August 31 is International Overdose Awareness Day. Let’s get rid of the clock. Let’s talk about it. Let’s throw the curveball addiction finally misses.

“Between Pitches”

by Linda Geraghty

In 2022, when Major League Baseball announced the pitch clock, I didn’t like it. To me, the slow was what made baseball special. I liked that the pitcher could take the time he needed to decide what to throw.

At Citizens Bank Park, my sons sat with sunflower seeds packed into one cheek, mumbling through the other about what should happen next. When their mouths were free enough to yell, they managed the game from the stands. Because that is just what you do in Philly.

For me, baseball was a way to connect with my sons, who were growing up too fast. I loved the way the game moved slowly. We had time back then. Enough time to tell stories. Enough time to wait for an answer. Enough time to say, sorry, I wasn’t listening. Tell me again. There was enough time between pitches to figure things out.

Then suddenly there was a clock behind the catcher, counting down the seconds. Now, even our sacred sport had a time limit.

In 2023, Christopher, the oldest of my two sons, died from an accidental fentanyl overdose. He was the son who could throw a perfect curveball. The son who told me baseball was the one pure thing in the universe. The son who left his younger brother to navigate sports on his own and his older sister to argue with herself about everything other than sports. The son who left me behind. The son who shattered my heart. All that was left were the stories, and I wanted to hear them all.

In the months after Christopher’s death, the only time I smiled was when someone listened to my stories about him or shared one of their own. I didn’t care if the stories were flattering or if they revealed a darker part of him. It was all him, and I didn’t want to miss anything. But eventually, something changed.  People began to believe enough time had passed. The stories were told less often. People stopped asking. Sometimes, they stopped listening. But the trouble is, families like us don’t get new stories. What we have is what we get.

A few weeks ago, my husband came home from work visibly upset. He began telling me the story about Christopher, at twelve years old, when he was mistakenly matched at a Golden Gloves boxing tournament in Northeast Philadelphia, against someone who was supposed to be his age.

“Remember that guy?” he said. “He looked like he was divorced and paying child support.”

I remembered.

“And Christopher didn’t show he was scared. But he was. Remember?”

I remembered that too.

“I know I tell it a lot,” he said. “But can’t people just pretend to be interested? Can’t they pretend to care? Faking it would feel like something.”

I understood because my experience was the same. People in certain crowds more than others, began shifting in their chairs when I retold Christopher’s baseball stories. How he almost pitched a perfect game. How he held the home run record at his Little League for over a decade after he left. Maybe this made them uncomfortable, because they knew the whole story. They knew the part I was leaving out. The part where he wasn’t easy. The part where he could be insulting, difficult, impossible.  But they didn’t know addiction was making him that way; stunting his emotional growth, messing with his memory; the reminder of the good inside of him. They didn’t know because their children hadn’t been consumed by addiction.

I would understand their discomfort listening to my stories if I cornered them, demanding acknowledgment for a pain they couldn’t understand. That wouldn’t be fair. Besides, I reserve the unthinkable stuff for parents like me. The parents whose lives have been derailed by addiction. The parents who answer the phone and listen when nobody else will, who must hold themselves together while being ripped apart.

But sometimes, when parents not affected by addiction tell stories about how their kids sulk for days when their team loses, I want to say, “I know, right? My son did that too.” And when they talk about their child’s accomplishments, I want to share some of the cool things my son did too. But when I try, their eyes look for an exit, as if escaping a fire.

I guess I get it. I’m in a different camp, and they may not appreciate me comparing our children. I wish they would tell me that, though, because then we could talk about it; open the conversation. If they said what they believed; that my child wasn’t like theirs, and that is why my son was no longer living and theirs was, I could tell them that addiction is a disease, not a moral failing. And even if they disagreed, I could take that too. I could break it down, try and make them understand.

People get scared. They whisper to their friends when they think you can’t hear them, “It’s all in how you raise them.” I wish they knew they didn’t have to whisper. I could answer with statistics, make them understand that it’s more about biology. It is more about a whole lot of other things. But instead of words, their bodies talk for them, and it’s in that sliver of space between a crunched shoulder and an ear that my story dies.

The thing is, I’m not asking anyone to put my son on a pedestal or make him a saint. I know that in the throes of addiction, he said and did things some people may find unforgivable. But parents like me aren’t the only ones whose children have made mistakes or found themselves in trouble. The difference is that addiction didn’t allow Christopher’s mistakes to be quietly dealt with and eventually left behind.

It followed him into courtrooms, hospitals, jobs, relationships, and back into our home. It is never done with our children who suffer from substance use disorder, and it is never done with the parents who love them. Addiction cannot be left behind or willed to stop. It fills homes with so much wreckage that there is no room left for the people who used to live there.

While addiction refuses to release what it has already latched onto, I refuse to believe that together we can’t pry loose its grip. There are solutions, but we won’t find them while addiction keeps families isolated and ashamed. While it tricks families like mine with stretches of quiet that begin to look like normal. It is in those times that we lower our defenses, believing this time might be different, only to be ambushed again. What we thought was finally better disappears, and we are left trying to figure out where to begin again.

This is exhausting. It weakens our fight and forces us into hiding. But what if we didn’t hide? What if we exposed addiction with the same vigor it uses to silence us? What if we kept talking about it, rolling it around in our hands, dissecting it, trying to understand it, while others truly listened?

What if I could say my son was giving, kind, and grateful, but also difficult, demanding, and ungrateful, and let both be true? What if I wasn’t ashamed. What would addiction do then?

In the days after Christopher died, people called and stopped by to share stories about him I had never known. One woman told me he stayed up all night talking to her husband through a manic episode, then helped him get into treatment, and babysat their infant so she could visit him. Another told me Christopher had spent hours teaching her son how to pitch and never charged her a dime.

I didn’t know any of it. These were the stories I was afraid would stop coming. Maybe that is why I still hate the pitch clock. Some things in life shouldn’t be rushed.  Addiction has all the time in the world, and doesn’t work on a clock, and neither does understanding. Sometimes we need to stay between pitches a little longer. Long enough to listen. Long enough to ask another question. Long enough to say, Tell me again.

So many times, when Christopher pitched, I couldn’t look. It was too intense. Too scary. Too much at stake.

I remember one game. Final inning. Two outs. Two strikes. The kid at bat could hit almost anything Christopher threw, except his curveball. Christopher knew what he needed to throw. I hid in the shrubbery, closed my eyes, covered my ears, and prayed for the perfect pitch. Back then, I had the luxury of hiding when I was afraid of what I might see or hear.

We don’t have that luxury with addiction. None of us do. Families, doctors, schools, courts, treatment centers, communities. We need every team in the center of the field, studying the game, how it works, and talking about what we see. We need to get rid of the clock. No time limit. Addiction doesn’t stop when the clock runs out. It doesn’t sleep. For families like mine, this is a twenty-four-hour-a-day fight. We need to keep talking, keep listening, and stay in the conversation for as long as it takes. Discomfort is no longer a good enough reason to look away.

Had I stood tall on the grass above the field, and cheered with both eyes open, I would have felt the excitement from the pitcher’s mound. My son would have heard me screaming his name, seen the joy on my face, the pride in my heart when on that day, Christopher threw the perfect curve ball that his opponent swung and missed.