Recently, I learned that my cousin Matthew had lost his years-long fight with addiction. He was 22 years old.
I didn't know the depths of Matthew’s struggle—it always seemed too taboo a subject to bring up—but I knew about it and the effect it had on those closest to him, yet I did nothing. I offered no help. I stood by silently as he battled his addiction. And now he's gone.
But I still can’t help but feel obliged to do something. It’s so easy to turn a blind eye to opioid addiction when it remains healthily distant as a story on the evening news. But when it touches your family, it becomes personal. It becomes something with a face and a name. It becomes a problem you can no longer avoid.
So, I've decided to ride my bike from Boston to New York City to raise funds and awareness in the fight against opioid addiction. I'm still working out the finer details of the trip (which I will post in updates here), but I hope to ride sometime in late-April/early-May over four-to-six days.
I hope my ride will raise awareness in the continued fight against addiction, but I'm also not naive: I understand that awareness only goes so far in this battle. The primary reason I'm making this trip is to raise funds for Learn2Cope, a Massachussets-based nonprofit serving families of loved ones who are fighting opioid addiction. Providing resources for those in need is not cheap, and organizations like Learn2Cope deserve to have the funds required in order to be sucessful in their mission. Matthew and his family had utilized these very resources for some time, and I hope that with your generosity, they can prevent this tragedy from befalling other families.
Disclaimer: Every single penny raised here will go to Learn2Cope as a gift in Matthew's memory. I will be supporting all costs related to the trip—food, gear, etc—myself. If you or anyone close to you can lend me gear for the trek, or if you live along the route and can put me up for an evening, this makes things significantly easier on my end, but rest assured: I am in no way using this fundraiser for anything BUT supporting Learn2Cope.