We we’re good friends when we were in elementary school. We were in the same grade and lived only a block away from each other. Then in the fourth grade he moved to another town a few miles away. We kept in touch for the first two or three years, going to the county fair every year. But then we just sort of drifted our own separate ways.
Last month, his parents found him the basement, dead from an overdose of who-knows-what. The obituary doesn’t say exactly how he died of course. But it does say to send memorial funds to a drug abuse prevention organization.
Dead at the age of 19. The prime of his life. His whole life was ahead of him. Not anymore. 
The thing that bothers me the most is that I don’t think he would have went down the same path if he had stayed in the same school district with his old buddies. He must have gotten mixed up with the wrong crowd. Maybe he would have anyway, but I don’t think it would have been as likely. Who knows. 
Speaking as someone who has lost a close friend in a similar manner, I know that there’s not much that I can say right now.
You are in my thoughts.
About a year and a half ago I posted a thread called “A girl I knew has died” (or something like that). She wasn’t a “friend”, just someone I knew. She was actually the neighbour and friend of my best friend. I knew her from parties. At the end of one, she and a guy injected cocaine. Pretty hardcore, injecting drugs.
I ran into her in the building where I worked several years later. She recognised me in the lift. We chatted briefly, and she said that she had given up drugs and was working as a dental assistant. Good on her!
And then I got the news, just before I posted the thread, that she had died of a drug overdose. My best friend said heroin was her drug of choice, and that’s probably what killed her.
It’s sad. Very sad. But people make choices, and some are not good ones.
A high school friend of mine died at age 19 of a drug overdose also. I dated his older brother a couple of times and my sister later married another brother of theirs so my family is still close to his family. Many years later they are still sad and wonder “what happened” to such a sweet and promising kid.
Johnny LA is right. It is about the choices we make. They can touch a lot of people for a long time. It is sad. I’m thinking of you and sorry for your loss.