Nonprofit Founder Honors Son Through Outreach
By Luke Schmaltz, VOICES Newsletter Editor
In 2013, Justin Phillips’ son, Aaron, died from an overdose. One year later, she founded Overdose Lifeline, a nonprofit that supports those affected by substance use.
Phillips and her staff are dedicated to increasing access to overdose prevention, providing access to treatment for those at risk, and removing stigma through education.
As CEO of Overdose Lifeline, Phillips orchestrates a large network of harm reduction providers and educators while staying attuned to her grief, her inspiration, and her mission.
Mindful of Danger
“I refer to my situation as an imperfect storm,” Phillips begins. “What makes my circumstances with Aaron unique is that I used to work in injury prevention, nonprofit management, and grassroots advocacy. I worked in public health, specializing in the prevention of unintentional injury and death from falls, motor vehicle crashes, and fire.”
“I have been sober from alcohol-use disorder, through 12-step recovery, since 1989. I thought I understood addiction and how it affects a family with a genetic predisposition. I spoke to my children about it regularly. I had them after I got sober. I thought that awareness gave me some extra immunity, which is not true at all.”
“Aaron was my middle child. He was an extremely talented athlete. He loved to champion the underdog. He had a really big heart and was super sensitive – very empathic. At some point, he found his way to opioids. I don’t know if it was because he was prescribed opioids for his orthopedic injuries, or if his use was due to developmentally appropriate experimentation.”
“Regardless, I first caught him with someone else’s prescription in 2011 or 2012,” Phillips says. “I did not understand opioids to the degree I do now. He came to me in the fall of 2012 and said, ‘Mom, I am using heroin. I can’t stop on my own, and I have tried. I know recovery is possible, because that’s what you taught me, and I need help.’”
Incomplete Support
“I didn’t know how much more difficult it is for someone to stop using opioids than it is to stop using alcohol,” Phillips explains. “Maybe I was naive, because for me, getting sober was relatively easy. We sent him to treatment, but the program did not address the potential for return to use. They did not talk to us about the potential for overdose should he use again, and they certainly did not talk to us about Naloxone.”
“Around nine months later, he started to behave like someone who had returned to substance use. I tried to have conversations with him, but he couldn’t be honest with me. I think he had a lot of shame, and he didn’t want to be a disappointment. He said if he didn’t get help for his anxiety, he was going to use again. He lost his life in October of that year – a year to the day he went to treatment.”
Taking Action
“When Aaron lost his life, I was working for the State of Indiana. Some of my colleagues thought it would be a good idea to invite me to a ‘heroin round table’ being held at the local police district. The purpose was to talk about the rise of heroin use and what people wanted to do about it.”
“A law had just been passed requiring first responders to carry Naloxone. I didn’t know anything about it at the time, but I did know about education and prevention education. What I learned at that meeting was there was no prevention education and nobody there knew about Naloxone.”
“At that meeting, I spoke with a professor named Brad Ray. I felt he could be trusted. I told him I needed to do something. I asked, ‘What should I do?’ He said that I should raise money so that first responders could have Naloxone, and that I should pass a law that allowed people like him and I to have Naloxone without a prescription.”
“It was winter of 2013, and that is exactly what we decided to do. By July of 2014, we filed for our nonprofit status. We passed “Aaron’s Law” in 2015 and we now have a great partnership with the State of Indiana for distributing Naloxone. We are the main distributor in the state, and we distribute around 24,000 doses per month. For free.
Harnessing Grief
Looking back on the loss of her son, Phillips is grateful that she directed her grief towards these goals. “I had something to put my energy into,” she says, “Which was making a difference for other people.”
“In my early grief, I think I probably hid from it by doing all of this work. I also knew, deep down from the beginning, that stigma and shame around Aaron’s use of heroin prohibited me from getting him the help he needed. If he had a different disease, finding the right help would not have been so difficult.”
Phillips relied on her 12-step experience during the initial onset of grief. In doing so, she cultivated her own support, as well as that for others. “I started talking about it, because I had learned that community is really important. Right away, I started building a community for people who had lost a loved one to overdose. I published a piece in the Indianapolis Star that brought people with the same experience out of the woodwork. We began meeting regularly as a support group, and we still meet once a month.”
“I also had two surviving children – one was only 13 – and I rose to the occasion and put my energy into holding them up and building scaffolding around them and their grief. Helping others is a way to help myself.”
“I also learned to compartmentalize by default. It was not a conscious decision. Within that, I started to journal to Aaron every day for a long time. I talked to him about things that were happening, and I talked to him about how angry I was at him. I still do that, but less frequently. It is a tool for processing, which I believe is the key to coping with grief. It never gets better, but it gets different.”
“The way grief gets different is through processing – by putting your energy towards helping others.
Overdose Lifeline is also a proponent of Black Balloon Day, observed on March 6. This international event invites families of those who have been lost to overdose to celebrate the lives of their loved ones. People grieving a substance-use loss are invited to release a virtual balloon in remembrance via this portal.