My Son is An Addict, Part I

My Son is an Addict
Part I

I was leaving the house early one Saturday morning to take my daughter to her gymnastics training. We live in a neighborhood where the houses are on large lots, and our driveway is around a hundred feet long. It was a little foggy, but as I backed the truck out of the garage, I saw something halfway up the driveway in a pile. As I pulled closer, I realized it was my son’s bicycle. My first thought is that someone tried to steal it. It’s a trick bike, and fairly expensive. I was getting worked up about it thinking this was his fault since he hadn’t put it away. He paid for half the bike from his own money; he should be more responsible. We were running late to my daughter’s training, so I called my husband Rob to come out and investigate. He wasn’t so naïve. He knew immediately what had happened. He went up to my son’s room to find him passed out in his own vomit in his bed and his room reeking of puke and whiskey.

Shaking him awake, Rob asked “What did you have to drink last night?” My son, rubbing his face and eyes crusted with dried vomit, claims “nothing.” Then he asks – “what is this in my bed?” Turns out he was walking his bike home from his all-night bender until “it wouldn’t go any further.” That would be because his sweatshirt was wrapped up in the front tire.

My son David is an addict and alcoholic. He’s been dependent on marijuana and alcohol for a year and a half. He’s fourteen.

David was never a great student, but he always got by. He’s incredibly smart, but not motivated. He’s had emotional issues, he’s had behavioral issues. We’ve been suspicious of a learning disability; every year his teachers cry ‘ADD’. We’ve been through the same miserable parent / teacher conference every year. They describe him as bright, capable, but not working to potential. He causes distractions, he doesn't bring in homework that we know he finished the night before, he doesn't pay attention to instructions.

We’ve been through school evaluations and all kinds of counseling. Although David had been diagnosed and treated for depression a few years ago, the ‘professionals,’ had continually ruled out ADD. They treated him for depression with medicine and therapy. At the end of fifth grade, he was on the honor roll and was in the Science Club. By that summer, we had gotten to a spot where the therapist ended the depression medicine and the counseling.

However, eighth grade was a different story for David. He started with four F’s the first semester. By the third quarter, he was still failing several grades, he’d had eight referrals, several in-school suspensions and a couple of ‘night schools.’

David has always been difficult to deal with in the home. He was extremely talkative, with poor sleeping habits, erratic appetite, and mood swings. I used to say he liked the sound of his own voice. He was never hard to figure out. If he was thinking it, it was coming out of his mouth. On the other hand, I would also say he is ‘scary smart,’ with an uncanny ability to read people. He is an excellent teacher; I’ve seen and heard him explain games, processes, situations with a fabulous skill many times. We also describe him as ‘Saturday-Night-Funny,' with both physical comedy and a quick mind. He went from the emotional problems he was having in fifth grade to being the class clown. Unfortunately, too much of anything can cause a distraction that makes it more difficult in a structured situation like a classroom and makes teachers have mixed feelings about David.

His peer group used to find him a little weird at times; as he honed his humor and his manipulation they started to seek him out. He is a big one for practical jokes, such as scaring people by hiding in trees where they are walking out of a building at night and screaming, or by laying in front of a neighbor’s house next to his bike pretending he’d been hit by a car or something. While annoying, most people ended up laughing with him.

Of course, I saw it as needing attention. Even negative attention. David has a very poor relationship with his father, who is a gun-toting, hunting, man’s man who has little tolerance for David’s tricks and even less for his personality. We’ve been divorced more than 11 years, and David’s visits to his father’s house have dwindled to nothing this year. I think it has been four months since he has visited his father. On his last visit, David told his father that he "loved him as a dad, but did not like him as a person."

Over time, David’s hi-jinks escalated to vandalism. One summer night Rob and I were sitting on the front porch when we saw several marked police cars trolling the street in front of our house. In short time, they were joined by an unmarked car. The ‘gang’ of about six boys David’s age was in our back yard shooting off fireworks. Rob sent them home – thinking the police had been called by an annoyed neighbor. They sure had. Not for the fireworks in the back yard, but because David and a friend had put a firework in someone’s mailbox. Turns out the ‘victim’ worked for the Emergency squad. They had four policemen, the unmarked car, and the Fire Marshall looking for my son; they believed it was a cherry bomb. He got a ‘warning’; we made him trudge up the hill for a dreaded apology. There was no damage, but the neighbor made a big enough deal out of to scare David straight for a few weeks. It didn’t last.

I don’t know when David started stealing alcohol. He has stolen alcohol from our neighbors, from friends, from friends’ parents, and from his dad. He’d steal from me if I had it, no doubt.

He has skipped school, he’s left school and church events, he’s walked or biked miles to support his habit, often in the middle of the night. I can’t count the nights I have driven around our neighborhood and the community looking for him, dreading seeing him laid out on the side of the road from an unsuspecting driver hitting him in the dark – for real this time – not like his tricks in the past.

David stole wine from a major grocery store by emptying out a case of Coke and smuggling a bottle out in the box. He didn’t get caught by the store, but it’s hard to disguise the smell of alcohol from a sober parent.

He’s broken into a small local convenience store in our neighborhood to steal cigarettes and as much beer and bottled alcohol he and his friends could stuff down their baggy pants. He didn’t get caught by the law then, either – just by Rob and me searching for him in the middle of the night.

One of the first times I caught him smoking marijuana he had stolen it from his friend’s parents. Now, he has regular dealers; he also sells a little to recoup his output. He knows all the ‘terms,’ and exactly where and how to get it. He and his peers say it takes less than five minutes to procure it at school. The schools’ Student Assistant Program representative, who works with the drug counseling program at school, confirmed that.

Now, after being caught with a joint and cigarettes at school, David has been suspended for the rest of the school year. His absence from school will affect his grades even more. He’s probably looking at retention. We wait in fear for the ruling from the superintendent to hear if they are going to expel him. He hasn’t been charged with possession, but they hold it over our heads.

The scary thing is, I hear we’ve gotten it easy so far.

This last incident has plunged us all into the world of adolescent addiction. I thought I knew what I was getting into; I’ve been in recovery from alcohol for nearly ten years. David knows my story, hell, he lived my story. He lived with my drinking and he went through early recovery with me. When he was little, he had to go to meetings with me because I couldn’t afford a babysitter. When he was a little older, the Ala-Teen instructor let him come to the program about three years early. (Ala-Teen is a program for teenagers of alcoholics and addicts.) I’ve been open and honest about my recovery with both my kids and I thought I was aware of what was going on. I really had no idea.

I had no idea that adolescent dependency can take only 5 – 15 months. That means that within a few months of using pot, a 14 year old kid can become dependent. And yes, dependent means addicted. Up until I learned that, I would have said he was ‘experimenting.’ I was wrong. With a 21-year old, who is considered an adult because their mind and body are finished developing, it can take 5-15 years for dependency. At age 11 and under, it’s a shocking 5-15 weeks. A year and a half ago, my son looked like the fictional Harry Potter, played soccer and video games, and spent his spare money on paint-ball supplies. Today, his appearance resembles a shabby, shaggy, shuffling version of the kid who used to play practical jokes on everyone around him and who could charm the smiles out of even the most experienced teacher. His life is a checklist of addiction. Every warning sign was there.

I had no idea that David was smoking enough pot to actually go through withdrawals. Although withdrawal from marijuana is psychological and not physiological, make no mistake that withdrawal is exactly what it is cracked up to be. The first two weeks were hell for our family. Mood swings, irritability, trouble sleeping, anger, anger, anger…. And forget about the language and the subjects – he seemed to have no boundaries. I felt like I was dealing with a peer, and not my 14-year old son. It was creepy, and scary. There were times I knew he was capable of running away; his impulse control, while never good, seemed to have completely disappeared. One night after he had been caught at school, up to his eyebrows in alligators, as they say, he still found it a good idea to sneak out and go find some alcohol. When he finally appears at the door, after two hours of searching for him once again, I was so mad I completely lost control.

I started yelling, it escalated quickly to screaming, and then I had him up against the corner cabinets in the kitchen and I was hitting him as hard as I could. As embarrassed and sorry I am to admit it, I have to take responsibility for my part. I was threatening to make him move to his dad’s house, who believes that David ‘needs the shit beat out of him.’ I was screaming that if that is what it took, I outweighed him by 80 pounds, and I was capable of doing it. David finally escaped me and ran out of the house, screaming ‘f*ck you, I hate you, sobbing. I had grabbed him by the shirt and he had pulled out of it. He had run out of his shoes and was running barefoot and shirtless through our front yard towards the woods in pitch dark. I knew he was totally capable of running away and I might never see him again. I knew I had to do something different, or he would slip through the cracks of addiction and I would lose him for good, even at 14.

I had no idea of the ‘collateral damage’. It’s not just the kid in trouble that is punished by the school system and the courts. The parents pay the price – and not just in dollars. I believe most parents sitting in multi-family group, or ‘Families Anonymous’ meetings, which are common requirements for parents of kids caught in any kind of drug-related incident, would rather pay even more money than have to attend these meetings. And guess who gets to drive the kid to treatment, to Narcotics Anonymous, to Drug Court, to principal meetings, to the doctor, to the psychiatrist, to the therapy sessions….

While the parent is attending to the kid in trouble, everyone else in the family goes by the wayside. Siblings a) follow suit, b) take advantage of the parent’s preoccupation and do what the want, or c) fall into oblivion. Siblings and parents are subjected to the comments from neighbors, classmates, and friends. In one meeting, a parent related how some of their neighbors had actually moved because of her son’s actions. It wasn’t long before she was planning a move herself.

The plethora of meetings and the myriad of doctor appointments and assorted therapeutical processes required for a kid in treatment take precedence over family dinners, over household errands, or work outside the home. There seems to be no end of the ‘next step’ list. It is made clear in our treatment program in no uncertain terms that treatment of the addict has to be a priority.

I had no idea of the cost of addiction. In addition to the money spent on treatment, lawyers, and doctors, you can combine the loss of income with the threat of expulsion. Expulsion means NO PUBLIC SCHOOL IN THE STATE OF VIRGINIA. And private schools, if you can afford them, do not have to take a kid who has broken The Code of Behavior - not religious schools, not alternative schools, not military schools. Prices in our area run from $7,000 to $21,000 annually for private education. Enrollment is an annual contract, so if your child gets kicked out for unacceptable behavior, your checkbook still keeps getting tapped.

One of my favorite lines from a well-meaning friend is: “The state has to do something – they are obligated to provide an education.” HA! Well-meaning, but mis-informed. It is the PARENT’s responsibility to provide an education. This is explained in great detail in The Code.

That’s The Code of Behavior. In our state, in our district, parents and kids sign the Code of Behavior at the beginning of the year. It’s a detailed booklet explaining the education systems requirements and restrictions. Not only do they have our signatures on file that we have read The Code, our children are tested in school. Really. We are Informed. No excuse there. In fact, while my son was on out-of-school suspension for possession, while we were awaiting the next meeting with the principal, I actually received a copy of the test in the mail from someone at the school – to further inform me, I suppose, and to remind me that we had signed the thing, indicating that we had read it. Our county has a policy of ‘zero tolerance.’ That means, The Code explains, that they can and will take action, including legal action and expulsion for any drug or look-alike, or any paraphernalia. This includes cigarettes, any kind of illegal drugs of course, and also over the counter medicine, matches, lighters, even spices. True story: one of David’s classmates in the Impact program, which is a four-day drug awareness program required by the school, was on long-term suspension and possible expulsion for oregano. Why he had oregano at school we can only surmise. I don’t believe his story about needing it for ‘spice for his lunch’ went over very well with anyone.

For several weeks, I’ve also been researching the cost of an attorney, in case we end up looking at a possession charge. Long story short, if you have to ask how much that alternative costs, you can’t afford it.

As I said, so far we’ve been lucky. For some reason or other, David did not get charged with possession, although they caught him red-handed. They still have a cigarette case with cigarettes and a joint in it. I have been informed that he still could be charged – I don’t know when the Statue of Limitations is up on this. I don’t bring it up. Perhaps he didn’t get charged because it was the end of the school year and it’s a lot of paperwork; perhaps because, like many addicts, people usually like him. He’s dangerously manipulative and even when people know what he’s doing, he’s usually able to somehow get away with it.

I had no idea of the effect of David’s addiction on other people. Some friends and neighbors refuse to let their kids come to our house. We have a ‘safe’ house. We have no drugs or alcohol – not even cigarettes. But now, my son has a reputation; I can’t say I blame them. Ironically, some of the neighbors busy protecting their children from my son have openly talked about smoking pot and partying to me. Their children and mine have stolen pot from them in their own home.

Some parents reacted to my son’s incident by searching their kids’ room – and many were surprised at what they found. More than one parent found a bowl or a bong or other evidence. And no, my son was not the source, but yes, he has the blame. Neighbors pull up in my driveway to tell me when they see him in the neighborhood – “He was by Megan’s garage, and I know he stole from them before,” they report.

More than one parent have been alerted to their kid’s excessive use and have asked about the outpatient treatment program we have admitted David to.

I had no idea at the extent of David’s use. We had caught him several times, and being a good alcoholic in recovery and aware of the murky depths of denial, I reasonably figured he might be using three or four times the amount we had caught him. I was not even close. My son was smoking every chance he got – several times a week. His habit had become bad enough that he had to start stealing to support it. He was also stealing cigarettes, rolling papers and other paraphernalia. Every time I went through his room I would find something. He was incredibly creative at making pipes. My favorite – bamboo and duct tape. He truly exhibits the addicts’ behavior of ‘going to any length.' I've known times where he wouldn't get up from a video game to eat or even go to the bathroom, but now he would harvest bamboo from a neighbor up a hill in the middle of the night; plan night raids on neighbor’s garage; or, shockingly, steal three cases of beer one night from a house almost a mile away –on foot.

I had no idea of the support available for families like us – with a child who has an addiction. Even with my years of recovery, I had no experience and knew noone in this situation. I learned quickly that being a parent of an adolescent addict is not the same as being a spouse, sibling, or friend of an adult addict. The pain is almost overwhelmed by the confusion, the guilt, the fear, the disgust, the anger, the frustration – I could go on and on. My fingers did the walking as I started calling blindly. Almost immediately, I was sent off on the right foot. An intake coordinator at a boy’s alternative school informed me that my son was, basically, not in enough trouble for their program. However, she suggested to me some steps we could take, and I will be forever grateful. She suggested going to his regular doctor, which we had already done. She suggested counseling, which we had been in and out of and were actively pursuing again when his eighth grade started to unravel. She suggested to add a psychiatrist to the mix to prescribe and monitor the depression medicine and fully evaluate him for ADD or ADHD. She supplied me with names and numbers. She also strongly recommended getting him evaluated to find out the extent of his drug use, which led us to the intensive outpatient treatment program we are in now.

Although David is younger than most of the participants in this program, and his use is less than most, thankfully, he fit the profile of the adolescents they believe this program will work for, namely, someone who keeps getting caught using drugs and alcohol and keeps using it. The program is truly intensive; the first of three phases includes group therapy, family therapy, Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous requirements, active participation and attendance, and some treatment work – a small amount of homework designed to educate the addict even more about their addiction.

The program is not designed for youth who have progressed to more serious drugs, like crack and cocaine, which helped relieve my fear that David would learn more about those drugs than I really wanted him to. The adolescents in this particular program mostly have problems with alcohol and marijuana, like my son.

It takes six months or more to successfully graduate from the program – which includes the course requirements and sustained sobriety. That’s six months or more of family participation, or at least parent participation, as well. As hard as it is to fit in to an already maxed out schedule, however, I find the family meetings are particularly educational and supportive. I didn't like it at first. In fact, I hated the meetings and the people in there. BUt I shortly realized that it’s like tapping into a well of badly needed information and assistance from people who have been through worse. They are mandatory – part of the contract I signed when I admitted David to the program, but I can’t think how I would have gotten through any of this without it.

I had no idea that my son was so much like me. Once I asked him why he would possibly want to turn to drugs and alcohol. He said “I like the way it makes me feel.” I felt as if I had been slammed in my solar plexus. Not, ‘everyone else is doing it,’ not ‘it was just there,’ not even 'I don’t know.' I know exactly what he is talking about. I know that escape that was so easy for me to take for so long. It is the addict in him talking, and I know that path he is going down, and it terrifies me. I am watching him start a journey that I have already been on and it angers me. I scream inside wondering why he can’t learn from me – especially since he knows my story, even as I know that he has to write his own.

I had no idea what powerlessness really is.

I had no idea how much love hurts – or how much he is still tied to me in the very center of my being like an invisible umbilical cord that transmits the pain and confusion from his growing body to mine. This is my baby, my boy. The unbelievable blue eyes and the dimples peek out from under his long hair and I grasp at the glimpse of my boy coming back to me.

Even at just a month clean, the difference is amazing. He interacts with the family and I am grateful for a day without conflict. He is where is supposed to be and I can let my breath out. I hear him talk about his ‘rehab’ and I sneak glimpses at his online comments and I hear him admit how the program helps keep him clean. I go to his room at night and I can sleep knowing he is there, sleeping.

It is easy to quit anything. The hard part is staying quit. David told me that he actually stopped smoking dope and drinking for almost four months before this school incident, but then, he started again. I explained to him that’s why we need our meetings – we need to be reminded why we don’t want to use or drink no matter what happens in our lives or around us. I watch him struggle with emotions and cravings and decisions, and as a family we struggle together with his recovery. I had thought I would be able to teach him a thing or two about recovery; I had no idea I would be the student.