Melissa Etheridge shares painful details from late son Beckett's final weeks
Ever since her 21-year-old son, Beckett, died last May, Melissa Etheridge has been candid about her grief and the helplessness she felt trying to save a loved one with an opioid addiction.
In an interview with People TV, she shared some painful details from the last weeks of her son's life.
"He was paranoid ... All of a sudden he was involved with guns," she said of Beckett, who got hooked on opioids after an ankle injury at age 17, adding that he became someone she didn't know.
Etheridge said the two would talk every day, but four days before he died he called and told her he was "really scared" and mentioned fentanyl.
"I tried to get him [treatment]. I tried to get him to let me call an ambulance for him, then he stopped calling me," the two-time Grammy winner recalled. "He didn't call me for four days, and twice we sent a wellness check on him. The second time, they found him dead."
To help honor her son -- as well as help others going through something similar -- Etheridge launched the Etheridge Foundation in June, which supports research into the causes and effects of opioid addiction.
"It's a nightmare so many families go through," she said, "and it eats away at good people."
