​Festival Friend Taken Too Soon

This week I attended the funeral of a life taken too soon. It’s not a new story and certainly won’t be the last, but his friends and family hope his passing will lead to others getting help.

I didn’t know Zach Spieker that well. But the times I did encounter him, he was always a pleasure to be around and someone whom you immediately got along with and would gravitate towards. This was common for him. He loved going to music festivals and met many new people who he became instant friends with. Many of them became lifelong friends who ended up mourning his premature death. Zach was only 25.

A close friend of his encouraged me to attend the funeral. It was a sad event but I learned a lot about him and the impact he’d made. It was tough seeing how devastated his family and friends were by it. Zach had a leg injury in high school and following that he developed an addiction to painkillers. Somewhere down the road, his need to reduce the pain increased and he slid into heroin addiction, and that’s what ultimately cost him his life.

It’s not the first time heroin has taken someone well known in the music community. We saw local guitarist Cody Conner taken from us not too long ago for the same thing. People tell me heroin is a bigger problem in our region than most people realize, and that more people are doing it here than you think. I haven’t seen it myself but of course it’s not something that is done in the open. But it’s such a deadly drug; people need to do whatever they can to get their loved ones help. It’s not easy. The person has to want help. But Zach’s friends and family hope this is a wake-up call for anyone in his circle that is fighting the same battle.

He tried to get help himself, entering treatment in September, but eventually slid back into addiction. Zach wrote a letter to opiates while he was in treatment and the last line of his letter said,"I will tell everyone how evil you are and you will die alone." Even though he lost that fight, those powerful words tell you he wanted to win but it was out of his control.

It’s important to not look down on people who suffer from addiction. It is a disease just like any other and can happen to anyone. There are all sorts of reasons someone can slide into it: hereditary, mental, physical. The stigma of addiction forces people to condemn the addicts as bad people who are not capable of self-control. But a lot of times, it is out of their control once they get to a certain point. And they should be treated as suffering from a sickness just like any other disease.

There is help out there. A group in Moorhead, The Fargo-Moorhead Good Neighbor Project, offers free needles and opiate reversal drugs (which have saved lives from overdoses) for addicts in the region. It’s important that these groups not face any threat from the law for doing their jobs. In some states, like North Dakota, it can be against the law to hand out the opiate reversal drugs or free needles.

Everyone that loses someone close to them from a drug addiction wishes they could have a second chance to try to save them. It may seem hopeless at times but if you know someone in the throes of heroin or meth addiction, do whatever you can to get them help before it’s too late.

It’s important that Zach’s death not be in vain. It is hard to say something good can come out of something so bad but maybe saving some lives of those who wouldn’t get help otherwise is a start. Already Zach’s death has brought people together who were immersed in life’s little squabbles. And I am sure if his struggle and fight could help his addicted friends, it would make him relieved wherever he is.