his niece and nephew. I haven't been awakened at midnight with an SOS phone call to game out his latest girl problem. I haven't binged 12 hours of television with him in one sitting or shared an eye roll at dinner after one of our parents said something completely unhinged. My children are getting older, but my childhood sidekick is not, and although I've somehow come to accept that fact, it's never felt like something I should accept because no one should die of a drug overdose at 30 years old.”
Erika Mahoney (EM): We really get to know your brother in this opening to your book and it's clearly such a profound loss for you. What inspired you to turn your pain into your work?
I never thought about it. It just was an impulse. I didn't have a moment where I thought, "Hmm, should I make something about this?" I just am someone who has always made things in the wake of anything that happens.
Particularly, writing is something that's helped me through low points. So yeah, it wasn't a cognizant sort of, "Let me do this." I was, as you know all too well, overcome with grief and sorrow and in the early aftermath of that grief, I wrote and wrote and wrote about my feelings; processing this loss and how traumatic it was and how just profoundly full of sorrow I was in a way that felt crippling and like I would never be able to move forward from that place.
But as grief does, you can move forward ultimately, you know? The thing about grief is it's always with you, but there are other things in your life that provide such joy and I think people who have experienced that kind of crippling grief are able to experience joy on a much higher scale and level because you know what it is to be at the bottom and you kind of are able to sit in those joyful moments, I think, more wholly and more intentionally than you would otherwise.
So anyway, long story short, I was moving forward from that, and then I just started to have this pathological need to make sense of it. So at first, the grief is debilitating, and then it becomes, for me, "I need to do something," and for me, the doing was about, "why did this happen? What did I miss? Why did he die?What could we have done differently? Was this a death sentence, or did we not do something that would have helped him ultimately?"
That's where I have spent the last seven years. So my brother's been gone a little over 11. I'd say the first two or three, I was sad, and then I – it was a transformative loss that has sort of informed everything I've done since.
EM: And now you're helping other people. The title of your book is "Last Day: How to Stop Losing Our Loved Ones to the Opioid Crisis." For someone who's listening and is maybe concerned about someone they know dealing with addiction, what would you say to that person?
SWW: So many things. First of all, there's no manual, right? I feel like with so many other medical issues that arise, the first thought is — call a doctor, right? Get medical intervention. With addiction, it's so different because there's a lot of shame and stigma, and so I think a lot of people hold onto it privately. It's something that is not supposed to be shared, right? If somebody you know has a cancer diagnosis, you're calling around. Who did you go to? What should I do? Who should I see? Who should I talk to? Who is the expert? With addiction, it's all hushed and in the dark and in the shadows and in the corners.
So my first thing I would say to them is, "Hey, your loved one has a disease. This is something that is a chronic illness, and you need medical intervention. There is medication that you can be prescribed. There are addiction medicine specialists and doctors who can help you through this.”
The idea that we need to just throw someone in a 30-day inpatient residential treatment center and then poof, they come out and they're cured, which was my understanding of it…so naive to say, but truly I think this is what we've been sold. The rehab industrial complex is bringing in lots of money for their shareholders, but it's not the most effective treatment for people who need it. What I say to people is: would you have someone with acute diabetes, you know, whose disease was severe enough that they needed to be put in the hospital, would you release them out into the world and say, 'Okay, you're cured'? No, you would never do that. It doesn't make any sense. It literally makes no sense.
So I would just say your loved one isn't doing terrible things to destroy their lives and ruin all of yours on purpose. They have a disease, and the symptoms of that disease make them appear to be lying or stealing or selfish or whatever because they're being held hostage by this voice in their head that's saying, "You have to use, by any means necessary.” It is as important as oxygen. The people I've spoken to over the years have described it to me like, "I'm being held hostage. I have a gun being pointed to my head telling me, 'Get up. Get out of here. Use. You have to use or you're going to die.'" And I like to sort of reframe it. It's like if you were drowning and someone jumps in to save you, you would be pulling on them to get air, right? It is a human sort of need. Like, “Yes, I need to breathe. Oxygen is what it feels like for somebody who's in a severe substance use disorder. I need this. It's breath. It's life.”
And then I would just say, you know, we've been fed this narrative that tough love is the way to go and that “hit rock bottom” and I don't think it's the way. I think the way is love and compassion and leaning in, not leaning away.
People are not gonna change until they're good and ready to change. This is a thing that I wish I had known. I can't force my brother to be sober on my timeline. All I can do is keep him safe and alive until he's ready to change, and accept that he's gonna do what he's gonna do until then, and that's all I can do, which sucks, you know? You really wanna be able to control their timeline, and you can't.
EM: With that, what would you say to your younger self, looking back and having gained perspective, having spoken with so many people who look at this crisis from all different angles? What would you tell yourself?
SWW: I think I'd tell myself to strap in for the long haul. This is a marathon, not a sprint. And it is not going to be a, you know, "let's deal with this for 30 days and then move on with our lives." Just like if you did have a cancer diagnosis, you are meeting with that provider every few months. You're constantly getting scans. You have a longitudinal relationship with that provider. You are doing things to keep yourself healthy, but it is a long-term process. Recovery and remission take a very long time.
And while you're addressing the medical piece, you also need to be making sure your side of the street is clean. You need to be making sure you're…you know, I think I make the joke in the book, like, make sure you drink lots of water and eat healthy foods and nutrients and get enough sleep because it's tough. It's a tough trek. There's highs, there's lows. Relapse is part of it. Relapse is part of any disease. It's not an outlier. It's normal. It is the norm, not the exception. And so when your brother relapses, or as Dr. Nzinga Harrison prefers me to say, when his illness relapses, don't feel like it's a failure. It's part of the disease. Yeah, just be patient with yourself and with him. He's not doing this to you. He's grappling with something that's bigger than willpower. It is not willpower. You can't control your human body. One time I spoke to this guy, Sam Snodgrass, who I talk to throughout the book. I love him. He's got this amazing Arkansas drawl, and he's just one of my favorite people to talk to. And I asked him in our first conversation, this was years ago, this was like 2019, 2018. I was like, "What are the risk factors for addiction?" And he said, "Being human." And I go back to that a lot because we live in human bodies, and this is just one of the things that we encounter.
EM: Before we go, tell me a little bit more about your brother.
SWW: I mean, he was a professional funny man, so there was nobody funnier and sharper and smarter and wittier and, you know, he was one of those people that was…in any room he was in, if he was talking to you, he made you feel so special. He had this, like, light, this warm light that when it shined on you, it felt so good.
And I think a lot of people who grapple with this disease are, like, the brightest lights, actually. I think it's a cunning illness that really goes after people who are empaths, who are feelers, who are seeing things on a deeper level. So I think that was him.
He also was, like, stubborn and, like, terrible. Would argue – fight to the death on his positions. Everything from this movie was good or bad, or these are the rules of Apples to Apples, or, you know, this is why the world is ending. Everything was a very passionate debate.
He loved food. He loved ordering food. He was, like, a psychotic orderer of food. He would order 27 dishes and then make sure everyone could try everything. Just a delight. I just love him. I miss him so much and I think he had a lot more to do and a lot more to experience and a lot more to share with the world. He was an amazing artist and TV writer and it's a real shame that his life was cut short.
And I just — my goal here with the book is, no one, no one should have to face their last day prematurely. And yeah, that's why I wrote it.
EM: That was so beautiful and so full circle. Thank you so much. Is there anything else you wanna add?
SWW: No. This was so lovely to chat with you, Erika. Thank you for having me.
Last Day:How To Stop Losing Our Loved Ones to the Opioid Crisis is out now. Wittels Wachs began her national book tour this week. Locally, she’ll be speaking at Olivia & Daisy Books in Carmel Valley on Sept. 12 at 7 p.m.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs is the co-founder and CEO of the podcast network Lemonada Media, which provides underwriting support to KAZU and distributes Erika Mahoney’s podcast, Senseless.