Opioid Addiction Reporter loses his daughter to an overdose

A journalist from South Dakota, who has frequently reported opioid addiction, had to tell the most painful stories – the death of his own daughter.

Angela Kennecke was an investigative journalist for KELO in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She spent years telling people about the growing opioid crisis in the United States, an epidemic that claimed the lives of 72,000 people in 2017.

Although all the stories of lives lost through drug overdose are painful to tell, Kennecke's most painful report ever was the death of his 21-year-old daughter, Emily Groth, who died on May 16 of a overdose.

Kennecke said that she was slow to realize that her daughter was using hard drugs – she knew that Groth was experimenting with marijuana, but had never imagined that her daughter, having a comfortable Midwest lifestyle, would injecting drugs.

When she realized what was happening, Kennecke planned a professional intervention to save her daughter's life.

Groth died of a fentanyl-based heroin overdose three days before the intervention.

"It could happen to your child"

Before the pain of losing her daughter and knowing how many other mothers had to deal with this pain, Kennecke decided that she had to get the message out as widely as possible. Kennecke decided to use Emily's death to hopefully save other lives.

After taking a leave to face her loss, Angela Kennecke appeared in a special segment of KELO on KELO on September 5th to talk about her pain.

"By telling the story of Emily and my story of loss, pain and suffering. I'm opening. I am vulnerable to our audience in a way I have never known before, "she said.

"But I think it's very important that I do it. Because if only one person hears me. If only one person does one thing to save a life, I do not care about a million naysayers or people who do not understand. I just care about that mother that I can stop feeling the pain that I have.

Then, on September 7th, Kennecke went to New York to appear on CBS This Morning. She shared her story on national television with a grim but poignant message: "I feel so compelled to let everyone know that what happened to my daughter can happen to you. It could happen to your child, "she said.

What's a typical addict?

Gayle King, host of CBS This Morning, tried to figure out how Kennecke could not know that his own daughter was an addict.

"You did not know that she was using heroin?" King asked Kennecke.

"That's what I'm amazed because you said you were all close. You knew that she had had drug problems, you said with marijuana. But you, an investigative journalist, did not know that she was using heroin?

"It was the most shocking thing for me," replied Kennecke. "Needles? Middle class child, privileged, all these opportunities and things like that. It's hard to explain the addiction. It's hard to understand.

"My child missed once at the doctor's office when she was going to be vaccinated."

Emily Groth was not a disgruntled teenager from a broken home, with no hope and no reason not to escape under the drug. Instead, she was a very intelligent and creative young woman, who studied music and art in high school. She played cello and French horn and sold her clothing creations online.

Groth has also excelled in sports, winning gymnastics and track events. She ran several kilometers at a time several times a week.

According to her obituary, she loved the outdoors, hiking, camping and snowboarding.

In other words, Emily Groth was the last person to expect to be in a bag with heroin in her veins.

Yet she had been struggling with addiction for more than a year before taking her last lethal dose.

Alarm bells

Kennecke said he realized that his daughter had a serious problem during the last week of his life.

"Everything in my instinct told me that something was really wrong," she said at the KELO special.

"There were not the glaring signs you see with people. It was more his physical appearance had begun to change, "Kennecke told KELO. "She was skinnier, her eyes were more hollow and it seemed like she was on something every time I saw her."

"The more time I spent around her before she died, the more alarm bells went off in my head. And so we hired an interventionist to forward it. "

Kennecke said that she understood that she needed to take drastic action on May 12 and scheduled an intervention for her daughter to participate in a treatment program the following Saturday. Groth overdoses on May 16 – three days before the intervention.

On the day of his daughter's death, Kennecke interviewed parents who had lost children as a result of a drug overdose.

Stigma

Watch the full interview here:

Kennecke told CBS animator Angela King: "The first reason I talk about this is to clear the stigma that surrounds addiction, especially the use of heroin , opioids.

Kennecke said his daughter had hidden her drug problems from her parents – perhaps because they were so close and shared so much love.

"As a child, you do not want your parents to be ashamed of you," Kennecke said. "And there is so much shame in that. You do not want to disappoint your parents.

"I had to make a very good line between trying to help her, trying to talk to her and moving her away."

Kennecke hopes that by sharing his story, parents of children at risk will realize that drug use – and addiction – is something they need to look after before it's a problem – and that the first signs can act quickly.

Drug addicts may not want help, Kennecke said, but they need help. "Someone described the addiction as if you were falling from a high-rise building," she said. "You can not stop."

Angela Kennecke has created a charity called Emily's Hope through the Avera McKennan Foundation. Emily's Hope will provide funds to families who can not afford to pay for their loved ones.

Deadly dose of fentanyl

This is not the heroine who killed Emily Groth. It was a much more powerful synthetic opioid called Fentanyl.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), fentanyl, developed to treat extreme pain such as cancer pain, is 50 to 100 times more potent than heroin.

As it is so powerful, much lower doses are needed, which means smaller packaging and less risk for smugglers. Distributors often add fentanyl to less powerful drugs to give them an extra boost, reported the CDC.

However, as the drug is so powerful, getting the right dosage can be problematic – a tiny bit can be deadly.

Angela Kennecke said her daughter's lethal overdose was such a mixture of heroin and fentanyl.

"According to the autopsy report, Emily had six times what would be considered a therapeutic dose of fentanyl for the biggest man," Kennecke told KELO.

"She had no chance. This fentanyl killed him almost instantly after the injection.

From NTD.tv

Watch Next:

A mother shares the story of her son's heroin overdose