Posted on February 9, 2026 View all news
Kellen. He was a great kid—very social, with lots of friends in different groups. On the outside, he seemed to have it all. He was smart, kind, athletic, and easy-going. He loved basketball, soccer, and golf, and he could recall almost any sports statistic you didn’t even know you needed to know.
We found out that Kellen was struggling with his mental health midway through his junior year of high school. Little did we know that he had already been using marijuana for about a year at that point, according to a good friend of his. He was part of the “cool” group of athletic guys, and it seemed like the thing to do. We did get him into therapy, and he seemed to do fairly well until the end of his senior year.
His high school soccer team had wrapped up its season at the state level, and he suddenly seemed lost. He couldn’t go to school during the last week, and we ended up in the ER twice because he was having severe suicidal thoughts. While in the ER, when they asked if he had used any drugs or alcohol recently, I learned that he had smoked marijuana at the state tournament with some teammates because he thought it would make him feel better and less anxious. He admitted that it didn’t help at all and actually made him feel worse.
He was struggling so much with depression and anxiety that he didn’t even attend his own graduation ceremony or party. With lots of therapy, some medication, and constant supervision, Kellen did get much better by the end of the summer. We decided as a family that he would defer college for a year to get back on his feet.
Most of his friends left for college, and he felt alone. He started hanging out with some friends who were heavy marijuana users and began using it heavily himself. He became a completely different person—amped up, full of himself, and disrespectful of our house and rules. Things escalated very quickly, and he was using it every day. Marijuana did not have any kind of calming effect on him. I was so confused by this behavior, as I only knew marijuana from my college days, when it was very low in THC potency. I was under the impression that the main harms were low motivation and ambition.
Kellen ended up getting arrested for a DUI related to possessing marijuana while driving. Even this didn’t convince him to stop. Everything I read online at that point seemed to say it wasn’t possible to become addicted to marijuana, even though I knew in my heart that something was terribly wrong.
In the last couple of weeks of his life, he stopped using marijuana, but his anxiety came back with a vengeance. He felt hopeless and had no sense of self-worth, which ultimately resulted in his suicide in January of 2020.
After we lost Kellen, our family started a nonprofit called The Kellen Cares Foundation, focused on mental health for boys and young men. Through my research for our website, I learned so much about the effects of marijuana on the developing brain and how destructive today’s high-potency cannabis can be. We are determined to educate the public about anything that negatively affects mental health, and we believe cannabis education is crucial.
There is rarely ever a single cause for suicide, as I have learned, but I truly believe Kellen would still be here today if he had not started using marijuana.
Kimber Erickson, Kellen’s mother and Executive Director of The Kellen CARES Foundation
