“When you approach a dead body, there is a void there, and I’d never sensed that before, and that’s when my world was destroyed,” Air Force veteran and airline pilot Chris Didier told The Washington Post. His son seemed asleep at his desk.

Although he didn’t know it then, his son, Zach—a 17-year-old Eagle Scout, soccer player, and star of his school musical—had taken what he thought was a Percocet pill for pain. It was later found to be fentanyl and filler: no Percocet.

When paramedics arrived, they had to pull Chris off his son’s body.

“I got angry and fought them and I said, ‘No, failure is not an option, we cannot stop,’ ” he recalled.

“Help me save my son!” he screamed.

When they finally got him away from Zach, he howled and curled up in a fetal position, he told the paper.

Deadly Drug, Easy Access

The statistics are terrifying: 107,633 overdose deaths in 2021, a new record, the paper reported. That was more than double the number from 2015, and 20 times the death toll of the crack cocaine era of the 1980s.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) seized 9.6 million counterfeit pills in 2021. Many of these are being sold on social media sites such as Snapchat and TikTok, DEA head Anne Milgram told The Post.

“The drug dealer isn’t standing on a street corner anymore. It’s sitting in a pocket on your phone,” she said.

Another Promising Life Gone

That’s what happened to Zach Didier. It took the undercover drug investigator less than 90 seconds to find Zach’s contact on his phone. He’s now serving 17 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter and selling fentanyl.

And Zach’s parents have become drug-awareness advocates.

“I just want his life to make a difference,” his mother Laura said.

“His room stayed exactly the same for 15 months,” she told The Post. “Sometimes it was very hard for me to go in there—to see his desk. You can still see where his spirit left.”

What To Do

Start by talking to your kids about the dangers of fentanyl and fake pills, regardless of whether you think they’re susceptible to illicit drugs. Warn them about the dangers of buying drugs from friends or online.

Get information on fentanyl from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) here. 

The DEA also provides tips on how to keep kids safe here.