Coping with bereavement due to drug-related death in the context of one's own drug challenges

Coping with a close relative’s drug-related death is an especially difficult and challenging process. If the bereaved family member is also using drugs, this has the potential to exacerbate these challenges, possibly with further consequences, some positive, some negative. This chapter focuses on this group, enquiring how bereavement reactions and grieving processes are altered as a result of also using drugs. Research is reviewed using data and published reports from projects across the United Kingdom, Norway, the Netherlands, the United States, and Canada. Although research in this area is still sparse, a tentative picture is emerging. The drug-relatedness of the death often leads the drug-using bereaved person to consider their own use in a different light. Sometimes, that may lead to a major change in their use (they may cut down or stop entirely, or they may increase their use to either cope with or avoid their grief). Often, ways of showing their grief are impacted by the stigma (and self-stigma) that the bereaved person perceives, related to either the person who has died or to themselves as a drug user: many find that their ability to grieve is seriously compromised. And for some, their view of death alters.