It’s been about a month and a half now since rapper Juice WRLD passed away from an accidental opioid overdose. Since then I have been wrestling with some thoughts about his life and what his death means for mental health awareness in general. I enjoyed a fair bit of his music and saw him easily as one of the most promising new faces in music going into the 2020s.

In a lot of ways, his death felt somewhat inevitable. When I learned that Juice WRLD had passed away, I honestly wasn’t very surprised. I was shocked, but it wasn’t unbelievable. His struggles with opioid and codeine addiction were clear as day, having been consistent topics in his lyrics. His biggest hit song, “Lucid Dreams”, included the lyrics, “You left me falling and landing inside my grave/I know that you want me dead/I take prescriptions to make me feel a-okay/I know it’s all in my head.”

There have of course been thinly veiled musicians and celebrities with drug addictions and mental health issues, but the explicitness of Juice WRLD’s and his eventual fate is alarming to me. His entire persona and career was built essentially on his struggles with mental health issues and drug addiction in a way that was marketed as his “thing.” It was the crux of his music career and what made him so appealing to a demographic of young listeners who responded to and identified with his struggles.

I’m never one to police lyrical content; debating the emotions or intent behind an artist’s lyrics is inherently bad, as the music is a reflection and expression of the person and their life. And when talking about content such as mental health and emotional struggles, being able to relate to an artist’s content in a way that comforts and helps someone get through similar issues is a good thing. The problem, and one I particularly was concerned about when it came to Juice WRLD, is how that relatability can prevent seeking out necessary help.

By Juice WRLD’s own admission, his introduction to taking drugs was influenced by listening to his hero, Future. In a 2019 Billboard cover story interview, he described meeting Future, how he told him that it was his music that inspired the young rapper to begin drinking lean and experimenting with other drugs. This revelation horrified Future and pushed him to give up codeine.

I don’t want to suggest that Juice WRLD influenced people to begin taking drugs when they wouldn’t have otherwise, but for those who came to his music already suffering from mental health issues and drug addiction, they may have found comfort in his music where they should have found an alarm. Self-medicating depression with drugs is a very serious and unfortunate response and Juice WRLD’s music may have given solace to others doing the same, straying further from seeking necessary help. It is in this way that the comfort of relatability in music can end up being a crutch rather than an aid.

This situation should serve as a template for how and when to step in to help someone in need. I would like to think that his friends and record label executives tried to help him to overcome his addiction and depression rather than just ignoring it, or worse, enabling it. However, I have no idea what the situation was regarding Juice WRLD’s inner circle or the record executives working with him at his label, so I won’t make assumptions about the role they played in his continued struggles with addiction. However, I will say that his struggles exemplify a situation where those close to someone going through similar problems should step in. His death should be a warning that you should properly confront a loved one’s issues before it becomes too late to do anything about it.

More than anything, Juice WRLD’s passing represents the worst-case scenario: Someone whose mental health struggles led to self-medicating with drugs that resulted in an untimely death. And what is the most unsettling about the whole situation was that it was all so open and widely known. Anyone who knew of Juice WRLD knew he was depressed and that he took drugs because of it. It’s eerie to think that his death was essentially set up from the onset of his career. Some of his lyrics predicting his own early demise make this reality even more haunting. The takeaway from his short life and career should be that if you know someone who is suffering from mental health issues or drug problems, you should step in to help and convince them to seek help.