Good morning, everyone. Im lenny bernstein, the health and medicine reporter at the washington post. I aim going to introduce to you today todd and evelyn, the parents of thad berkey who died of a Drug Overdose and ellis lee, the journalist who made the remarkable video that you just saw. [applause] can you tell us a little bit about how the addiction began and how it progressed . In january of 2015, he broke his hand and foot and we took him to the emergency room and everything and he got prescribed painkillers. We had no idea that he got addicted. Now around october of 2015, his mom found the walk pills in hism and this is when he told us about his addiction to painkillers. I looked it up online and educated myself a little bit about it and the that and then k upstairs to the top and yelled out called him im sorry, i love you. He was on it in an attempt to beat his painkiller addiction. I said i love you and if anything happened to you, i wouldnt want to live, and then, of course we had him in rehab two different times. The first time he was doing really good, wanted to get clean and because it was good about going to meetings and everythi everything. The first time he went to rehab he was able to get the blocker but it only lasts for like 30 days or so. I called around to different places and couldnt find anyplace to subscribe him to that. Call it a place in milton that the only prescribed to patients who went to treatment at a Treatment Center so i wasnt able to get it for him and he relapsed. Relapse is common. When he came out of rehab, were you hopeful, what did you think might have been . Well, i thought this was just a bump in the road because he really wanted to get better and it was just totally out of our family, our realm, im going to say it, it just doesnt happen to us. When he did relapse, what did you see . Behaviors that i just said you know, you are reminding me of when, and he was like no, no. Was he back to using pain pills or was he using street drugs . What finally turned up fax delete or when he didnt have pain pills, that is when he turned to hear heroine. When he took him back again, he didnt do as good when he came home as he did the first time. He wasnt as excited, he had drug courts coming up and down d the anxiety and everything and then about three days i think drug courts would have been good because it would have held them accountable, there would be structure in his life because he would have to go to so many meetings, so many groups and be held accountable. But three days before he would have had drug court is when i woke up to my wife screaming in the morning wake up, wake up. I went over and as soon as the e top and its like i knew what was going on in my head. I jumped out of bed, dialed 911, ran to his room and he wasnt breathing and he was blue lying on the bed. I had the phone in one hand and grabbed him and drug him to the floor and started chest compressions and then the Emergency Police and Emergency Personnel arrived. My wife tried but it didnt do anything. The antidote that reverses an overdose. Yes, and Emergency Personnel worked on him for 45 minutes while me and my wife sat downstairs in the kitchen and they finally came down and said theres nothing more they can do, so we had to sit there and wait on the coroner to pronounce or some dead then we went in another room while they brought his body down. Exe overdosed on . Heroine. Do you know how he obtained his . Not exactly. The grief group, can you tell us about the years since he started . Sort of a ridiculous question, but what has it been like for you . My sisterinlaw shared about a group she went to years ago in indiana called grief share and they have been a local church was one that had started up and we it was a 13 week thing. We jumped in at about week four, that was 11 days gone and that was helpful to go through i dont know if the instructions were just to go through with other people through their grief and talk about it. Its a faithbased program, so that was a good fit for us and as we went along, i thought okay, i think we are doing okay. We are doing things the right way. Then we went to an event, saving lives for zachary, and met david told us about a group that meets and weve bee been going monthlo that and its, you know, we criecrytogether and laugh togetd we all have unfortunately one thing in common. Talking with all these folks, have you learned anything about grief, about moving on, about this particular way of losing a child . There is no way i think to describe of losing a child, in this epidemic has it been helpful to meet with other families . Yes