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David takes us through his journey of his grief after losing his son William to fentanyl. I also talk about losing one of my best friends the same way.
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David takes us through his journey of his grief after losing his son William to fentanyl. I also talk about losing one of my best friends the same way.
Comment
David takes us through his journey of his grief after losing his son William to fentanyl. I also talk about losing one of my best friends the same way.
Listen to Episode 4 fentanyl David Mcgruffin by Tanya Manley MP3 song. Episode 4 fentanyl David Mcgruffin song from Tanya Manley is available on Audio.com. The duration of song is 51:40. This high-quality MP3 track has 2116.8 kbps bitrate and was uploaded on 10 Feb 2023. Stream and download Episode 4 fentanyl David Mcgruffin by Tanya Manley for free on Audio.com – your ultimate destination for MP3 music.
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David McGruffin shares his story of losing his son to a fentanyl overdose. He discusses the prevalence of fentanyl and the dangers it poses, mentioning a large seizure of the drug in Houston. He also talks about the manufacturing of fentanyl in China and its distribution through Mexico. David emphasizes the need for better border security to combat the drug crisis. He advocates for early conversations with children about the dangers of drugs, as even young kids are being exposed to them. David recounts his son's struggle with addiction and the multiple times he overdosed. He highlights the addictive nature of fentanyl and its presence in various drugs, including marijuana. David expresses the need for regulation and legalization to prevent the lacing of drugs with fentanyl. He concludes by discussing the impact of drugs in the restaurant industry and the importance of federal regulation. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Episode 4 of Sunset Stories, a father's love and his fight against fentanyl. I'm your host, Tanya Manley, and thank you for joining us today. And joining us is my dear friend, David McGruffin. David and I met about five years ago when we were in the same networking group and building our businesses, and David and I became instant pals. Little did we know we would both lose our sons months apart in 2021. David went to a motorcycle accident, and David's son, William, to a fentanyl overdose. David, thank you for being here today and sharing your story with us. Well, thank you for having me. We hear stories and warnings almost every day of fentanyl. In the story that you sent me prior to us sitting down, it talked about a seize of fentanyl in Houston that was enough to kill everyone in Houston and the surrounding areas. To me, that was so scary, because Houston at that time had a population of 1.3 million and is the fourth largest city in the United States, and the seizures doubled in 2022? The seizures of fentanyl did double, and believe it or not, the population of the Houston metro area is well over 6 million. Wow. So it's grown that much. It's grown that much. The city itself is about 4 million, and then you take the surrounding areas. We're around 6, between 6 and 7 million people in the metro area. I also read that this past year alone, that they have, that the federal agency has taken down 7.8 million doses of fentanyl off the streets. That would be probably a very conservative estimate. Yeah. Yeah. Some that aren't reported or, you know. My question, you know, is like, do we even have a fighting chance to win this battle that is against this drug that's taken so many people that we love? Well, one of the problems we face with this drug is that it's being manufactured in China. Okay. That, and the fact that they're shipping it over to Mexico, or they're shipping all the ingredients to make the drug to Mexico, and then the cartels are the ones that are smuggling it across our border. Okay. Which, you know, so that brings up border security. Right. Which is a huge topic right now. Which is a very huge topic, and a very dear topic to my heart. Of course. Yeah. And should be to so many others that... You know, to fight it, we need to close our border. Right. So we definitely need better border security. We need to talk to our kids. Yeah. In this interview, you say, talk to your kids, and I couldn't agree more. And I feel like we're having to talk to our kids at a younger age than we used to. Like, I remember hearing a few months ago of a young man at Goodson Middle School here in Cyprus that had had a football injury, and a friend offered him what he thought was a pain pill, and it was fentanyl, and he died instantly. So my question to you is, really, when should we sit down with our children and have these tough conversations? I mean, I have a 10-year-old in the fourth grade. Is that where we are? Unfortunately, I think so. I don't think we have... The innocence of the time from when you and I grew up is long gone. Right. With social media, with kids as young as four with their own cell phones. Yeah. You know, it's... Yeah. There's just too much information, and too many ways out there for them to acquire these drugs. Yeah. And they're saying, like, this drug is, like, 50 times more potent than heroin. So this is the drug that caused William to overdose two times, correct? Three. Okay. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Well, Will's been... He started experimenting, I guess, with marijuana back when he was 11 or 12. Okay. He quickly wound up, you know, on the harder stuff. He was living with his mother at the time. You know, when he turned 15, you know, I got custody. Okay. Either when he was 15 or 16. I can't remember. I think 16. Mm-hmm. You know, I got custody with him. He was 15, because he turned 16 when I had custody of him. I tried to get him, you know, straightened out. Turned it around. Turned it around. After he'd already been in it for a few years. Yeah, that didn't really work. He bounced between, you know, he had me, then he bounced between his grandparents. You know, basically, he was living on, you know, couch-surfing with friends. Right. So, he was living with his maternal grandparents back in, I want to say it was 2017 or 2016. Mm-hmm. Because I was living in Austin at the time, and that was his first overdose. Okay. Did he know what he was getting? Did he... I think that time it was just straight heroin. Okay. The paramedics in Arkandy, he went to the hospital. He ended up checking himself out, you know, AMA, just medical advice. Right. I flew from Austin to Alabama, which is where he was living with his maternal grandparents at the time. And I basically gave him, you know, I tried to do the tough love thing. Mm-hmm. And I gave him two options. I'd either take him anywhere he wanted to go within 20 miles, but don't call me. Right. Or you can go to rehab. Yeah. So, that was his first stint in rehab. He chose rehab. After rehab, he got out. I moved him to Austin to a halfway house. He stayed sober for quite a few years. And when he was sober, he was such a great kid. Right. It was fun to be around. It was funny. Yeah. You know. It's like this drug takes their soul, you know? It does. Yeah. And then back in 2020, when COVID, right when COVID was first hitting, I remember the date. It was March 6th. Mm-hmm. I had to go to Austin. He had to go to court for something. And there was a case that was against him that was getting ready to be dropped. Okay. So, we were going to court, which was apartment and found him on the floor. And that was his second overdose. Now, is that in November 2020 when he spent 18 days in the hospital? No. It wasn't November. It was March. Oh, okay. March. Okay. So, yes. He spent 18 days in the hospital. for 11 or 12 days. He finally got out. He pulled through. We decided that he would go back and live with his mother. That kind of fell through, so we were already two days into our journey that way. Right. So, we decided to go ahead and my mother and my brother live in Atlanta. Okay. So, which is where we were living when I first got custody of him. Right. So, we found a halfway house for him there. He didn't actually go through rehab this time, but he stayed. He was on a, I guess it was the methadone program to help wean him off. Right. And he was doing well. Wasn't using. Had a girlfriend. They were serious. Then, according to the girlfriend, around Christmas time or about January, things started kind of changing a little bit with him. He started getting secretive. So, that tells me he was probably using again. Yeah. Those are definitely when you don't hear from him. The fibs start coming up and all the signs. Then, March 19th, about 9 o'clock at night, his girlfriend called me saying that he was being taken to the hospital. She had found him on the bed. She had just seen him 15 minutes earlier in the kitchen and they were getting ready to go to the grocery store. He didn't answer the knock on the bedroom door that told him to go. She walked in and found him. So, the paramedics took him to the hospital. Between that time, I immediately booked a one-way ticket to Atlanta at that time. And literally 30 minutes later, 10.04, that night I get a call from the doctor at the emergency room that he had passed. So, you couldn't even get there in time. I'm so sorry. I have honestly watched what this has done to you. People don't understand what losing a child does to you. It literally destroys you, especially in a type of way that could have been prevented. It's like the question I was going to ask you earlier. You answered it. Who is making these drugs and where are they coming from? I can imagine. The cartel doesn't care how many children or people that lose their lives. The Chinese damn sure don't care. They want us to kill each other. Right. Right. What gets me is why do the drug dealers tolerate this because they're killing off their clientele. Right. But it's like the epidemic is so much they're getting new ones right behind and right behind. It's so addictive that they're getting these people that the first time they use they're addicted by that point. Right. So, now they are coming back. So, it's six of one, half a dozen of the other. Right. They don't care. Also, it's being found in uppers now, like meth and cocaine. This is why the victims, they know it's the rich and the poor. It's the young and the old. It's like if they drive up the level of addiction, then they create a larger customer base and make more money. It seems like the victims are getting younger and younger. Even parents that are addicted, small children finding their fentanyl and dying. William was just 25. He had his whole life ahead of him. Yeah. When he was sober, he was a hard worker. He was following in my footsteps and his uncle's footsteps. He was in the restaurant industry. That in itself... There's a lot of drugs in the restaurant industry. Yeah. Yeah, because they're trying to stay up late and work fast. That's why you wonder why you see all these chefs that smoke and cooks that smoke. Because it's the only chance they ever got to take a break. Right, right, right. Even now, they're lacing it in marijuana. It's like, so how do you know? I know there's a lot of housewives that smoke marijuana. That's even scary. It's like you cannot. If it's not from a doctor and it doesn't have your prescription on it... That's where we need to work. In that industry, we need it regulated by the federal government. Go ahead and legalize. That way, you're cutting out... Lacing that as well. Yeah. Do you know how young he was when he first got introduced? He said about 13 years old? I want to say he was probably 14. Okay, so middle school. Middle school, first of high school, somewhere in there. It seems to me the more areas where there is more money, there's more drugs. Yeah, but when he first went into high school and middle school, he was in a smaller town in Alabama, which is very well known for its opioid crisis. Yeah. Even in small towns. I come from a small town of 1,300. When I go back home, the people who hadn't left, they all look like zombies. This town, probably 30,000, 35,000. It's probably the sixth or seventh largest city in Alabama, but it's still small enough where everybody knows everybody. Yes. Even where I grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, we all knew each other. Private school and public school kids. We knew who each other were. I saw in that interview where you were interviewed, you quoted and you say, I hope to God that the government, law enforcement, let these people know we're coming for them and we're not going to stop. Like I said, we have been friends, networking friends and friends for many years. Again, you've seen what losing CJ has done to me, and I've seen what losing William has done to you. Hell, even in your grief you checked on me. Yes. Because now we're in this club that nobody wants to be in and we don't want to be here, but we're here. What I want to know is what we as a community, what we can do to help fight against this. There's got to be more we can do because it's such a battle. This past August, there's a group in Montgomery County called Montgomery County Overdose Prevention Endeavor called MCOPE. You can go to mcope.org to learn more about it. But August is International Overdose Awareness Month and we had put on an event and it was held at the loft at the Woodlands United Methodist Church. Governor Abbott actually came and spoke. Nice. I'm quite sure he's aware of it. The four women that founded MCOPE got an audience with him for 15 minutes. He was not aware that rehab centers kicked you out as soon as the money from the insurance ran out or your money ran out. Sure. Whether it be four days, 16 days, 28 days. He did not know that. So he's working on something for low-cost rehabilitation. Oh, that's wonderful. For long-term because most of these addicts need more than 20 days or 28 days. Most of them need three months. My brother was an addict for 20 years. It's not going to take 10 days to undo all of that. Even with the addiction but then also where they are in their mental space. Exactly. You've been out there for 20 years because you're basically in a mental space at the age you started. And now the penalty for dealing drugs that are laced with fentanyl are much stiffer. That's good. The drug dealer that sells, if we can catch the drug dealers that sell fentanyl-laced products and the customer dies, that drug dealer can now be charged with murder. I think that is what has to happen because it's going to be the only deterrent. And still people are going to take the chances. Drug dealers don't really care. They care about their money. And also what losing someone does to not just the parents like this but the whole family. William has a sister. I know what I've seen that this has done to you. But you and I have talked about it. When you lose a child, you kind of forget everybody else lost them too. And everybody else is in pain. And on top of that, people stopped talking to us. Like we talked about, I talked about. People just stopped checking in with me. Did that happen to you too? You really find out who your true friends are. That's the... in a nutshell, yeah. And I hate to be pessimistic like that or negative. But yeah, you really find out who your true friends are. And I think people... And I don't know if it's because they don't know what to say. I remember when I saw that you posted about losing William, I just knew what kind of man you were. And I knew what it was going to do to you. And then I, to myself, and I had not lost CJ yet. I lost him six months after. I said to myself, what can I say to him? As a parent, especially when you lose a child to a drug overdose or something like that, you really start to question your parenting. What did I do right? What did I do wrong? Yes. You replay everything over and over and over. And the guilt. Oh, yeah. The guilt is what, I mean, that is really what just eats me alive. And what I always try to explain to people is that I'm not even remotely close to the woman I was before I lost CJ. I look at the world through a totally different lens. Things that were important to me before are not important anymore. What is important to me is trying to educate people, trying to get them resources. Even me, after losing CJ, and I have great insurance, I couldn't get in with a counselor for six months because of the need of the waiting list of parents that are losing their children. I wanted a specific counselor that understood, that had went through the pain that we had. I mean, you know, it's physical pain. I got very sick. My seizures came back. I was diagnosed with broken heart syndrome. My shape of my heart actually changed. The valve in my heart. I would have to rub my heart and take medication for it to even, for me to even be able to function. That's how heartbreaking it is. I am a stress eater. I'm a grief eater. Yes. I have put on 40 pounds. I talked about that in episode two. I also put on 30 pounds. Since Will passed? Yes. 40 pounds. Yes. And trying to get, you know, at my age, trying to get that off. Yes. Yes. And that's what I say. I mean, we've changed. And, you know, I want to share a little story that I haven't shared until now. But a lot of people that know me locally know that, you know, I lost an employee three years ago, 2D. And I, that was the beginning of my grief journey of these last three years. And I remember that she had called, called in, and she said, I'm not feeling very good. And she never called in. So I knew that she wasn't feeling very well. And so she said, well, I don't have the money to go. Again, uninsured. I don't have the money to go to the doctor. Hey, don't worry about it. I'll save you in advance. Make a doctor's appointment. Made a doctor's appointment at 1 o'clock. She had been complaining that her tooth was hurting the night before. And she had some, we were working on getting her teeth done by a doctor in the woodlands. But when she went, her blood pressure was too high, so he couldn't do it. So I got on her and said, hey, you need to get that blood pressure down, you know, so we can get your teeth fixed. So anyway, she had had a tooth pain. She had posted on Facebook about any, like, over-the-counter remedies. Next day called in, told her to make an appointment. She makes the appointment. They treat her for, like, albuterol. They treat her for her asthma. Nothing about the tooth pain. So she and I talked right before her appointment. I told her that I was going to lay down and check with her right after the appointment. And about 3 p.m. I woke up, and she didn't text me back. I didn't think anything about it. She went home maybe, you know, wanted to take a nap or something like that. And that night, I remember I texted her about 10 o'clock. I said, hey, don't worry about coming to work tomorrow. We've covered your schedule. Just stay home and rest. She didn't text me back. And I thought that was strange, but I thought, okay, she's really not feeling good. So long story short, next morning I get a text from her daughter saying that the hospital had called her mom. And that she did not make it. So what we later found out is that she left the doctor's office, like a Care Now clinic or whatever. Uh-oh. And didn't give her anything for her tooth, which is really why she went in. Drove over to the parking lot of HEB, I presume to get something for dinner. And passersby saw her slumped over in the car. So I later, we first thought it was a heart attack. We went to tell the staff. We went to tell her children. From what they explained to us, it was a heart attack. Six months later, I got a death certificate that was amended. And it said, toxic effects of fentanyl. Now, she was 39 years old. She left behind three children, as you know. What I did was I went looking at her phone. And I found that one of her friends said, hey, I've got an OxyContin for your tooth. You know, come and get it. She was like, okay, because I'm in pain. I know that if she knew what was in that pill, she never would have taken it. Like, she just was in so much pain. Uninsured. And the clinic not listening to her. That's all too common now. And I just, I was in shock that, you know, it took them six months to amend her death certificate. And it wasn't. She had gotten a pill from a friend and taken it. And it killed her. Yeah. And left behind three children, 39 years old. And just such an emptiness in our hearts that at first I did not know that it was fentanyl. I would have never thought that she would have taken a pill from somebody, you know. She wouldn't have if she wouldn't have trusted them. So, you know, I reported it. I know who gave it to her. Nothing ever come out of it. Yeah. They should, they charged with murder. In my opinion. Yeah. You know, we've tried to find the dealer that sold Will, but to no avail. Yeah. I mean, we suspect who it was, but we can't prove it. Right. Just because he had so many. But I handed over the police her cell phone. Yeah. With the guy's number. Well, we did that to the police too. You know. There were too many of them. Are they so many? Are they so inundated with these cases and that they just can't keep up? They're not worrying about the small time dealer. They're trying to go after the big fish is what it is. So. Well, that's, you know, that's when my grief journey started losing her. And I just remember taking her children in and saying, you know, I cried for two weeks straight. I couldn't stop crying. Yeah. And then, you know, taking in three grieving children and seeing what it did to him. And then the next year losing my sister. She had gotten in a car accident with my father. My father was, you know, worse off, so they catered to him. She died two weeks later from internal bleeding. You know, not proper medical treatment. You know. And then CJ, of course, you know, gets on a motorcycle. You know, the doctors are telling us, hey, he's got a slight brain bleed. It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. Kept kicking him out of the hospital, but they'll do that too. And the third time, you know, that he went home from the hospital, he died that night in his sleep. You know, from what they pulled up, he was going to be okay about it. And the hardest thing, too, is that I had to wait seven months to find that out. Seven months for the autopsy because of COVID. That's torture, not really knowing how you're going to die. I was fortunate that we got the autopsy report within a month. Yeah. Yeah. It just really, it's heavy, and it's hard to get to the point where we're here right now being able to talk about our children. And it's because we have all this love for them, and we don't know what to do with it. You know? Yep. And, you know, the best thing that I can do is try to educate people on what to do. And like you said, have conversations with your children, and have them at a young age, and have conversations as a family. You know, I have conversations with Tootie's daughter. She's in college. I tell her, don't let your drink be away from you. Don't take anything that doesn't have your name on it. I remember when I first lost CJ, I had to go to the doctor to get on medicine. I could not function to plan the funeral and all of this. And the doctor, even though she's been my doctor for years, she was very hesitant to prescribe me Xanax because it is an addictive, highly addictive. Yeah. My doctor wanted Xanax, but it was quantitative, and she was very, very hesitant. Yeah. But, you know. But she knew that we needed something in order to keep our feelings at bay and to be able to plan a funeral and be all the things that you... That everybody wants us to be. In that very, very early moment. And I was one that was stuck planning wills. Yeah. And even though I was living here in Texas and his mother lived, you know, two hours away. Yeah. Because it was in Atlanta, you know, I could stay at my mom's, and it was just me. Right. I was one that was... Well, CJ and I's dad, we were in high school. We were never married. We never, you know, it was just one of those things. But we came together, you know, during his funeral. And I remember when we were planning it, and I was looking... He had lost his mom the year before, so he had gained a lot of weight, because losing his mother almost destroyed him. And I remember sitting across from him, and I said, hey, you're having trouble breathing. Like, are you okay? You know, and I said, I told my husband, I said, I don't think this has hit him yet. And after CJ's funeral, he had two heart attacks. Two heart attacks. What it does to you physically, again, people don't understand. It is exhausting. And it is debilitating, both physically and mentally. I'm fortunate that I was able to take time off work, because I don't know how I could have done that. I, for the most part, took about seven months. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I didn't take that much time, because I was, like I said... Here and there. Here and there, but I wasn't putting in a solid eight hours a day, five days a week. Right. Or even, you know, I was putting in ten hours a week, maybe. Right. And I was, I remember telling, you know, everybody that I went straight back to work a couple weeks later, because I was building Dallas, and I had commitments, and I had employees. And about March, I just broke. I just couldn't keep going, you know, at that pace. I was away from my husband and my child, and being in Dallas, and, you know, trying to be everything to everybody else. And I was like, wait a minute. I need everybody to be here for me, you know. And my husband thought, yeah, she's going back to work or keep her mind off of it. But, no, it was actually making things harder, because I was unraveling, you know. And I just, while I was doing this research, I just wanted to do some, talk about some stats here that I found. Fentanyl overdoses are the leading cause of death amongst adults 18 and 25. More die from fentanyl overdose than COVID, motor vehicle accidents, cancer, and suicide put together. Yeah. That. In 2010. How do you make it make sense? In 2010, 2011, 11% of overdose deaths were related to fentanyl. Today's numbers, it's over 70% of the overdose deaths. Are fentanyl. Are fentanyl. Over 70. And to me, it's like, that should be, like, declared a national emergency. I mean, it's, people are, so many unsuspecting people like 2D. Tell that to our federal government. Right. Right. And that's why I'm trying to say, what can we do? Because they're dying from this at a rate of, like, mass destruction. They don't have nothing on COVID. I mean, our state government's doing everything they can. Their resources are strained. Tell that to the federal government. Until it happens to one of their children. They're the ones that are supposed to be protecting our borders. Right. That's where the key is. That's where we start. Yes. We have to start there with the federal government. You know, we're fortunate that we have, you know, in this state, you know, a number of senators and a number of legislatures that, you know, support a strong border. Yes. And border security. That's what we talk about all the time. Yeah. But I also, but also this also, this number kind of threw me for a loop. Texas seized enough fentanyl this past year to kill 200 million people. Mm-hmm. Yeah. 200 million people is what they seized and took off. That's over half the population of this country. Right. So, you know, and like you said, people are using social media. They're selling it on Snapchat. I'm not a Snapchat person. I don't know anything about it. I have no clue what Snapchat is. I use the filters. But apparently there's little videos that you can send to people, and they go away within 24 hours. They're erased. Okay. Why is the federal government not monitoring that? They want us to monitor it. Part of the reason why they're using Snapchat is because those videos disappear. Right. In 24 hours. It should not be like that, though. No. I mean, they're like going on there and saying, hey, I'm selling this, this, this, and this. Come get it now. Come get it. And it's like, why is that not being monitored? And 24 hours later, it's gone. Yeah. That just blows me away. That number blew me away in that the fentanyl deaths doubled from 2019 to 2021 with no slowing down from 32,000 to 64,000. So it's highly likely that someone we know this is going to happen to. And then in the first five months of 2021, 42,600 people with an increase of over 1,000 times, 1,000 more a month. And border seizures were at an all-time high. Border seizures were at an all-time high. Think about the number that have gotten through. Right. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. And then now we're living in a world where everybody's saying, you know, carry Narcon, you know, this life-saving medication which has the ability to reverse the symptoms of an overdose of fentanyl. Narcan. Yeah, Narcan. But even our law enforcement are handling these drugs out here in our world. And even with gloves, sometimes law enforcement are getting it in their system and almost overdosing. It happened to a female officer about three months ago. And they don't even know what they're handling because some people do put them in a prescription bottle. Yeah. So, I mean, it's dangerous to our law enforcement as well. So, I guess what we could tell, you know, what would we want to share with the listeners that are going to be hearing this story? Because this, I'll be honest, knowing you and knowing what it's done for you, this hit me really close to home. And usually I try to, like, leave a message, you know, for the listeners. But this one, I really am going to put it in your hands, you know, on what they can do, how they can help. And we've talked about it a little bit more. But let's reiterate it for them. And, you know, hopefully, you know, it seems like it's a losing battle. It feels like it on a daily basis. It really does. It feels like that's what's really going to take us out more than a pandemic or, you know, guns or anything like that. It feels like these drugs. Well, if you are a survivor of an overdose victim, there is help out there. What's been helping me is a group called GRASP. Okay. You can go online to GRASPHELP, that's G-R-A-S-P HELP, dot org. You can find a local meeting. I happened to go to one in the woodlands. There's MCOPE.org if you're in Montgomery County, Texas area, which has resources. And it's also out there trying to get the word out about, you know, the steadily drug. So we have people that are going into our schools and trying to, you know, going into our middle schools and trying to talk to people. There are people that do that. We need more people to do that. Yeah. And we need to make it real, you know. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we have to have some tough conversations with our young son just, you know, being African American, just living, you know, in where we live. Just, you know, conversations that we normally wouldn't have to have about CJ passing away and decisions and mental health. And so, you know, like I was talking to my husband too, like this is going to have to be another conversation because, yeah, I feel he's too young. But I want to make sure that I do my part as a parent and educate him. He's right there on the cusp of that age to where we, you know, you need to talk to him. Yeah. Because with social media now, the kids are getting younger and younger. Yeah. He's not allowed to have social media at this point. I think he's too young. There's a, I mean, I know of a family that lost their son who was 12 years old to fentanyl. He took a pill. 12 years old. Yeah. Just a baby. You know, these kids, their brains aren't fully developed yet. Right. Their bodies aren't fully developed yet. You know, why are we trying to put so much stress on these kids? Right. That's what I tell my son all the time. I was like, there's enough time later on for social media. Let the kids be kids again. Yeah. Go outside and play. You know, go play basketball. Get them off. You know, a lot of these kids are making contacts through, you know, their Xbox or their PlayStation. They're playing their games online. Yeah. And they've got the headset on. They're talking to their friends. That's a very good point. What are they talking about? Right. That's a very good point because when Jalen got Xbox, and I know nothing about it, but I heard him one day up there, and I could hear the person back talking, and they were cursing him. And he was like nine years old. I'm like, wait a minute. Who are you playing with? And he said, oh, you know, some guy. I said, no. So I told my husband, you shut that down. He plays with nobody unless we know who they are, their username. Other than that, I'm not opening up my son's ears to this world. Yeah. Especially the dark world that gaming can be sometimes. And so you're right. They're posing as friends. They're posing as, you know, young people, you know, and oh, you know, you develop a friendship in this game, and then these kids think they can trust this person, and they have no idea who the hell is on the other end of that line. Exactly. That is even more scary. Yeah. And I tell everybody, you know, my son's not going to have any privacy when it comes to his phone. Are you kidding me? I take that phone bill. I'm going to pick it up anytime I want and look at it. And if you're not doing anything wrong, then you don't have to worry about mom picking it up. Yeah. But I always say, yeah, trust them, but verify. Trust them, but verify. Yes, exactly. I mean, that's my motto. I'm going to trust you, but I'm just going to make sure that you're doing what I'm asking you to do. And we always talk to Jalen about consequences. You know, there's consequences. And, you know, like you said, being guilty, it has nothing to do with your parenting or anybody else's parenting. I thought about that, too, when CJ passed away. Could I have done things differently? You know, I have two boys that were raised exactly the same, two and a half years apart. Couldn't be more different. Same with my son and his sister. Yeah. I mean, Colton was always afraid to get in trouble because CJ was always in trouble. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 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