Ed Ternan, Song for Charlie's Founder On His Unrelenting Work to Warn About Fake Pills

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

When Ed and Mary Ternan finally met the police officer who had been on scene at their son's overdose death, he had an off-the-record theory: "This is not official, and you'll have to wait for toxicology to come back, but this is going to be fentanyl," the officer told them.

News about the synthetic opioid is inescapable today, but in 2020, the couple had never heard of it. Charlie was a popular, successful student with no substance use issues. How could this have happened?

As it turned out, Charlie was Santa Clara County's seventh fentanyl death in only 10 days. Suffering occasional pain from back surgery a year earlier, Charlie had taken a single counterfeit pill purchased from a dealer ("plug") on Snapchat.

Incredibly, it took less than two months for Ed and Mary Ternan to found a nonprofit dedicated to awareness and education about the skyrocketing deaths from accidental fentanyl overdose. In this episode, we trace the lessons we can learn from Charlie's story, the storm of circumstances that has placed young people in such danger, and how to reach both kids and parents in specific ways.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Song For Charlie website
• Bandcamp page for Song For Charlie (download the song here)

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Transcript

Ed: 0:09

Even if the each individual pill is maybe less potent, the bad guys are finally getting the formulation the way they want it, where fewer people are getting fatal doses, more people are getting addicted. So there's the white noise problem of awareness and education. We have to make sure that people don't kind of think, oh, problem solved, but we also have to move with the issue. There may be fewer sudden one pill, unexpected, totally shocking deaths among youth, but the addiction problem may persist and even get worse. Charlie,

Song For Charlie: 0:42

he.

Brenda: 0:59

Welcome to Hope Stream, the podcast for parents of teens and young adults struggling with substance use and mental health. I'm Brenda Zane. I've walked this path with my own child's addiction and high risk lifestyle. Each week we help you gain clarity, learn new skills, and most importantly. Find real hope in what might feel helpless. You are not helpless and you're not alone anymore. Find more resources@hostingcommunity.org. Hello my friend. We are back after a great summer revisiting some episodes from the Vault, and I wanna be sure, of course, that you are breathing. Really breathing it is so important. And also, if you have not nourished yourself today with some water, some healthy real food, please do that now as you listen. Truly, truly, I cannot overstate how important it is for you to take ridiculously good care of yourself so that you have the stamina and the mental fortitude it takes to do all that. I know you do. I am so excited to get back in the swing of things, and I can't think of a better guest to start back up with than Ed Turnin, founder of Song for Charlie. You know, I love highlighting people and organizations that have taken the most unthinkable tragedy and turned it into a force for good, and no one exemplifies that more than the people behind. One of my absolute favorite nonprofits song for Charlie. Ed and Mary Nan lost their son Charlie in 2020 to a counterfeit pill containing fentanyl. Charlie was experiencing back pain from a surgery that he'd undergone, and after sheltering in place with his parents for a few months, he had rejoined his fraternity brothers during COVID lockdown. He, like so many other young people did and still do, ordered four Percocets from a dealer on Snapchat. The pills that his doctor had prescribed, only what he got were not Percocet, they were fentanyl. After taking one pill, Charlie did not stand a chance, and Ed and Mary and their entire family and community lost this incredible young man. That could have been the end of the story. But it took these dynamic parents less than two months after the devastation of losing their youngest son to channel their grief into action. I sat down with Ed over the summer to talk about how we can continue to reach and impact young people in this new era of widening awareness about fentanyl, what's working with young people versus what works to enlighten parents and a look ahead at what is next for his organization. If you're not familiar, song for Charlie is literally the one stop shop for Fentanyl information. If you're a parent or an educator, they have a whole suite of videos you can access free, a school-based program, Spanish language programming, and they run the very important national Fentanyl Awareness Day initiative. It's incredible the amount of work this team does and a special note. The music you hear in this episode is the actual song for Charlie. It was written and sung by his friend and singer songwriter Jackses, and I'm including a link in the show notes. If you wanna check out more of Jack's work or purchase the song or album, I think you are going to find this conversation surprising, thoughtful, and inspirational. So take a listen to my conversation with my friend and founder of Song for Charlie. Ed Turnin, enjoy. Welcome, ed. I'm so glad to have you here today and actually can't believe that we haven't had this conversation sooner, given that we, we run in very close and similar circles. So thanks for taking time and, and joining me.

Ed: 5:20

Oh, thank you. Thanks very much for having me.

Brenda: 5:23

I, I know that you've told your story many times and if, if you don't know Song for Charlie, you, you guys are like my goals nonprofit, just the amazing, beautiful work that you do, but also the quantity of work that you do is astounding. But I, you know, there's so many things that we could talk about and I, and I would really love to tap your experience in your brain on. What's going on today? You've been at this for a while, as as we have. And so you see trends and you see changes. So I wanna talk about that. But first, for those that don't know your story, maybe you can tell the origin story of song for Charlie and a little bit about your family.

Ed: 6:05

Oh yeah. Thank Thanks Brenda. And thanks again for the opportunity to, to share our organization. Song for Charlie is in year five now. Which is kind of a, a landmark year for a nonprofit and, and nobody is as surprised as Mary and I with just how fast and how crazy it's, it's gone. And there's a lot of interesting reasons for that. I. The, the reason that we do this work is because we lost our son to a, a fentanyl poisoning in May of 2020. And what, what happened to Charlie? And, and the timing of it illustrates this new thing that's been going on, which is people are dying from drug overdose. In larger numbers, younger and often earlier in their experience with substances. And the reason is because of the kind of mega shift that's gone on the drug landscape from producers of illicit drugs, using plants as the wrong materials to produce their stuff to using chemicals. And then just as important is the practice of pressing pills. Using this really quote opioid fentanyl as the active ingredient in these pressed pills and then marketing them to young people as medications, right? And so we grew up in an era. I say that, you know, Charlie was born in 1997 and you know, in his generation, by the time the kids got to. High school and certainly college, right? Their friends had a couple of, many of their friends had a couple of three prescription pill bottles in their backpack. I mean, we had been prescribing stuff to kids for physical and emotional pain. And so taking and sharing prescription meds is kind of on the menu now way more than it was like when I was growing up. Right? And so all those things came together to create this kind of storm of, of of risk for young people. So. Charlie's story is that in very early COVID, he came home from university where he was a senior in Silicon Valley at Santa Clara University. Mary and I both went there. We met there. We're kind of a legacy family there. Charlie's old, older, older siblings had been there. He went to a Jesuit high school, which is a feeder school there. So he was kind of a big man on campus. Yeah. And he came home from school sheltered in place with Mary and I for a couple of months. Which is relevant because we were with him in close, you know, in a closed area. Yeah. All kind of locked down for the pandemic and he was doing okay. And it was a weird time, as we all remember. He was trying to find a job you know, school was remote and nobody knew what was going on with COVID. Right, right. What's gonna happen? How bad is this? It was really, it was the first couple of months of that. But he was coping pretty well. We didn't see any signs of like, kind of a mental breakdown or any addiction or anything like that. And then just about a month before he was due to graduate, he and a bunch of his friends decided we're gonna go back up to campus. And he went back up to the fraternity house where he was living right adjacent to the campus. And within a few days of getting back up there, he went online and purchased some pills. And the story is that. He couldn't kind of hang out with the, with the guys that day.'cause he had a job interview on the phone. And so he and, and a lowerclassmen, an underclassmen while his senior buddies ran out to go hit golf balls and drink beer, whatever, whatever seniors do during spring quarter. Right, right. Charlie couldn't go 'cause he had this phone call coming up. So he and his friend found a plug on Snapchat. Who agreed to sell them some pills. And we know all this, luckily because they used the friend's phone and not Charlie. So it, we weren't locked out of Charlie's phone. We, we, we could find all the evidence and details of what happened. So they bought some pills that were sold to them as Xanax, which turned out to be counterfeit. And Charlie opportunistically purchased what he thought was a Percocet. Charlie had had a back surgery about a year prior and had driven up from Los Angeles area to the Silicon Valley said My back's hurting. I'm gonna get a perk while I'm at it. So he got one of those his friends came back to the house, they walked by. Charlie was doing exactly what he said he was gonna do, which was play video games and wait for this phone call, and somebody talked to him around three o'clock in the afternoon. They kept walking by his open door and thought he was taking a nap because he had his video game on pause controller still in his hand, laying on his back, on his bed with his chin on his chest like this. But he never made his five o'clock job interview, phone call, and about eight o'clock his fraternity brothers said Somebody go get Charlie. Come on, we're making dinner. He's been napping all afternoon, and he was gone by then. Oh. And had been gone for, for a while. They tried not, you know, they tried resuscitation. It was a major calamity, lights, sirens at the fraternity house in a small university where really only about 900 or a thousand upperclassmen had come back to campus. And everybody knew Charlie. Yeah. And it was like, what happened at the fraternity house? Oh my God, it's Charlie Nan and he's dead. It was a disaster. Really traumatizing for those poor kids. What we learned was that they found all of the counterfeit Xanax that, that Charlie and his friend had purchased. So we know that he took one tablet, it was a medication he'd been scr prescribed before that he was familiar with that he actually took as prescribed. Right. He took one. Right, right, right. And it killed him. Because it wasn't, he was lied to by the plug who said it's a Percocet. It was presented as a medication. He thought it was a medication, and that's what's happening to young people. Or in that time there was a real spike in that kind of incident. And that's what set Mary on our, on our path to just warn young people about this new phenomenon.

Brenda: 12:26

It just, it makes me so sick every time I hear this because you look at a guy like Charlie and you know, he's trying to do the right thing and maybe the, you know, the avenue of getting there wasn't the best idea. But also you're young, right?

Ed: 12:46

Yeah.

Brenda: 12:48

You're doing what your friends do and you know, I just, I hear this story. So many times, and I, I just think there is going to be this period of time, this generation of young people that we look back at and we lost so many of them, the future CEOs of companies, the future top chefs, the future senators, or they're gone. I mean, it's just, it's hard to wrap your head around it. I'm sure it's easier for you because you're living the nightmare, but I just, I'm so speechless and I, I just haven't been able to find the right words, which is why I'm glad that you do what you do to get across to people who aren't as familiar with it, who aren't as close to it, what is going on. It's like people are just oblivious still, I find

Ed: 13:53

still. Yeah. And, and it's it is interesting that still in 2025 we talk to people, we talk to parents who say, what, oh, I had no idea. And when you're in the weeds like we are and have been doing it for several years, you and, and you see some progress. You say, oh, well, everyone must know by now. But, but they don't. And so, raising awareness and telling people just the very basics that, listen, there's, there's fake medicines out there, fake pills that your kids are familiar with, or you, you guys, when we talk to students, you and your friends are familiar with this. What you gotta know is they're fake. They're made with this really potent opioid that's just too strong to be self-administered. It's typically given in a hospital over time in micrograms. And when you take a pill with an unknown quantity and pop it in your mouth and swallow, you've lost all all this off. You do not know how your body's gonna react to that. And it could very well be, be lethal. So there's still a lot of. Awareness that we need to raise around the country. But a lot of that's happening and there are groups like that, like ours, all across the country, grassroots local, who are having, you know, events and awareness days and walks and rallies and speaking at schools and community groups. So the, the awareness, it's been fascinating to see, has really bubbled up from the grassroots up. Five years ago one of my little pet peeves was people would say, fentanyl and I'm a nitpicker. And I would say, no, it's fentanyl. You're not seeing it. We actually, on our website early on, we had the phonetic. Spelling of it on our website to correct that because I'm so, such a detailed guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now it's everywhere. I mean, you can't get through an hour, a 30 minute news broadcast without fentanyl in some form being being mentioned. So our organization, where we are now is we're moving through the awareness work and to education, moving from. Kind of one time or annual assemblies in the gym to creating classroom content. Mm. And giving teachers, we, we need to get drug education back in schools and normalize the conversation around the kitchen table. So we're working on, we're working on doing that with the idea that the stakes are so high now that we have to get it right this time. We have to really leverage all the current knowledge we have about how the adolescent brain develops and, and what kids think about and leverage all the current best practices around, well, how do kids take information? They live in the information age, the social media age, so we want to bring all that to bear to reimagine a drug education kind of writ large. In America. So that's where we will move as an organization, as Song for Charlie. We'll still do the awareness stuff and, and the assemblies and and and that kind of stuff. But one of the things I'm fond of saying is awareness is knowing something's going on, but knowledge is understanding what's going on. Right. And families need to get to that level of really knowing what's going on and why. For us to see behaviors change and see this kind of, hopefully this culture shift away from quick fix, self-medication, pop a pill to make she feel better, type thing. Right, right,

Brenda: 17:21

right. I mean that's, that's such a big goal. But I wanted to ask you what messages. Are you seeing resonate both with parents and with kids? Because what I find is sometimes I'll be talking with people, you know, you, you probably have the same thing happen. Like you meet somebody, oh, what do you do? And you tell them and they're like, whoa. Yeah. And they think you Sorry, I brought it up. Yeah, exactly. Like, oh, I wish you were just a dentist, right?

Song For Charlie: 17:49

Like, yeah, exactly.

Brenda: 17:50

But often people, what the, the vibe I get back is, oh, well I'm glad that doesn't impact my family. Like, I'm glad that's not relevant to me. Yeah. What do you, how have you guys been able to break through the, well, that's not my problem, or that would never happen to my kid. And then what are kids resonating with because they're so difficult at that age. They're invincible. Right,

Ed: 18:15

exactly. It's a great question, and I'm glad you asked it in two parts because they're two different audiences. And we're very, my background is like marketing communications and, and so I'm aware of like market segmentation, audience segmentation, and we talk to parents way differently than we talk to young people with parents. I. It's really hard to get past this. Not my kid kind of attitude to paraphrase Homer Simpson. That's, that's, that's a somewhere someday problem, but it's not a right here, right now problem. Yeah. Right. Or you know, for my generation it's like, well, I know cigarettes are gonna kill me, but not this one. No. Right. I'll quit later. So how do you get over that? It's really, it's, it's really tough and that's where. If we can put a personal face on it, that's where it really helps. So if you can, the other thing that's difficult is getting parents to even attend. So if you try and put together a personal a a an in-person event, people are busy and in the things that they're worried about and all the things they have on their calendar to come to like a drug educational awareness event. It's a tough sell,

Brenda: 19:24

let alone the stigma of that.

Ed: 19:26

Yes. Right? Like, Hm, why would I go? Right. What are people gonna think? I'll show up to that.

Brenda: 19:30

Right.

Ed: 19:31

So we have found that if we, and this is, we do some of this stuff with the kids too, a little bit of triangulating. I won't say bait and switch, but it's a little bit like, listen, hey, I'm for it.

Brenda: 19:42

I like it. Okay,

Ed: 19:43

there we go. So it's, but it can be, what if we talk about your child or your students' mental wellness or resilience, or we're gonna have a thing about what's going on with kids today. What are they facing? What are some of their challenges? You bring the parents into the room and you talk to them about coping. And coping with stress and anxiety is really important these days because oh, by the way, the chemical drug landscape, the landscape drug landscape has completely changed. It's all chemicals now. And you have to know that. So you kind of slip it in there.

Brenda: 20:17

Yeah, I like the Trojan horse approach.

Ed: 20:20

Yes. That's kind of like what it is. And, and so we're still working on that. That's, that's very challenging. The young people, for the most part, when we see them, they, we've got 'em.'cause they have to go to the high school gym assembly or they're sitting in class. So most of the time they have to, they have to sit there. I. Then how are they gonna receive the message? And we were given some really good advice early on, which is appeal to their peer affinity. Because at that stage of development, young people feel bulletproof. It's not gonna happen to me. Even if I took those drugs, I would know how to do it safely. Right. Right. So again, we triangulate and we say, you wouldn't want this to happen to any of your friends, would you, your cousin, think about your little cousin. Think about your girlfriend or boyfriend. Right? It's important that you listen up. It's happening to you and all your friends. This is happening to your generation. We, we say all the time, you didn't cause this problem, but you can be part of the solution and protect all of your friends and family around you. If you list, you know, learn and share.

Brenda: 21:27

Yeah,

Ed: 21:28

and just tell, tell your friends. And we reduce it down to our kind of, again, my marketing guy thing, my slogan thing. No random pills is our three word slogan. I say to young people, I'm gonna ask you the easiest question ever. You're all gonna pass this test. Here's the question, what do you do before you cross the street? And everybody goes, look both ways. I said Exactly. And we wanna make no random pills, so always choked me up. We wanna make that as, as knee, knee-jerk, as reflexive, as look both ways. And, and if you do that, remember those three words and tell all your friends and your family what you, that little slogan you can actually. Make an impact on what is basically a national crisis, you can actually solve this problem. Yeah. So it's about empowering them, giving them a little project, giving them something to do, but not for themselves, for their peers. And that seems to be part of the secret sauce.

Brenda: 22:33

Hey, I wanna pause for just a sec to talk about something that has been life-changing for so many women who started right where you might be. By listening to the show, if you're feeling the isolation, the exhaustion, like nobody gets what you're going through, there is a place designed specifically for you. The stream is our private community for moms and female caregivers, for parenting teens and young adults through substance use and mental health struggles. And when I say private, I mean completely confidential. It is not connected to Facebook or any other platform, or your business could become everyone's business. What members love about this stream is that you can be as visible or as anonymous as you want. Some moms jump right into conversations and calls. Others like to read and learn quietly in the background. Both are perfect. It's not social media. It's genuine community focused on learning growth and breaking through the isolation that might be keeping you from moving forward. Right now. Whether your child is in active use in treatment or early recovery. You'll find practical strategies and tools that actually help motivate healthier choices because we know you wanna see positive change in your family. Check it out@hopestreamcommunity.org. We would love to welcome you into this village of support and understanding. Okay, back to the show. You know, even with my son, it was like, oh, I can handle this. I know how to, I know how to be safe, dah, dah, dah. Well. There ain't no quality control happening in the back of the warehouse, wherever they're pressing those pills. Like nobody is checking to make sure that there's the right amount of whatever in them. So being able to, like you said, shift that to say, can you imagine if your friend Brittany wasn't here tomorrow, or mm-hmm. Whatever that is. Seems like a really smart way to do it. And unfortunately, you know, at least in our community, and we have a very. Like concentrated group of parents who have kids who are struggling, but so many kids know somebody personally who has either overdosed

Ed: 24:49

mm-hmm.

Brenda: 24:50

Or been had a, a poisoning. You know, some, unfortunately, like in my son's case, he knew he was taking fentanyl. Like he knew he was not like Charlie, where he was thinking that he was getting something else. So you have both, right? You have the kids who don't know which we also have so many of those in our community, and it, it's. Almost always Percocet and Xanax,

Ed: 25:12

right?

Brenda: 25:13

So parents listen up if you're, if you think your kid is just using Percocet or Xanax, they are not, there is no pure, I mean, it's almost impossible to get from what we hear from our kiddos in recovery who are still kind of in communication with, with the street is you can't even find. A pure Xanax pill because it would be so expensive. It'd be like $80 a pill to get one.

Ed: 25:42

That's right. Yeah.

Brenda: 25:42

Mm-hmm. So if you're getting a pill that's a dollar or 50 cents, it is not Xanax. It is not Burt. The number of kids who have either lost a friend or almost lost a friend is to the point now where they are taking it. They are hearing, I think the message a little bit more, and I noticed, and I haven't done the, I haven't sliced the data at the youth level, but I know that overall overdose are down, which is incredible. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. A lot of naloxone in the market, things like that. But kids are still dying. How are you grappling with that? Like that's, you do so much work and, and you put out so much messaging and you have so many events, and how are you like personally coping with that? Sorry, that was a lot of questions in one.

Ed: 26:29

Yeah. We look very closely at the youth data and our, our fellow breed John Epstein started doing that very early on after losing his son cow. We worked with he and his wife Jen, in Oregon for, from very early on. Four or five years now. And he was actually one of the first to break out that demographic and really take a hard look and look at data from different data sources and put 'em together, mc trends. So we are seeing youth overdose mortality also go down at about the same rate as the national averages. I think I have that right. John will correct me. What we find interesting that's relevant to our work is that college age, say 18, 19 to 24, the curve is bending down more steeply more quickly than the 14 to 18 year olds.

Brenda: 27:24

Right, right,

Ed: 27:25

right. And it's kind of speculation, but it's led us to. Kind of really moved and emphasize peer-to-peer programs for high school kids because the messaging at on college campuses and say in the clubs and bars of young adults, even those who don't go to college, right? Yeah. Is is, is that protective? Let's take care of each other. Hey, have you heard about what's going on? Mm-hmm. We gotta be careful this new thing's happening. You've got organizations like End Overdose and Taco tabling in the quad at university, giving out Fentanyl test strips and Naloxone going to festivals and it's like. It's peer to peer, so I think it's received better. It's seen as less judgy. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So at, at the high school level, a lot of the information that kids get is top down. Teacher, parent, coach, whatever. Hey, don't do this, do this, don't do that. Right? If we can facilitate the peer-to-peer messaging and get young people involved in creating clubs or doing events or showing our film, we think that it just, the message gets in. Right? And the other interesting thing though, is. There is always a new class of, excuse my language, knucklehead, eighth graders coming into high school every year who really don't know anything about this yet.

Brenda: 28:40

Eighth grade grade, eighth grade.

Ed: 28:42

It's so hard. Right? Right. But I mean that this is where primary prevention, upstream education is so important. And you think the work is done and you see numbers start to come down. But there's a new crop of kids and they're growing up in the same information culture, and it glorified in hip hop and the click fix mentality, and now they're being exposed to stuff. So we have to keep giving them the tools, the knowledge they need to make healthier decisions. So that's, that's the statistics part of it. Yeah. What's the, what, what also is trending to your second or third question? I'm not sure. Which is, is, a recent study just came out that indicates that the use of fentanyl specifically may be much higher than we've pre previously assumed. Hmm. And there was a spike in an. As you get into this space and you study it, you learn that there, that the, like drug mortality trends go up over time, always have, but there's zigs and zags in them. Mm-hmm. Peaks and valleys. And those peaks and valleys are geographic, demographic and substance related. So crack cocaine goes up and then you get that under control in one area. Then meth goes up over here. Right. But on the whole drug mortalities have continued, continued to rise and so there was a real peak during the pandemic is a factor. Yeah. Sentinel lot really coming on the scene and not just in the heroin supply, but now in pressed pills. Then the access through social media, those things all to see this hockey stick among younger people. As that flattens, which we really hope it will, and we're working hard to help flatten that. The, the challenge becomes that it kind of becomes white noise and people think problems solved. But the fact of the matter is even if the each individual pill is maybe less potent, the bad guys are finally getting the formulation the way they want it. Where fewer people are getting fatal doses, more people are getting addicted. Yeah. And that problem is again, it is, it's just persistent. So the one pill can kill messaging will, I think have a lifestyle like every movement and every, every product has a lifestyle lifecycle. Mm-hmm. And not that it'll go away, but we can't forget about. The other type of user who gets addicted at a young age and, and now what? Right. Right. And this is, that's your world. Right. And

Brenda: 31:21

then they end up with me. Yes. Yes. And, and, and that

Ed: 31:24

is, and you know, that is, we just have to make sure that a couple of things, we have to make sure a couple things don't happen as the one pill. Talk to the American system of, oh my God, I can't believe this is happening. Young people are dying thinking they took something safe. As that becomes kind of general knowledge and we see the numbers start to come down, number one, that's gonna keep happening.'cause there's a new crop of young people coming up every, every day and those pills are not going away. Right. They're still ma, manufacturing the heck outta 'em. Right, right. But we also have to understand that a lot of kids now know what an M 30 is and it's a drug of choice. Mm-hmm. Because it's a very powerful and addictive and pleasurable substance. Yeah. And so that. Is made worse by the, by these pills. And so we, we can't, we can't deny that. Yeah. So there's the white noise problem of awareness and education. We have to make sure that people don't kind of think, oh, problem solved. Right, right, right. But we also have to move with the issue. There may be fewer sudden one pill, unexpected, totally shocking deaths among youth. The addiction problem may persist and even get worse.

Brenda: 32:32

Right? Yeah. It's the longer term, it's death, but in a different structure basically, right? Mm-hmm. Because what we see is we, we do get those kids, we have their parents, and you know, our parents talk about, I'm literally watching my child kill themself every day. Yeah. So while it's not the immediate, you know, maybe it's the first time you take it. The, you know, the tolerance goes way up, then the use goes way up, and so it, it leads to the same place. It just takes a lot longer, which is equally, equally painful.

Ed: 33:10

Mm-hmm.

Brenda: 33:11

What I, the other, the other question that I threw at you with a lot of different questions was question how you and Mary keep going as you see. All the work that you're doing and kids are still dying, the message is still clearly not getting to everybody. You know, it's getting to a lot of people and, and you've done such incredible work in that area. How do you keep up your stamina and, and take care of yourselves to keep going? Because I know this is not easy work.

Ed: 33:41

Yeah, it is. It can be very taxing. Grief experts will talk about how do you go from your life before to your life after? What are you gonna make with the after charlie part of your life? Because it is a new life. You know, you start over after the sudden loss of a child from from, from any cause and. On one level, it's a gift to have this work to do. Especially for me. I think you would put me in the category of people who kind of stereotypically threw himself into his work in response to his grief. We we're blessed to, we do this full time. Mary and I are a little bit older. Charlie was our youngest child. We're not raising younger kids. We're not holding down a couple of jobs. We are, this is our work, our life's work. So we, we focus on it, we handle it very differently. Mary needs a little more space and, and is not. Super comfortable all the time with the public speaking and the podcast and stuff like that. Now, when she does it, she's great. But it's not something that makes her comfortable. And, and I am, I'm really into it, right? Yeah. I am. Like, this is. In grief, we talk about paradoxes where, for instance, our daughter just got married. We just had our first granddaughter, you know, through my, with my son and his wife. So you have these really joyous occasions that go on in the after part of your life. But there's always that paradox of, you know, my granddaughter's never gonna know her. Uncle Charlie, you know? Yeah, yeah. And Charlie would've been on the wedding and he's not here. Yeah. Right. So there's you, you always, you always carry that. And I. We have the same thing with Song for Charlie, or at least I do, where, you know, I, I'm a mid, early sixties guy business career, and this is the most meaningful and successful business effort that I've under ever undertaken. It's fulfilling and we're, we're having success. It's, it's really, it, it, it feels good on that level. And the only reason I'm doing it's because is because my kid is dead. And it's like, so balancing that is this really weird kind of zigzag and it doesn't happen to me on a daily basis, but it, you can get whipsaw a little bit. Just Mary and I talk about it. We still kind of feel like we're walking through a dream. It's kind of surreal. Mm-hmm. That we're, that we're here. So the work sustains us on one level. But we also do have to be really conscious of taking some breaks and resting and kind of stepping away a little bit and, and just being with family to being with the little stuff again, enjoying the granddaughter and having lunch with our, our adult kids and, and connecting. It's that's really important to step away from it once in a while.

Brenda: 36:29

Was it something that you kind of knew right away, like. We have to do this or, or did this grow from a vision after and, and you guys started putting thoughts together. I'd love to hear that story.

Ed: 36:40

It's amazing because I've looked back at my correspondence and emails and I know I, I wrote a letter to Marian and Charlie's two siblings within a month of his passing about. You know, how the family might react and respond to this. And we were blessed that on day one we were told by a a law enforcement guy on the scene of Charlie's death. And when we got him on the phone, 'cause he died in Silicon Valley, we were in Pasadena. So, you know, like unlike other families who lost their children in their homes and found them, we didn't have that experience right. When we talked to the cop who was on scene, he kind of said, listen, this is not official and you'll have to wait for the toxicology result, but this is gonna be Fentanyl and, and Charlie would be the seventh death in 10 days in Santa Clara County.

Brenda: 37:33

Oh my God.

Ed: 37:33

So there's a hot batch going on, and Marian like, what's fentanyl? What are you talking about? So on day one I was on the keyboard, right? And I'm trying to figure out what's going on. And I learned very quickly. There were other families that it happened to recently around Charlie's time that it was kind of a trend. And within four to six weeks, I, Mary and I said, we can't boil the ocean. We're not young people, right? We, we got, we got other kids, we got things to think about here. We can, we asked ourselves who's warning the kids? And what we figured out was really nobody was, and, and where the information about this new thing was, was not anywhere kids would find it. So in Santa Clara County, there was a, you know, like a page six article in the San Jose Mercury News about a high school girl who had died six weeks before Charlie did. And there was a bulletin on the regional. DE a's website and the Sheriff's department website, and there I looked at each other and said. You could put that stuff there for the next 20 years and Charlie and his friends would never see it. When's the last time a fraternity went? You know, we're gonna have a big party this weekend. Maybe we should check the DEA website, see what the latest trends are.

Brenda: 38:51

That would be smart. Yeah.

Ed: 38:52

Yeah. The number of times that's happened is never. Right. Exactly. So that's really what, very early on we just said we feel like we have to do something, but we can't do it all. What if we just did this one thing? Let's put up a little website and go tell kids and families that this, it didn't just happen to us like it's a thing. Right, right. And that's kind of how that started. But to answer your question directly, it was. Five or six weeks after Charlie died, we were kind of on the road. And then the other story is about the name where the day after Charlie died a friend of the family named Jack Signs, who's a songwriter, who was like Charlie's hero. I mean, this guy was like, oh my God. I have a friend from the neighborhood who's like, he's kind CD out. Oh my God, this is so cool. Charlie would go to his shows and just was his biggest fan and all that. He heard about Charlie's death and he wrote a song. He called us the next day and he played us the, he had recorded it, you know, on a little recorder. He said, listen, I wrote this song yesterday when I, I can't believe what happened. And he said, this is called Song for Charlie. And he played us the song, of course, we all, you just melted

Song For Charlie: 40:02

Sweet Charlie. You be proud. Sweet Charlie. Hands crying. Day. Be proud. Sweet Charlie. Be good. Sweet Charlie. And rest now. Sweet Charlie.

Ed: 40:48

That month later when I was saying, I think maybe we should do this I said to the family. I wonder if anybody's got the name song for Charlie. Wouldn't that be a cool name for a nonprofit? And that set us down the line of just going, well, nobody's got it. Well, let's just register that name and file the paperwork for a 5 0 1 C3. And that was in I. Johnny died in May and by July we had the paperwork filed with the name not really knowing what would happen, but like, just in case if we decide we're gonna do this, we'll, we'll have the, the foundation here. So it was, it was very quick that we had the vision of warning kids and families about this new danger, like was right away.

Brenda: 41:28

Incredible. It's just, yeah, it is just mind boggling. And, and I just have so much respect for that being able to have that vision so early on when you're dealing with. Such huge loss and it, it has to still feel like a bit of a dream because I think nobody can, can see themselves in that. I know I need to let you go, but I just am curious what has sort of been the biggest thing that's either surprised you most or most unexpected thing that's occurred with you and maybe with Mary since you started this organization?

Ed: 42:06

You know what I would say is we really started out asking a lot of questions and we talk about with our team at Song for Charlie, we, I mean, we have employees, right? It's ridiculous. We're running, we're running, we're a going concern. Yeah. But, and we have a culture, you know? Mm-hmm. And part of that is we say, stay in the gray. Let's remember that we don't know everything. Hmm. And so we started with a lot of questions and we talked to a lot of people, and we talked to people who are from the harm reduction space. Legalize everything to lock everybody up, close the borders, protest China. You know, and, and I say to myself, there's, there's like three concentric circles. Supply reduction, demand reduction and harm reduction generally. And they often don't get along and sometimes they're at odds. Yeah. But those circles overlap and in that middle of that kind of Venn diagram, they're really good people, right. Who just want to save lives. Yeah. And those people include cops and DEA and Psycho, not co, you know, concert and festival goers who like to take psychedelics. Yeah. They have a lot more in common than they know. And that's been really eyeopening to me that if you can. Attract the right kind of people. If you can kind of be like, look, let's stay hopeful and look forward. Right? Let's, let's focus on preventing harms, preventing the next death. There are people out there who will just get on board and say, I'm in. Let's go. How can I help? And that's been really inspiring. That kind of big tent, strange bedfellows thing. Yeah. I've seen some of that happen and that's can be really inspiring.

Brenda: 44:00

Amazing. Well, that is a beautiful place to wrap it up and we will make sure and get links in the show notes to it's song for charlie.org. Is that right? Yes, that's right. So go there. It's our at Hope Stream, our trusted resource for information on fentanyl, on messaging. You have Fentanyl Awareness Day. I mean, just so many resources and I think we would probably both say if. You know, if you are of the mindset of like, no, I don't think my kid's really involved in that, or would be, it's, it's sadly, probably more likely that they are at risk. Not, not intentionally, not necessarily knowing, but it's there. It's there right in front of him.

Ed: 44:48

Yes, for sure. Yeah, for sure.

Brenda: 44:51

Well, thank you so much for joining me. I just appreciate it and love, love, love the work you do.

Ed: 44:57

Thank you so much, Brenda. And you too. Thank you for everything you do. So important.

Brenda: 45:02

Okay, my friend. If you want the transcript or the show notes and resources from this episode, just go to our website, hope Stream community.org, and click podcast. That'll take you to all things podcast related. We even have a start here playlist that we created. So if you're new here, be sure to check that out. Also, if you're feeling anxious and confused about how to approach your child's substance use, we have got a free ebook for you. It's called Worried Sick, A compassionate Guide for parents of teens and young adults misusing drugs and alcohol. It'll introduce you to ways that you can build connection and relationship with your child versus distancing and letting them hit rock bottom. It is a game changer and it's totally free. Just go to Hope Stream community.org/worried to download that. You are amazing my friend. You are such an elite level parent. It is an honor to be here with you and please know you're not doing this alone. You've got this tribe and you will be okay sending all my love and light and I will meet you right back here next week.