Parent Partners: Making an Impact

Everywhere And No Where

Those first few days...weeks...and months following my son's death from inhalant abuse at 16 I felt  like a derelict ship in a gale force storm battered constantly from all sides by a relentless and merciless sea.  My son was everywhere around me and no where all at the same time.  Memories crashed upon me without warning from all aspects of my existence, sights, sounds, tastes and touches.  I was powerless to prevent them from bringing me to my knees as tears flowed and sobs took my breath away.

My wife called them blindsides but to me they were more like emotional land-mines because they seemed to blow me to pieces when I came upon totally unawares.  It happened a lot that first year.  To say that I missed David does not even begin to describe the emptiness I felt in my soul or the pain that emanated from my heart whose pace had once quickened at the sound of his voice, his footsteps on the stairs taking them two at a time or the gaze from his hazel eyes. 

But slowly, over time the pain has dulled and I find that I have become better at controlling  or anticipating what causes the explosion.  It does not mean that I am "over" David's death or that I have "moved on", no parent who has lost a child can ever do that.  What I did find that worked for me was that overtime I slowly began to integrated his death into my own being.  My memories of Dave have become my soul and today I can once again take refuge there and let the glimpses of the past roam freely in my subconscious without the pain of grief.  His memory also became the light in my heart that had been so tragically and brutally snuffed out that warm sunny day in June so many years ago. 

And most remarkable of all, today the land-minds and the blindsides have become moments of serenity and comfort for me because I do not fear them anymore.  Today I embrace them and by doing so find that at those moments David is more near than ever, touching my cheek and whispering in my ear..."Love ya Dad".

Inhalant Abuse And War

An odd confluence of events has led to a rise in inhalant abuse among a population that has not previously been considered "at risk".  America soldiers in an unpopular war, in countries dominated by muslim theology whose teachings forbid the use of alcohol and drugs, coupled with strict US military policies prohibiting the use of drugs and alcohol have for sometime now been turning to inhalants as a way to get high and escape the fog of war.  As most probation and treatment professionals know when abstinence policies are strictly enforced inhalants, which are cheap, easy and accessible, become a likely substitute.  Add to the equation  the fact that troops have more high tech gear in this war that requires constant cleaning with products like computer dusters and it's no wonder soldiers have been abusing inhalants since the invasion of Afganistan.

The recent death of a decorated returning Iraq war veteran suffering from PTSD who turned to inhalants as a means to help cope with his disorder is a warning to us all that some of our young men returning from the overseas may be bringing home more than just their memories of war.

I'm Sorry

It was 11 months from when we first discovered that David had a serious substance abuse problem until his death in a drug related drowning.  Just 335 days...8040 hours mark the distance and the difference between joy and hope...grief and despair.

In my family growing up we said "I love you" a lot, and so it was that the last conversation I had with David the night before his death my final words to him were "I love you David" and his last words to me were "love you Dad."   In the months and years since his loss I have played that exchange over in my mind thousands of times. I still hear his voice speaking those words as if he were standing beside me whispering in my ear.

I know how lucky I am to have been able to say those four words to him...and in the years since his death they have brought me great comfort in some of my darkest hours.  But I have also come to understand that there are still things that I never had the chance to say to him.  Prominant among them are the words "I'm sorry." 

So if you will allow me...

David my beautiful boy...

• I'm sorry you never knew your grandmother...
• I'm sorry I didn't know enough about baseball to be a better coach to you
• I'm sorry that I hovered too much...
• I'm sorry that I didn't listen more...
• I sorry we never got to see a Pink Floyd concert together...
• I'm sorry instead of helping you with you homework I sometimes did it for you...
• I am sorry I sometimes drank too much...
• I am sorry for the time we argued and you got so mad you hit me...
• I'm sorry I didn't know how much you struggled with addiction......
• I'm sorry that I tried to be more of a friend at times than a father...
• I'm sorry I offered you a beer when you were in recovery...
• I am sorry I was away when you died...

John Denver got it right when he wrote:

"More than anything else I'm sorry for myself for living without you"

Understanding the Teen Brain, A Guide for Parents

Yesterday marked the 7th anniversary of our son David's death at the age of 16 from substance abuse and while we spent the day as we always do honoring his struggle by working with young people still stuggling with the disease we also were pleased to learn that a project we have been working on will be announced this week. For sometime now Marissa and I have been involved with the Partnership for a Drug Free America (PDFA) in a new initiative called the Parent Resource Center. The PRC is a blending of the advertising expertise of PDFA, the reasearch expertise of the Treatment Research Institute at the University of Pennsylvania and the Parent Advisory Board composed of parents whose adolescents and young adults have struggled with the disease of addiction. This cooperative venture began two years ago and on June 11th will unvail the first online parenting tool called "A Parents Guide to the Teen Brain." Developed in conjunction with WGBH TV Boston, the tool translates recent scientific findings about how brain development shapes teen behavior into easy to understand tips and tools for parents.  Follow this link to the Teen Brain site and please let me know what you think of the site and how we can make it better.

www.drugfree.org/teenbrain

On June 11th The Partnership for a Drug Free America held a Virtual Press Conference Announcing Launch of “A Parent’s Guide to the Teen Brain”

- New Site to Help Parents Decode Teen Behavior and Connect with their Kids

- Release of the 20th annual Partnership Attitude Tracking Study

WHAT It Is About: The Partnership for a Drug Free America will debut their newest online parenting tool: “A Parent’s Guide to the Teen Brain.” The site launch also coincides with the release of the 20th annual Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (PATS), a survey of parents’ attitudes about drugs and alcohol. 

WHY We Did It:  For every parent of a teenager who has ever wondered “who is this kid?” the website aims to make answering that question easier. Designed to help parents navigate the confusing, often frustrating teen years, “A Parent’s Guide to the Teen Brain” translates recent scientific findings that shed light on how brain development shapes teens’ behavior and personalities into easy-to-understand tips and tools for parents.

The site explains that the human brain takes 25 years to fully develop, with areas responsible for complex judgment and decision-making maturing last. Through video, humorous interactive segments, role-playing and advice from experts, parents learn how adolescent brain development explains the “normal” teen behaviors that often confound parents—impulsiveness, rebellion, high emotions and risk-taking, especially with drugs and alcohol—and how to use this new information to connect with their teens.

The 2007 PATS study shows that as kids become teenagers, their parents need for information and help talking about drugs and alcohol peaks, and parents’ confidence in their ability to keep kids from using drugs and alcohol begins to wane.

WHO Participated: A distinguished panel of experts will participate in a discussion about “A Parent’s

           Guide to the Teen Brain including:

·         Steve Pasierb:  President and Chief Executive Officer of the Partnership for a Drug Free America

·         Ken Winters, Ph.D.: director of the Center for Adolescent Substance Abuse Research, a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota, and a Senior Scientist with the Treatment Research Institute, Philadelphia, PA.

·         Tara Paterson: certified parenting coach, mother of three, founder of the Mom’s Choice Awards (which honor excellence in family friendly media, products and services), author of the upcoming book Raising Intuitive Children and contributor to justformom.com.

 

Highlights of the Virtual Press Conference will include:

·         Detailed explanation/run through of “A Parents Guide to the Teen Brain”

·         Explanation about the links between teen behavior and the physiological changes happening in the teen brain

·         Explanation of findings from the 2007 PATS study

·         Discussion of how to apply the scientific findings about the teen brain to real life

·         Valuable insight from a parent and parenting coach

To download video of the webcast in broadcast quality format please visit the coordinates below:

Galaxy 26 Transponder 1 C BAND Analog

Downlink frequency is 3720 Vertica

Beta copies can be requested as well, but will require additional time for delivery.

                                                                                                                        

Media Contacts:    Judy Klein, o: 212-251-1204, m: 917-282-9352, e:  jklein@ckpr.biz

                             Paul Costiglio, o: 212-973-3530, m: 917-686-8697, e: paul_costiglio@drugfree.org

For more information about the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, visit www.drugfree.org.

A Parent Support Group

She opened the door tentatively and shuffled softly into the room, slipped quietly into the chair moving in seeming slow motion as if her lack of haste would somehow disguise her tardiness. The parent support group meeting had started some fifteen minutes before but no one took much notice of when she had arrived, they were simply glad that she was here.

We had started the group a year after David died of addiction, barely 3 months after he had been in treatment…barely 6 months after he got into recovery and barely 7 months after he turned sixteen. When David got out of the adolescent intensive out-patient program he entered the Treatment Center’s “aftercare” program that was to help him make the transition from treatment to recovery.  But there was no “aftercare” program for parents to help us make a similar transition…and soon realized, much to our regret, how ill prepared we were.

So we started this Parent Support Group and some six years later here we are every Thursday night at 7:30 PM, a group of parents whose children have been in treatment for substance abuse.  Some a little farther down the path than others with no magic bullet, no answers, only suggestions based upon our experience.  No experts in the disease of addiction just parents who are survivors from it, on our own odyssey of recovery. 

She settled into the chair crossing her legs and entwining them around one of the chair legs.  She held one hand to her mouth and wound her other arm around herself so tightly I was afraid she would suffocate. She looked so frail and small wearing her countenance of fear and worry like a dark veil. 

When it came her turn to speak her story rushed from her lips in a torrent of words and emotions.  Her 18 year old son had relapsed, he’d been dismissed from the treatment program and when he had returned home she handed him a small bag, clean underwear and socks, a few essentials and told him that he could not continue live in her house while he was still using.  Her words turned to sobs as she spoke of the grief she felt as he walked out the door, the plea for him not to go that choked in her throat, the haunting feeling of not being a good parent and then the unspeakable fear of what would happen if he dies of his addiction alone and without her arms to protect him.

TBC

Forgive Me Crystal Meth

Crystal meth, my love of my life

Remembering all the good times and bad

Yet I still admire you in every way

Stupid for using everyday.

Today is the day, I've got to forgive you

All because I want to break away.

Left you behind now, never thought I would

Mest up my life, took everything away

Expected nothing, just wanted your high

Todays the day, never thought it would be here.

Have a nice life, forgive me meth.

17 Year Old Recovering Methamphetamine Addict

David Sheff's Beautiful Boy

I received an email more than a year ago from a father who had read an article about me that appeared in a national magazine.  He wrote that his oldest son had struggled with substance abuse for many years and described briefly the damage and emotional price he and his family had paid and continued to.  He thanked me for sharing my story about losing my David and asked if I would do him the honor of allowing him to send a copy of his book that he had written about his own family's journey.  I agreed, told him how much I appreciated his kind words and spent the next couple of months waiting for the book to arrive. 

It never did and I eventually forgot the email exchange until 6 weeks ago.  A package arrived in the mail from the publisher Houghton Mifflin, and when I tore it open the book entitled "Beautiful Boy" slid out into my hands.  A small card fell from the pages that read "With the compliments of the Author" and I suddenly remembered the email exchange so many months before with David Sheff.

As I drew out the book Beautiful Boy my heart was rife with emotions. Feelings of joy, gratitude, dread and envy swarmed around me as I thumbed through the pages. Joy that he had finished his opus.  Gratitude that he had remembered me from so many months before.  Dread because I knew that each page would hold for me …remembrance…delight…grief…laughter…pain…solace… and anguish.   And finally there was envy...envy that he still had his son and could write about his continuing recovery while my own writings are about loss, grief and unfulfilled dreams.

Beautiful Boy is a beautiful, honest, heart wrenching yet engrossing memoir of one family's odyssey through the uncharted and tempest tossed passage that is the disease of addiction.  It chronicles the path that millions of families trod every day which often begins seemingly innocently with the first discovery of an empty liquor bottle or a bag of pot.  It is inevitably followed by denial of the problem by parent and adolescent alike that seems to grows as the evidence of abuse mounts.  Anger comes next when we can no longer escape the fact that addiction has a hold of our young person.  Bargaining and despair often ensues when we recognize that we are powerless over our child's addiction and that it has made our lives and theirs unmanageable.  And finally, if  we are fortunate through the help of treatment professionals,12 step programs and others who have been this way before we reach acceptance that the disease of addiction is indeed cunning, baffling, powerful, patient, and that in the end we didn't cause it, we can't control it and we can't cure it.

For me the most affirming aspect of David Sheff's tender narrative is the way that it ends with the acknowledgment that his son Nic's struggle with addiction is a day to day proposition and that it will always be that way.  David's journey to the level of awareness that Recovery is lifelong hard work for all of us who are addicts, as well as those who love us, is at times painful and agonizing.  Yet therein lies the very essence of Beautiful Boy's message that through this odyssey called addiction there can be understanding and that with understanding there can be a rekindling of hope.  Hope that had not been lost to us but clouded by despair, denial, anger and pain.

Beautiful Boy may seem to many to be just about the collateral damage  and havoc of addiction but for those of us who have walked this path with David and Nic we know that in the end there will always be love and that hope does indeed spring eternal.

What Steps Do I Take If My Child Is Using Drugs?

We first discovered that David had a serious problem with alcohol and marijuana when he was 15.  Like many parents who make this initial determination we thought that now we were aware of the problem that vigilance would solve everything.  But we were wrong.

Early on there was much we didn't understand about addiction especially the fact that by the time David began to get careless enough with his drug use that we became aware of it, his use was already at a very serious level. 

So what do you do when you discover that your adolescents drug use has gone beyond experimentation and may have progressed to addiction?

Here is a list of 24 suggestions of what to do next from  The 24 Group who believe that:

• Addiction is a biological disease and as such should carry no social shame or stigma.
• There is effective treatment for addiction.
• Treatment should be available to all regardless of socio-economic status or access to insurance.
• Family education and support enhances treatment effectiveness and success for the adolescent/young adult.
• Addiction is a family disease; parents and other family members need their own treatment and support to achieve and maintain recovery from the devastating effects of this disease.
• Staying connected with a treatment program enhances chances of long-term success.

24 Steps to Take if Your Adolescent is Using Drugs or Alcohol

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1. Have your adolescent evaluated by a professional drug counselor or treatment facility
2. Immediately admit your child to a drug treatment program if it is recommended
3. Educate yourself and your family about the disease of addiction
4. Seek family counseling from a group or a professional specializing in addiction
5. Consider attending Al-Anon or Al-A-Teen meetings
6. Understand that addiction will lead to prison, institutions or death if not treated
7. Understand that no one has any control over the addicted adolescent except the addict
8. Do not give your adolescent cash or credit cards
9. Recognize that addicted adolescents have a disease and do not reason the same way as non-addicted teens
10. Do not make excuses for your adolescent’s behavior; let the natural consequences of their actions occur
11. Do not feel guilty about your parenting skills, your child made the decision to abuse drugs
12. Realize that emotional maturity in addicted adolescents stops from the time they begin their drug or alcohol use
13. Set and communicate clear behavior standards for the adolescent to live by while living in your home, no fuzzy or gray areas
14. Hold the addicted adolescent accountable for their actions
15. Consider suspending their driving privileges until the teen achieves sobriety
16. If the adolescent is facing legal problems, do not intervene, let the natural consequences occur
17. Be wary of the addict’s skills at manipulating people and events
18. Consider removing or securing all alcohol, narcotic prescription medication, cold medication, etc. from your home
19. Realize that addiction is a life long disease that cannot be cured, but can be treated
20. All family members should try to be of the same mind set when setting behavioral expectations for the teen, and when holding them accountable
21. Realize that addiction is a family disease that has a negative impact on all members of the family
22. The addicted adolescents recovery is his program, you should not try to work harder than the teen at that program
23. Relapses are common, recovery is achieved one small step at a time
24. Learn to live life with an addict one day at a time, and be grateful for the time you have together

How Do I Tell If My Child Is Using Drugs?

Parents and family members often ask me "how do I tell if my child is using drugs."  Two years ago we joined with several other parents whose children have struggled with substance abuse to form The 24 Group who mission is that we believe those touched by addiction in adolescence and young adulthood deserve support and advocacy. Because current resources are inadequate, The 24 Group exists to provide a means for those in need of addiction education and recovery support. 

As part of that mission we developed a list of 24 warning signs based upon our personal experience.

24 Warning Signs of Adolescent Drug or Alcohol Addiction

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1. Loss of interest in hobbies, sports or other favorite activities
2. School grades have declined dramatically
3. Difficult time concentrating on tasks
4. Change in sleeping patterns, up all-night or sleeping all day
5. Withdrawn, depressed, tired, careless, or manipulative
6. Hostile, disrespectful, untruthful, and uncooperative
7. Relationships with family members and friends has deteriorated
8. Money is missing from the household
9. An increase in borrowing money from family members and friends
10. Physical health has declined, bloodshot eyes, bulging veins, runny nose
11. Dramatic mood swings
12. Missing prescription drugs, cold medicines, alcohol, aerosol containers in the home
13. Increased secrecy about possessions or activities
14. Personal hygiene has deteriorated
15. Dramatic weight loss
16. Finding drug paraphernalia hidden in the home, pipes, rolling papers, eye drops, butane lighters, soft drink containers made in to pipes, etc.
17. Inhalant products, rags, computer duster, paint, nail polish, paper or plastic bags etc. hidden in the home
18. Truancy and tardiness to school or a job
19. Changes in fashion, hairstyle, use of breath mints, fascination with the drug culture
20. Sudden change in friends, numerous secretive phone calls
21. Use of room deodorant or incense in their room
22. Physically abusive, aggressive, punching holes in walls, etc.
23. Has anyone told you that your child is using drugs?
24. Odd phone calls, sneaking out of the house, etc.

Someone Else To Love

I didn’t want another child. 

When our first son Josh was born in 1981 it was a magical event which changed our lives dramatically and irrevocably.  The so called “honeymoon” period of our early married years, where we only were accountable to ourselves, ended abruptly for now our world revolved around our baby son.   And while I was captivated and obsessed with every sound and movement of this tiny human,jealousy and resentment grew within me toward the interloper who demanded and received undivided attention from his mother…my wife, my lover and my closest friend.

So when Josh was two and my wife suggested that he needed a brother my reaction was strong and selfish, fearful that another child would add to the distance and alienation that had already deeply wounded my pride and self-esteem.  Realizing that my insecurities were being exposed I offered weak excuses for my resistance to the idea of having another child in hopes of deflected attention away from the hurt that I felt.  “I am really happy with one child.  Being an only child is not so bad.  Maybe we should wait a little while longer”, I whined.  But at the core there was an even greater fear which I finally blurted out one evening after we had put Josh to bed.  “What if I don’t have enough love for another child…I don’t know that I can divide my love any more than what I already have between you and Josh.”

What happened next became one of those defining moments of my life when Marissa replied simply that “You won’t have to divide your love between us further you will simply have someone else to love.” Her words had a profound effect on me that day and I willingly put my faith in this new truth. A year later David was born and I will forever be grateful to her for those words of wisdom at a point when self doubt and self centeredness dominated my emotions.

David arrived a year later and was a beautiful boy; a kind and loving child who despite his struggle with substance abuse never lost his warmly affectionate nature and humility.  Since his death at 16 in a drug related drowning I have reflected many times on what life would have been like without David having been born.  His death was also a defining moment and while magical thinking is not a place I go often I have come to believe that if the price I had to pay to have David for his short 16 years was the grief and pain of his loss, then it was without question worth the cost and I would not hesitate to do it again.

I didn’t want another child but the gift of his life did indeed give me someone else to love and cherish now and forever.