Heartbreaking...when Your Child Is an Addict

By Dawn P.

The intensely personal story of one parent's struggle to cope with her teenage son's alcohol and drug addiction. Sharing the journey through the variety of institutions that make up our national attempt to address a burgeoning crisis often shaded by inadequacy and unanticipated ramifications. "Heartbreaking" chronicles an agonizing "coming of age" unfortunately relevant to parents and family members, educators, professionals, politicians and anyone touched by the rapidly growing field of teen alcohol and drug abuse. Addressing such correlating concerns as mental health treatment and the criminal justice system, "Heartbreaking" informs and empathizes as one parent travels a wrenching and treacherous road all too familiar in today's America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543968941

Book preview

cover.jpg

Copyright © 2019 by Dawn P.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Print ISBN: 978-1-54396-893-4

eBook ISBN: 978-1-54396-894-1

Table of Contents

Introduction

Epilogue

dedicated to the Moto

Introduction

Stories of addiction have become common today. Even television has caught on to what many of us have known from personal experience...that families are fractured, crimes are committed and lives are lost when someone is unwilling or unable to stop using drugs and alcohol. The once-secret societies of AA and Al-Anon are now openly portrayed in the media. What was once taboo to discuss even among family members has become an all-too-predictable plot line for police dramas and reality shows.

But when young people, often as young as 12 or 13, become addicted to illegal substances, the impact on the family is uniquely devastating. Beneath the sunny glow of a growing societal acceptance, lies a murky world of real and implied parental responsibility... moral, medical, financial and legal responsibility for their child and his/her actions. The parents of young addicts will find themselves painfully powerless and, at the same time, particularly accountable. As they struggle to provide effective treatment, for what they are sure to learn is an ultimately terminal illness, they will stumble upon a well-intended but highly fragmented social system still struggling to assemble a viable response to this overwhelming and unfortunate epidemic.

From paying for treatment to making sure they show up for court, from providing a warm place to sleep it off to keeping your home and other family safe, from tough love to self- love, there is no clear path and no right answer to a hundred different decisions that will be made by the parent of a teenage addict.

As my son has grown up and deeper into his addiction, I’ve met doctors, counselors, psychiatrists, therapists, bank managers, social workers, police officers, prosecutors, public defenders, probation officers, court clerks, and prosecutors.... the majority of them trying their very best to understand what we, and so many others, were up against, and to help as best they could. Trouble was, no one really knew what help actually looked like.

When I realized my son was addicted to drugs and alcohol, I vowed I would do anything in my power to bring about his recovery. He was my only child. He was the most important thing in my life. I considered myself a reasonably intelligent and able-bodied person. I would be thorough and persistent, leave no stone unturned, and confront any fear that might keep me from helping him.

This is what happened. This is what I’ve learned. This is one parent’s story.

There was nothing worse than the ride home. You would think it would get easier. Experience had told you what to expect. Logic said, You know what’s coming, don’t you? And it had come just as you thought. So why was I blind-sided every time I got back into the car without him? Blinking behind a glaze of new snow on the windshield or driven back by a searing summer dashboard, the sensation was the same. An actual physical pain. Just under the breastbone. An alive, pulsating pain, it absorbed all your thought and feeling. A pain you only read about in books or saw played out in movies, but didn’t believe existed in real life...too dramatic to be a part of everyday existence. A day like any other day. To most people. Nothing can hurt that much and not kill you, I thought. But it does. It doubles you over in your seat, trying to keep a universe of hurt under your chest bones, cowering, you are reflected in the windshield, trying to breathe. That was the part I could never believe. That I kept breathing at all.

It wasn’t like you hadn’t prepared. You had gotten a once-nicely typed and subsequently badly xeroxed list of approved items. A list of the things that you were allowed to bring with you on your family visits to the rehab. Each institution was different. Rules, procedures, visiting days and hours. What you could bring with you was a little different at each, inadvertently revealing the personal and institutional idiosyncrasies of whoever was in charge, or as I learned was more likely, a calculated reaction to a single incident or brilliantly devised loophole no one could have imagined would evolve until it did. They were going to make darn sure that didn’t happen again. Teen addicts being an uncommonly intelligent and cunning group, rules were strict and exemptions nonexistent.

Visiting day had finally come. I packed the enormously anticipated goody bag and prayed I had gotten it right. The tangible disappointment of a small mistake, one that could have been forgiven in day-to-day life, here would deprive him of a rare pleasure or distraction for long weeks, was devastating to witness. And I couldn’t bear the shame of letting him down. My opportunities to mother him, to provide for him, had become so limited that the least I could do was to excel at the few left.

Some places wouldn’t allow certain hip-hop magazines, (too many F words), but others were ok because there wasn’t as much swearing and more mainstream advertising. Playboy wasn’t allowed but Maxim was all right, less of the essential female parts on display. Sometimes a small battery-operated tape player with radio was acceptable; sometimes it could only be a radio. Sometimes the radio had to be transparent, its circuits and wires on vulgar display for all to see. That must have been a bad day for the rule maker. After awhile, I began to wonder if magazine publishers and see-through radio makers had special arrangements with the system, like when Pepsi puts their name on a stadium and you can only get Pepsi at the snack bar. Some of the rules were so absurdly arbitrary that only economics could make any sense of them. But no matter, one thing we all learned quickly was not to complain. Complaining about the rules might bring your son consequences you would not be around to see. Even if it was just a judgment that your parents had been found wanting on their ability to understand (respect?) the rules. What if they think defiance of authority runs in the family? With so little under your control, every little thing you could control counted that much more.

So, I had packed and repacked, checked and rechecked, trying to do everything right and hope it all got in through the door. I wanted the powers to be seen that I am a good person, a good parent. I’ve dressed well, but not too well. I’ve talked politely to all I’ve met, even to those who ignored me. I’ve managed a bit of pleasant conversation though my heart is aching and I just want to cry. I feel like a contestant in a beauty pageant or a jobseeker at a crucial interview. Did I miss any opportunity to say something, anything that might help?

By the time we arrive at the center, I am already exhausted. But this is the time to get pumped. Now, you are ON. I get to face my son, maybe even touch him for a moment (though extended hugs are not allowed.) I try not to react to his appearance, but try to gauge his health by the pallor of his skin, look for obvious signs or marks of mistreatment and quickly begin to talk... quietly and always optimistically about what will happen when he is finally out of here, which is the only thing he wants to talk about. When this is over. The quiet part is very important. You are supposed to be here, but you are still the parent of a teenager and preferably invisible. At the mall or in the institution, it doesn’t matter. You are still the mom and at your best as a silent walking wallet. You are urgently needed. You are not necessarily wanted.

We find a private place in a run-down sunroom at the back of the unit where we can talk privately. So, I