Melissa Etheridge shares painful details from son Beckett’s last weeks

CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty ImagesAfter her 21-year-old son Beckett passed away from a drug overdose 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.

Now, in an interview with People TV, she’s sharing some painful details from the last weeks of her son’s life.

“He was paranoid…All of a sudden he was involved with guns. Just became someone I didn’t know,” she says of Beckett, who got hooked on opioids after an ankle injury at age 17.

Melissa says the two would talk every day, but four days before he passed 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,” she says. “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, Melissa 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 and it eats away at good people,” she says.

By Andrea Tuccillo
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

By ABC Audio on February 4, 2021

CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty ImagesAfter her 21-year-old son Beckett passed away from a drug overdose 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.

Now, in an interview with People TV, she’s sharing some painful details from the last weeks of her son’s life.

“He was paranoid…All of a sudden he was involved with guns. Just became someone I didn’t know,” she says of Beckett, who got hooked on opioids after an ankle injury at age 17.

Melissa says the two would talk every day, but four days before he passed 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,” she says. “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, Melissa 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 and it eats away at good people,” she says.

By Andrea Tuccillo
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.