they always admit it, if only to themselves.

Every athlete who ever fell short knows in their heart if they held back that extra juice or not.

Every student of martial arts on the receiving end of a blow that knocks them down on the mat, knows whether they are feigning injury or not.

Even if the only person you admit it to is yourself, you know...

I can imagine it would be very difficult for any parent to accept that their blind adherence to public dogma caused irreparable harm to their child. The thought of it is unbearable.

When a child dies, parents always blame themselves. It’s part of the process. I lost a son 5 years ago. The Pfizer drug Xanax played a big part. My son was diagnosed at 18 with adult ADD. He thought his focus problems that were becoming an obstacle to his higher education and he hoped they could be fixed. At that time, when the drugs briefly worked, I had second thoughts about whether I did the right thing. Because all his childhood I refused to drug him when the teachers told me he had ADD. He always did have a hard time focusing on things that didn’t interest him. He had sleep issues. Body clock was always nocturnal. Otherwise he was a brilliant wonderful creative person with off the charts high IQ and I figured it was the system’s issue, not his. He told me not being on drugs as a child taught him coping mechanisms and he was grateful for that.

One night he went to sleep and didn’t wake up. Xanax and some other substance combined to stop his heart. He was 23. I spent years going over with a fine tooth comb what I did wrong and how I could have done better. No matter what you believed before the death of your child, after the death you scrap everything and start from ground zero to seek the truth about what happened and your own role in it. At least that was the case with me.