Former OWN TV host Dr. Laura Berman is educating parents about the slang and emojis teens are using to secretly talk about drugs after losing her 16-year-old son to an overdose during the pandemic.
Dr. Laura Berman, a renowned relationship therapist, lost her son Sammy in February after he connected with a drug dealer on and bought Xanax that was laced with fentanyl without his knowledge.
In the wake of his death, the 51-year-old has been using her platform to rais
Helping other parents: Berman recently shared a chart listing the emojis teens use to talk about drugs, including a snowflake for cocaine and a pill for heroin
Berman announced Sammy’s tragic death on Instagram in February, writing: ‘My heart is completely shattered and I am not sure how to keep breathing. I post this now only so that not one more kid die.’
She explained that Sammy was a ‘straight-A student’ and ‘getting ready for college’ when he overdosed in his bedroom.
Despite how closely she and her husband Sam Chapman watched him, he still managed to have the drugs delivered to their house. The teen’s drug experimentation ended up costing him his life.
Berman and Chapman opened up about the loss of their son on shortly after his death, recalling how they had previously discovered he was experimenting with marijuana.
‘Obviously, we came down very firmly, we had a zero-tolerance,’ Berman said. ‘We even got him a drug counselor that he met with. There was also a therapist that he met with once a week.’
The relationship expert has been using her platform to raise awareness for teen drug use by sharing guides to help parents decipher their kids’ coded messages
She added that they ‘regularly’ tested Sammy for drugs, but that didn’t stop him from connecting with a drug dealer on social media.
‘Laura went up to talk to him about his internship and discovered him lying on the ground on his back, passed away. Vomit coming out of his mouth in what they call the classic fentanyl death pose where the respiration slows down so much they pass out, they vomit and they choke on it,’ Chapman told Oz.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine, according to the . It has a number of street names, including China Town, Dance Fever, Goodfellas, Poison, and Tango and Cash.
Drug dealers often add fentanyl to other narcotics, particularly heroin, to increase the potency without the user knowing.
Berman, the former host of In the Bedroom with Dr. Laura Berman on OWN, has three children with Chapman, with Sammy being their middle child. Her eldest son Ethan was born in 1999 and their youngest son Jackson was born in 2005.
Family: Berman and her husband Sam Chapman have three sons, with Sammy being their middle child
Strict: The couple ‘regularly’ had Sammy (pictured as a boy) drug tested after they discovered he was experimenting with marijuana
Tragedy: Sammy had the drugs delivered to their house in the middle of the night, and Berman was the one who found him dead in his room
In February, a spokesperson for Snapchat said the company was ‘heartbroken’ by Sammy’s death and was working with police who were investigating whether the app was used to purchase the drugs.
‘We have zero tolerance for using Snapchat to buy or sell illegal drugs,’ the spokesperson said in a statement to DailyMail.com. ‘Using Snapchat for illegal purposes is firmly against our community guidelines and we enforce against these violations.
‘We are constantly improving our technological capabilities to detect drug-related activity so that we can intervene proactively. We have no higher priority than keeping Snapchat a safe environment and we will continue to invest in protecting our community.’
However, Berman and her husband don’t believe Snapchat has done enough to help them or other parents. During her interview with Dr. Oz, she recalled how she showed the police the drug dealer’s Snapchat and Twitter handles and being told the information likely wouldn’t help their case.
‘They said, “That’s great, but don’t get your hopes up because we don’t even bother to call the social media companies anymore because they use the privacy and free speech laws to not give us any identifying information,” she said.
‘The only thing they’ll do is take the profile down and then the dealer will just pop up two seconds later within a completely different profile name.’
Spreading the word: Earlier this year, Berman appeared in a PSA urging people to sign an online petition to allow parental monitoring tools on every popular social media platform
Shocking: ‘Sammy was able to buy drugs on Snapchat as easily he would order a pizza,’ the grieving mother explained in the PSA
Earlier this month, Berman joined other parents whose children have died after buying fentanyl-laced drugs on social media to protest outside of Snapchat’s office in Santa Monica, California.
The rally was one of many that took place around the country on June 4, a nationwide effort coordinated by the Association of People Against lethal drugs.
Berman told that she and her husband spoke to Snapchat’s CEO and found Evan Spiegel on the phone before the protest to discuss the company’s privacy restrictions.
She said she told Spiegel: ‘You’re not doing enough to help the police when these cases come up finding these killers and that you’re not allowing parent monitoring software on your app where kids are spending time.’
The TV therapist alleged that the founder told her ‘there were privacy issues and manual processes involved that prevented that; the manual processes come when they call police to save a life. If that’s not scalable then shame on them.’
For their protection: Berman stressed the important of parents knowing what teens are doing on social media
Using her voice: Earlier this month, Berman joined other parents whose children have died after buying fentanyl-laced drugs on social media to protest outside of Snapchat’s office
Fame: Berman had made her name on the national stage with multiple appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and she later received her own show on the Oprah Winfrey Network
Chapman and Berman plan on appealing to Congress to try to get legislation passed that would require platforms with kids on them to have parent monitoring software accessibility.
Earlier this year, The Language of Love podcast host appeared in a powerful PSA urging people to sign an to allow parental monitoring tools on every popular social media platform.
The mom filmed the short clip in collaboration with and with the support of the .
‘Our son Sammy was an amazing kid — sweet, funny, curious. This February we tragically lost him to a danger lurking in something we’re pretty sure your child is using every day one of these,’ she said, holding a cellphone up for the camera.
‘Sammy was able to buy drugs on Snapchat as easily he would order a pizza,’ she continued. ‘They were delivered to our home in the middle of the night and were laced with lethal fentanyl without his knowledge. And that’s what killed him.
‘It’s so important for us as parents to know what our children are doing on social media, now more than ever.’
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