An Addict Within

By Mark Lipp

An Addict Within
"You Can Break My Heart But You Can't Break My Life"
This is not another story about an addict. It is the “Other Side of the Story”; that of the family. The mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers of the addict and the damage caused, the chaos caused, and the broken relationships that happen within the family, because of the love and simultaneous hate for the addict.
This is the story of a well-educated professional, who has worked for both Fortune 100 companies and has been an entrepreneur for over 30 years. A man whose family led a very affluent, and prestigious life in their community. Then life changed for him. His oldest daughter, at the age of 13, exhibited the masochistic behavior known as “cutting” and self-mutilation”. From there it escalated to pills, marijuana, alcohol and cocaine through her high school years of addiction. Then, into her early 20’s, college and then into the dark world of heroin, exotic dancing, drug dealing, overdoses, 8 rehabs, multiple detoxes, felonies and multiple arrests.
During the pages of this book and through a father's eyes, Mark takes you on his almost 10 year journey of his feelings, motivations, the lengths a father will go through to save his daughter from herself and a life of pain and suffering, and the real life lessons learned in bringing his life and that of his families back in control. From “shame” to “sane”, from "insanity" to "sanity".
Mark realized that his daughter's addiction had consumed his life and Mark realized that he had An Addict Within him also. The addict within, was trying to “fix” his daughter at any and all cost. His personal life was as out of control as his daughter’s.
AN ADDICT WITHIN is a book about how to "fix" your life so that a family plagued with a loved one’s disease of addiction can learn to adjust and live a happy life.
The book depicts are very real, harsh and compelling tale which is a must read for anyone who has an addict in their family. It is a book of change and hope. Even if your addict does not get clean, you can still learn to live your life and be happy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Lipp
• Release date: Oct 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9780989700009

Mark Lipp

Mark Lipp: Mark is a charismatic, well-spoken expert who has lived the life with both a brother who was an addict for almost 30 years, and a daughter who is an active heroin addict. Mark is a Robbins-Madanes “Strategic Intervention Coach”. As a Strategic Coach Mark helps people transform their lives in areas such as Business, Interpersonal Relationships, Communications, Family Issues and Transforming Yourself into what you desire.Mark is a frequent motivational speaker to those people whose families suffer from the ongoing problem of addiction. Mark has been hailed as an honest, refreshing, emotional, and entertaining motivational speaker. He shares the most intimate details of his life, his journey, and how he came to grips with fixing his, and his families lives. Just five minutes with Mark, and you can see how his personality, knowledge, and insight to this disease from the family’s standpoint, make him a wonderful, motivating and entertaining speaker. In his new book: An Addict Within , Mark shares his journey and his innermost thoughts feelings and what it took for him to go from shame to sane, from reactive to proactive in his 8+ year journey.Mark attended NYU and received a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Music and Syracuse University where he received an MBA in Operations Management and Finance.Mark has worked for Fortune 100 companies and has been a successful entrepreneur for over 30 years in the Cable Television industry and the music industry.www.marklipp.comwww.anaddictwithin.com

Book preview

Many of us have said, I should write a book. I too, have said that many times in my life. I always thought my eventual book would be based on a business experience or a hobby. Never in my wildest imagination would I have ever considered that I would be writing a book on a parent’s ride through the world of addiction.

But this is not just a trip through the drug addiction experience of my oldest daughter. I am the real addict here. This is the about my addiction – my need to fix the problem.

The book, although based on the addiction of my daughter, shows how my world was turned upside down, how the snowball effect took my life on a journey so deep and dark, that I was forced to rethink and reevaluate the motives of everyone in my life. From my ex-wife, to psychologists and psychiatrists, from friends and family, to the medical community, everyone had to be reconsidered. Ultimately, this experience turned into a rethinking of my life in its entirety, and how I dealt with the people in my life.

I have learned that there is no one correct answer on the path through the hell of addiction. There are no right or wrong answers either. In the end, I was driven by a need to share what worked for me. In these pages, I share what I have endured and what it took to turn me back into a normal human being again.

If you are the parent of an addict, you will hopefully find that my story resonates with you, and that you can relate to it, feel something from it. In turn, perhaps it can change your life. Writing this book was cathartic, because, it expresses my feelings, my observations and my viewpoints.

I am not qualified as a psychotherapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, or a doctor. I am a father. There are no degrees in Fatherhood, and most parents make the best decisions they can, given their background, experience and education. Not one manual was attached at birth, when my daughter popped out. If there had been a manual with a How to raise me section, it would have made my life much easier. Sadly, with no instruction manual, all I could do was make the best decisions possible based on everything I knew. Some of my decisions were correct and some were simply incorrect.

Looking back at our decisions in life gives us three options:

1) We can bask in the glory of the correct decisions and focus on those that made everything seem good; 2) We can beat ourselves up for the incorrect decisions, thereby making it harder to make the next decision; 3) We can simply accept that we will make good decisions and bad, learn from both, and stave off guilt. We are human and we all make mistakes.

A simple story goes like this. A rancher wakes up one day and finds a beautiful wild stallion in his pen. The neighbors say, You are a very lucky man to have found such a beautiful and valuable horse! To which the rancher replies, It could be a good thing or a bad thing. The next day, his oldest son decides to break the horse, and he ultimately is bucked off, and he breaks his leg. The neighbors say, That is such a shame! What a horrible thing to have happened! The rancher replies, It could be a good thing or it could be a bad thing. A few days later, the army comes to enlist his son for the war. The army could not take him because his leg was broken and in a cast. The neighbors say, You are a very lucky man! Your son cannot go into the army and fight in the war! To which he replies, It could be a good thing or a bad thing!

As you can see, in many cases we never know if the outcome of a decision or action is a good thing or a bad thing until after we have made that decision; sometimes long after. We make the decision based on our best information at that moment in time when we make it. As humans, we make some good decisions and some bad decisions. What we must not do is beat ourselves up over the bad ones.

I have never done any drugs for recreational purposes with the exception of smoking a bit of grass in college. What I am is a person like you, a parent, sibling, spouse, or child, of a drug addict. My daughter, my addict, started at the ripe age of 13. At the time of writing, she is 21, and soon she will turn 22 with any kind of luck. She is still in the throes of her addiction, so my journey continues. In reality, that journey will never end because sober or not, she will always be an addict.

I am also the brother of an addict. He was on drugs for close to 30 years, but he has been clean for over a decade. Two of my best friends are addicts, and both clean for in excess of 20 years. I am only qualified as a person who has lived a life of loving and attempting to understand addicts.

What you will encounter in the pages that follow is an account of the last eight years of my journey, which continues as I write this today. Wish me luck.

Chapter 1: Shall We Begin My Journey?

A little background about my family and early journey provides insight into how I found myself in this place as a well-educated, highly successful, responsible, logical businessman and devoted family man - who is also the father of a heroin addict.

I was born in the borough of the Bronx, in NYC, in December, of 1955. We lived about ten blocks from Yankee stadium, and I used to go there with my father as a kid. I have fond memories of those father and son times together; the crowds, the fans, the players. My father was an avid baseball fan. In those years, many of the games could only be experienced by listening to the radio and he was tuned to every game, especially those of the N.Y. Yankees. Although, admittedly not a big sports fan, to this day, my favorite baseball team is the Yankees.

My mother was a health, special education, and physical education teacher, in New York City and later in New Jersey. My father was a salesman, and eventually the VP of Sales for a company that manufactured electronics for the Cable TV hardware industry. I grew up in the Bronx, and had the same Kindergarten teacher as my mother, and both my uncles. My grandparents on my maternal side lived right across the street and my paternal grandparents lived one block away. Many of my cousins, lived in the neighborhood, and we would see them all the time. It was very common in New York City in the 1950’s, to live around your whole extended family.

When my dad started to make better money, in the 1960’s, we moved to the suburbs, a place called Carteret, N.J., Forty minutes from NYC. It was a small, racially charged town where the politicians were crooked (some went to jail), and the people actually reelected the jailed politicians once they were freed from jail. I was convinced at the time that if the country needed an enema, the tube would be stuck in Carteret.

We were raised in Orthodox Judaism. Then we changed to Conservative Judaism when I got a bit older, and we lived in New Jersey. When I asked, Why did we change? The reply came, Because that was what your father decided.

It was not uncommon in that generation, to answer a question with, Because your father or mother said so! I do not have to explain that mentality when so much has been written on family life in the 50’s and 60’s. Children never questioned their parent’s decisions, nor were these decisions, for the most part, explained to us. We were after all just kids, and accepted it.

After I finished 8th grade in the Carteret Public School system, I was sent to Rutgers Preparatory School (RPS) in Somerset, NJ. I have very fond memories of the school. It looked like it came out of a movie scene. It was set in the woods in a beautiful setting on the Raritan River, in an area of civil war battles. The school had large soccer, and multi-purpose fields surrounded by forests. Part of the lower school, was a farmhouse, built prior to our War of Independence, as the school was founded in 1766, ten years prior to us becoming a nation. The school was steeped in tradition and education. RPS had small class sizes, and the only curriculum was college prep. We never learned such skills as typing, wood shop or car repair. Those skills were not taught to children who were preparing for college. Now, that everything is done via a keyboard, they hopefully changed their curriculum to include typing. To this day I suffer from the Biblical method of typing… seek and ye shall find! I am a six-finger typist and if it were not for autocorrect, I would be in deep trouble.

We had to wear ties, and a blue blazer with a school emblem on the pocket every day, which said, Severa res et Verum Gaudium in Latin. In English, it meant, hard work is great fun. Our hair could only be a certain length, collar length, and we could not have any facial hair at all. No jeans were allowed, and women had to wear dresses and adhere to a dress code also. Thank God, the school was coed!

For three years, I played varsity lacrosse and wrestled on the varsity team. I was captain of the teams in my senior year. It was a great education, great kids, and a great faculty of teachers and administrators. The education and value system I learned at this school set the stage for the rest of my life. The values, traditions, and self- reliance skills I learned at RPS, was one of the major reasons I sent both of my school age children to private schools.

At RPS, I developed an interest in acting and music, and did many of the productions at school. I started playing the guitar in 8th grade. The Monkees were popular and I wanted to be like them. I was going to be a star! In and around 1969, I heard the first Black Sabbath album and my life changed forever. Next, I was enlightened by Led Zeppelin, and the whole hard rock genre. Then there was Mark Farner and Grand Funk Railroad. Mark was my first idol. I had to have a Les Paul like his, and learned every song and every note on their first few albums. Along came Alice Cooper, and I had found nirvana.

After going through the trauma of college applications, I started to attend New York University in NYC, N.Y. Greenwich Village in the 70’s. Why NYU? My mother went to NYU; it was and still is a very good school. As important, I could be in Greenwich Village NY. I had a plan. I could go to college AND I could play guitar at the same time.

What a place, Greenwich Village. The lifestyle, the nightclubs the excitement. The Fillmore East was reopened, the Bottom Line, CBGB’s were all in their heyday, Lou Reed, David Bowie, Andy Warhol were a few of the people you could see in the Village hanging out. What a great place.

Drugs were in their heyday during the 1970’s. I only smoked a bit of weed, and not until my last semester of my senior year in college, did I even try it. Yes, I drank beer. Welcome to college 101! But I could and would take a lie detector test that I have never done hard drugs of any type to this day. I suffer from FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). I never wanted to miss anything that was going on in life. I obviously loved music and the lifestyle and the one thing about drugs I understood definitively was this:

Drugs let you check out when I was trying to check in.

As a college student, I knew that I was not going to get addicted to Marijuana, and, yes, I understood that it is possible to become addicted to alcohol, but most people did not. To the best of my knowledge, I knew of no one in my family who was addicted to alcohol. Therefore, I was certain that if I just drank a bit socially, I would not have a problem. I had already seen overdoses by the time I was seventeen. I saw people shoot up and put themselves in comatose states. I witnessed people on a variety of pills and mind-altering substances. How those under the influence of drugs acted, their loss of self-control, respect, dignity and reality, just did not appeal to me. As a logical person, I always knew if I did more than smoke a bit of marijuana and drink a bit, I probably would not get addicted. With anything harder, it was not a matter of if I would be addicted; it was just a matter of when I would be addicted. This did not hold any attraction to me at all. I wanted normal thinking and normal logic!

After achieving a stellar 1.9 GPA average in my first semester as a pre-med/pre-dental program student, I had my first reality check. I was forced to rearrange the priorities in my life. In my first semester I majored in 1, Guitar playing 2, women, and 3, occasionally went to classes, and did my work. I had come from a class size in high school of 15 people, in a graduating class of 54. In college, my first lecture had close to 1000 people in it. Who would know if I ever went to class or not? I am bright, I will just read the book, do the homework, turn it in, and voila, I will be an A student. I did not realize that the lectures had information not covered in the book. I might not have truly understood the college system. I just took too much for granted in my first semester. I earned a nice letter from New York University, putting me on academic probation, and giving me one semester to clean up my act, or I would be gone.

I also determined, after that first semester, that I hated pre-med, and had no desire to be in the program. I switched to business after my first year, rearranged my priorities, and amazingly, I went from a 1.9 GPA, to a 3.8 GPA. Ultimately, I graduated with a B.A. in Economics and a Minor in Music.

I then went to work in NYC, and for the next two years, worked for a Fortune 100 hundred company, NCR, in Sales and Marketing. At night, I was a musician. I lived a dual life on no sleep.

Up until the age of 29, I had no problem staying up all night, playing guitar, drinking alcoholic beverages, and living on 3-4 hours of sleep. I was a machine. In my 30’s I could go all night on little or no sleep, or, I could drink. No longer could I do both in the same night. Very depressing! I chose to drink less as the condition of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), which I still have today, wants me to stay alert. In my 40’s, I could not do either one. I needed to get a minimum of 5-7 hours of sleep and limit the alcohol.

After almost two years of working at NCR, I then decided I needed to go back to the warm and friendlier environment, known as post-graduate studies to obtain my MBA. Work, frankly, was not that much fun. Yes, they paid me, but not enough for the aggravation.

I then attended Syracuse University, where I had a position as a Teaching Assistant. In 1981, I graduated with an MBA in Operations Management and Finance. Syracuse is truly a great place to live and raise a family. Syracuse has a big city feel, but if you drive just 10 miles in any direction, you are in a suburban area, and just a few more miles and it becomes rural. Winter is 10 months a year, and sometimes you get to enjoy summer, but, only if it comes on a Saturday or Sunday. I loved living in Syracuse, even with the snow and the cold, and it will always hold a fond place in my heart.

Upon graduating with my MBA, which at the time was a very prestigious degree and a much more rare degree as most school did not offer this. I debated staying in for a doctorate but there were two reasons that I did not. The first was that my father was a bit fed-up. He was not crazy about me being a full time student for three more years and more importantly, I found out that I could get a job today that paid more than I would make as an Associate Professor after three more years of school. I decided not to get a doctorate and get a job. I could always go back to school and become a Professor, if I did not like working. That was my new backup plan.

I was hired by Magnavox CATV Systems Inc., a division of Philips (you know them as light bulbs and TV’s). They built cable television equipment for cable TV companies. I started as a Systems Analyst, became the IT Manager, and ultimately the Director of Materials and Production Control. My boss was phenomenal; a man named Joe Wodzinski, and, I had a mentor named Bob Fisher. I could not have asked for better mentors and career guidance. I will always be indebted to these men. This is where I met my best friend to this day, John. We were Best Men at each other’s weddings, and godfathers to each other’s sons. He is a great and moral person, who always has wise and practical advice to this day.

I still had some unfinished business, and needed to get my last shot in as a musician. I was now really losing my hair, and now in my late 20’s, it was, in my mind, my last shot at the brass ring. I accepted a job in Los Angeles Ca., with Eaton Corporation, as a Director, and ran five plants for them at the age of 28. While I moved to Los Angeles to be a musician, I quickly found out that not only was I not the best guitar player in Los Angeles; in fact, I may not have been the best guitar player in my apartment building. Rude awakening and a shot to the ego. I was continuing my dual life. By day an executive, at night a superstar (at least in my mind). I had plenty of work, and I played five nights a week. In Los Angeles, I worked as a studio musician; I was always on time and smiling. I may not have been the best musician but I was dependable, on time, and drug free, and that got me a lot of work. Always sober, always on time, and never an issue. I was just happy to be there and play.

At the ripe old age of 29.5 years old, I along with my father and one another partner started a company in the Cable TV hardware business. Three months after we started the company, my father had a heart attack, and three months later, he had a massive coronary and passed away. In my mind, my father left me with a drug addict brother and my mother, who was a part time ESL teacher to Japanese kids.

My mother loved teaching but did not bring home a large enough paycheck to cover her expenses. I was getting married in less than a year and I was now 30 years old. My mother lent me her life savings. She became my business partner for the next 21 years, until her untimely passing in December 2007. She was my mother, my partner, my confidant, and my sounding board. We enjoyed 21 years of success in business. That is not to say we were not at odds at times. Of course, we were. The secret was that we had defined responsibilities. In the day we were, Mark the President and Norma the Executive V.P., when work ended, it was mother and son. Any issues stayed at the office. She was annoyed with me on a regular basis. Even when she was crazy from my actions at work, never, and I mean never, did it affect our personal relationship or the relationship with her two grandchildren.

She was a woman born 30 years too soon. She was brilliant, well educated, and had insight into people, that frankly, I do not have and never will. Nor, have I met anyone with even a close approximation of her abilities.

For quite a few years, I served on the boards of many charitable organizations, and for three years, I was the president of a religious organization. I recommend this job to those who want their phone to ring day and night with problems and requests that start at the unpractical, and work their way up to borderline psychotic. All of their requests and ideas cost a lot of money, take a lot of person-hours, and as a non-profit, you are limited by two things, a lack of money, and a lack of volunteers.

If you really want to learn how to be in management, try managing in a volunteer organization. It is hard to get people to believe in your vision, when you do not pay them. Getting volunteers to work hard is now a function of salesmanship and charisma. Learning to convince volunteers on the benefits of what you are trying to accomplish, is both exasperating and gratifying. Exasperating, when they cannot see the greater good, and gratifying, when they see the greater good, it goes the way you want it to, and you see the results. Dealing with volunteers, and motivating them, has many parallels to motivating and teaching your children. Volunteers are hard to find, and hard to motivate as are children at times. You really cannot fire volunteers, nor can you fire your children, even if at times, you want to.

I attained many lessons as the lay leader of a religious organization and I tried to apply this knowledge to real life situations, especially when dealing with my children. When you are the president, you are trying to convince people to work a plan. Much like your children, you discuss the problem, come up with a set of solutions that are possible, lay out the positive and negative results that can come from each decision, and show them the greater good theory. You then determine the plan and then put it into action. Unlike in business, when you make an unpopular decision, people would follow through with it, as they are being paid to do so. In the volunteer world, and with your children, they are not being paid. Follow through is tougher. They have to see what they will get from the situation. The reward and the prize. You learn to think differently and motivate differently.

I am divorced and remarried almost 4 years. I am part of a very standard California family. I have three children and two stepchildren. They range in age from 22, and 18, which are mine, 15 and 12, which are hers, and an 11-month-old baby girl, which is ours!

Today, I deal in the very complex issues of being a father, and being a stepfather. Compounding this is dealing with my wife’s ex-husband and his wife, along with my ex-wife and her boyfriend. Add to this, the children’s therapists, and all the emotions and issues that this brings up, and you have a tropical storm of issues constantly swirling around everyone. Throwing an addict into the mix turns it from a tropical storm, into a class-5 hurricane. Much has been written, and there is still much more to write, about co-parenting, step parenting and the multitude of issues that develop when dealing with this complex situation. This is where The Law of Unintentional Consequences begins to show itself.

I learned very early in life, that I was