"Some volunteers are driven to heal others — and themselves. Robyn Houston-Bean, 52, said when her 20-year-old son Nick died of an accidental overdose in 2015 after participating in a drug-treatment program, she went from being “a real go-getter always doing a million things” to sitting numb on the couch for months. “The last thing I expected was for him to die,” she said. Her friends and extended family were also in shock, she said, and she found it hard to process her grief with them, largely because this kind of loss was not something any of them had ever experienced. Several months after his death, Ms. Houston-Bean discovered a volunteer organization that distributed clothing, food and other supplies to drug users living on the streets. She was intrigued. Her sister urged her to check it out in person. When she finally did, she found a nonjudgmental space full of volunteers whose loved ones had also been touched by addiction. Soon, she was heading out once a month to help those in need. “I felt like I could give my mothering to them that I couldn’t give to Nick anymore,” Ms. Houston-Bean said. Later that year she started a peer grief support group for those who have lost someone they love to substance abuse — the first of its kind in Braintree, Mass., her hometown. It became so popular that she created a nonprofit and found enough volunteer facilitators to run 13 groups in different parts of the state. “It takes the focus off of my grief and puts it somewhere else,” she said. “I have this whole real purpose now.”"