Help Us Honor Campbell's Memory

Please help my family and I cover the expenses for my brother Campbell’s funeral after his devastating and sudden death from a Fentanyl overdose.

Campbell’s Life

After more than 10 years of struggle and fighting desperately to beat addiction, my 26-year-old brother died Wednesday, July 2nd, after overdosing accidentally in the bathroom of his new place. My family, mom, dad, and brother Aidan, our dogs Teddy, Sophie, and Stevie, and I are crushed and finding it hard to continue.

Campbell Wood was born on September 9th, 1998. He was the oldest of 3 siblings, leaving behind my brother Aidan, 25, who has cerebral palsy, and myself, Aspen, 19. He has always loved his siblings so much and was our protector. Growing up in Sacramento, Santa Cruz, and Monterey, he had a very strong connection to nature and enjoyed hiking, camping, biking, or just enjoying the sunshine on a nice day and bringing an unhoused person and their dog food. He worked for a period of time to become a captain after falling in love with boating while working on a Monterey pleasure cruise. He was a talented musician from a young age, making beats on FL Studios and writing raps, despite never being formally trained. His favorite job of his life was working with my mom at the Santa Cruz Animal Shelter, where they found our beloved dog Sophie in 2011, who is still with us today and was one of his best friends. He called her "Sophs".

During high school, even though he was a great student, my brother experimented with pot and alcohol and xanax. He struggled as he had the addiction gene. My parents sent him to rehab after about two years of his continued use. Unfortunately, he learned about harder drugs while in rehab. Upon attending more rehabs, the substances became stronger and stronger. Despite struggling greatly in high school, he graduated in 2017 with honors from Chartwell and headed to Southern Oregon University. His dream.

Campbell started at SOU in January 2018 and fell in love with Oregon. Though he was lonely living away from home and missed his mom and dad and siblings and friends, he found some new friends who shared musical interests. He was proud to tell us his professors sometimes used his essays as examples because they were “exceptional.” He took pride in debating with them on everything and they loved it! He loved living in the beautiful mountains and experiencing a snowy winter. Unfortunately, though, addiction found him even in Oregon. He was kicked out of the dorms for drinking and smoking weed. He and my mom had to resort to looking for alternative housing for him. He moved in with an acquaintance who was really sweet, but he turned out to be a heroin addict. Campbell did not have a chance. After this, my mom went to Oregon numerous times to help him get out of various difficult situations, and eventually, he had to withdraw from school, hoping to one day return. He wanted to be a professor on a college campus.

Since then, Campbell has been in and out of rehabs in the Los Angeles area, where my family moved in 2019, trying his absolute hardest to get sober. He would have his relapses, then go through a few rehabs until finding a stable place for a few months, until his insurance ran out and he was body-brokered to a new place. He had a few jobs in this time, as a deckhand in Marina Del Rey and a tile layer amongst others, but continued to struggle. Though he lived this tumultuous life, he was always there for my mom and me during the hardest parts of our life, and wanted to start an intervention business with her or a sober living home in Oregon once he was stable. As time progressed, he was off drugs less and less and in increasingly dangerous situations until he turned 26 and ran out of insurance entirely.

My mom helped him get set up on Medi-Cal and be placed in a facility, but since then, his life had much less hope. He tried methadone treatment in January of this year, during which he lived in West Hollywood with us. He had really good progress, but not enough. He was still struggling. He started using again and it became impossible for my mom and I to accommodate him. In retrospect, I wish I would’ve just been happy that he was with us, and worked harder to support him as a sister. She helped him find another rehab and he did well for a while and then had a relapse. My dad tried to help him and help us help him, but no one was as strong as Fentanyl. None of us had a chance. Even still, he viewed every chaotic transition as an opportunity to make a life for himself and help us. He told us last year, "I don't think I'm gonna beat this". We refused to believe that and kept trying to keep him safe and happy. I think he was happy at the end.

Campbell’s Death

My mom and I saw Campbell on Monday and Tuesday after he had been discharged from the hospital due to being beaten up after a mugging while he was trying to sell popsicles and cold drinks. He showed up at our apartment in West Hollywood his normal playful self, despite having endured so much. We spent Monday evening showing him photos and videos of my recent musical projects and just enjoying time together. On Tuesday, he showed up again, but was clearly using in some capacity. He found a table for free and brought it on the bus for over an hour just to give it to my mom and me. Though he seemed a little bit off, and not his usual neatly groomed self, we had seen him so much worse off a thousand times before that, so we were not concerned about his safety. My deepest regret is that I was annoyed that he had shown up unannounced and under the influence, resulting in he and I getting into a small argument. I just wanted him to get better and hated seeing him struggle. When he reached to rub my shoulder, I pulled away. When I left for the gym, he said, “I love you.” I said, “See you later.”

My mom spent the rest of the evening with him, taking him to a Metro store to help him get a new phone. It was the first time he was able to pay for his own phone and he was so excited. When he asked for a cheap charger and headphones, the store workers just gave them to him because they felt so bad that he had lost his phone in the mugging that put him in the hospital.

While driving him to his new placement through Medi-Cal, my mom and he talked about his future and his struggles. He asked, “Do you think Aspen will ever let me into her life?” and my mom told him, “She loves and needs you so much. If you get sober and can be there for her, of course she will.” On this drive, he saw a little boy out the window and said, “I really want to have kids one day. Do you think that will ever be possible for me?” My mom said, “Definitely! You are such a loving person. You would be a great dad.”

They arrived at the secured facility close to 10 pm and my mom couldn’t help but notice it was not a very nice area. She had a sinking feeling that he shouldn’t be here, but he assured her that it was “so cool” and he showed her the yard area that he loved so much to show that it was nice. She dropped him off in front and told him to go in, and he said he had to climb a tree and hide his vape and lighter. He insisted on showing her the song “A World Alone” by Lorde before she left. She said, “Goodnight honey, call me tomorrow. I love you so much. Please be safe.” He said, “I will Mama. I love you, Mama.”

We got the devastating news the next day around 3 pm that at around 11 pm, he had gone into the bathroom and shot up. Though staffers were supposedly doing rounds, he was not found until 4 am by his roommate, and by then it was too late. Since then, our life has just been a blur and a tsunami of pain and anguish. We have all lost a part of ourselves so deeply important and irreplaceable. My mom, in particular, is in immense agony, losing her first baby and her greatest support. My brother, Aidan lost his biggest fan and my Dad his sweet boy. I lost everything.

We want to give Campbell a dignified and beautiful sending off. We love him so much and don’t want his spirit to undergo more suffering in death. Our hope is to find a beautiful mortuary that can clean and groom him tenderly before we see him, and then cremate him at the same location. The last thing we want is for his final earthly moments to be transportation to various industrial buildings on LA freeways. We hope to bury him somewhere he'd love, a beautiful, natural setting with a lot of trees and clean air that we can all visit and maybe I can get married there one day and have him at my wedding. Please help us send our sweet Campbell off the way he deserved. ❤️