Love Never Dies –
Oct 9, 2020 – Toni Cornell — armed with a mission to end the stigma associated with addiction — is honoring her late father, rock star Chris Cornell. On Friday ahead of World Mental Health Day, the 16-year-old and her brother Christopher launched an informative new podcast titled Stop the Stigma: Tackling the Stigma of Addiction Through Education. The series comes as part of their national advocacy campaign addressing the discrimination faced by individuals battling substance abuse. The podcast, which will explore how stigma is hampering efforts to combat addiction, is in partnership with the Chris and Vicky Cornell Foundation along with the Addiction Policy Forum. Chris Cornell, who first gained fame as the lead singer of Soundgarden and later as frontman for Audioslave, died in May 2017. “I want listeners to learn about addiction as a disease,” Toni tells PEOPLE. “We worry about all our organs it seems, except our brains. We often neglect the fact that our brains are affected by genetic and environmental factors and by substance use or abuse, including short and long-term effects of alcoholism.” She adds: “We need to understand which communities and individuals are genetically predisposed and who is more susceptible. It all comes back to ending the stigma so that we can start treating addiction as a disease. If not, we will continue to lose more people. We need to understand that it is very much a mental health issue.”
