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NEXT DOORS { ahead of the curve } I t was just one pill. But it created one of the most heartbreaking tragedies imaginable. Megan Macintosh’s 18-year-old son Chase went to see friends one night in January 2021. She didn’t fully understand the ramifications at the time, but Chase had started experimenting with drugs — Percocets, specifically, an opioid-based painkiller — a few weeks before. But on this evening, the pill he took wasn’t a Percocet. It was fentanyl — and it led to an overdose that caused his death. “It caught us totally off guard,” Macintosh said. “He started experimenting in December, and he was dead just a month later. And I know he had trauma, and I know he was feeling lonely and depressed, and I was with him through all that. But because he was 18, he made the decision one night to do something that felt right to him in that kind of undeveloped part of the brain. He did it, and the long- term effects have shattered outward and affected many other people.” It’s every parent’s worst nightmare, an unthinkable turn of events that’s heartbreaking even to consider. It’s hard to imagine anything positive coming out of such a tragedy. But Megan Macintosh must be wired a little differently than most people — because what happened next took an astonishing amount of inner strength and willingness to help others. Tom Evans I Contributing Editor Megan Macintosh ( left ) found a way to transform her grief into helping other families. A Place to BE WELL notMYkid helps young people battle addiction and the effects of the pandemic FRONTDOORS MEDIA | 45 | JANUARY 2022