A friend of mine died almost two years ago to the day; same cause, complete surprise to all of us who knew him. It was a difficult thing to process; he had two bright, lovely early-teen kids who he loved spending time with... and suddenly he was dead, out of the blue. It did make it hard to talk about; or hard for me to be compassionate about.. with his kids left behind with an entire father-less life ahead of them it seemed like such an asshole thing to do - but I understand it wasn't his intent. Clearly not a "bad way to go" just dying in an opiate haze, but.. eh. One can only hope that for each heroin overdose there are others who get a useful "course correction" from that mistake.