I’m sure my
story is like many of yours. I was a single mom for over 14 years; I put
myself through school and had a great job. I have three children and gave
them what my limited income could provide. My youngest son was an
above-average talented honor roll student, a bright kid who wanted to become a
Marine when he grew up. I had recently gotten married; we bought a house and
were living the American dream with my 17-year-old son. With the two older ones
now on their own, I was no stranger to raising teenagers.
Kids always
want what they want. They want to hang out with their friends, they want
to sleep all day, they want food and money. They want all the time.
So when my son started asking for more than his allowance money, I did not
think twice about it. He always seemed to want $15 for laser tag, or to go to
the movies, or eat at
I was at
work, it was 3:30, and my son should have called as he’d done every day right
after school since 3rd grade. It was our deal. He was due to be at
work at 4 p.m. and was getting a ride from his best friend because he’d totaled
his car the week before. So when he called I was not surprised, other
than it being a little later than usual. What surprised me was what he
said. He and his best friend had been picked up by the police. Of
course I thought he was joking as that was his nature, to kid around about
everything. I asked him for what, he said the cops suspected that he and
his friend were in
Like many of
you, up to this point my knowledge of heroin addicts went something like this:
a person from the inner city who grew up in the projects, lived on the streets,
lived a life of crime. They were junkies, they shot heroin up with needles in
their arms, and they were dirty, nasty people who lived in the inner
city. They were loners, sleeping in abandoned buildings or under freeway
overpasses; they were thieves who stole money for their drugs. What they
were not was my 17-year-old son and his friend. They were not high school
students from the suburbs with their whole lives ahead of them. They were
not good kids from good families who lived in good neighborhoods where both
their parents had good jobs and provided a good life. My son could not be
that person, that junkie who would sell anything for that drug.
What I found
out was my son had become that person, and the scary part is that it happened
right under my nose. I never noticed nor had any idea what was going on
in his life. He had successfully hidden this addiction from me and his
stepfather, brother and sister. I spent the evening wondering what I had
done wrong, what kind of mother I was, how this could be. At first I
believed everything my addict son told me: he had only been doing this for a
few months, though I suspect it had been going on longer. That same
evening I was told by his best friend’s stepfather that my son’s addiction was
out of control, that he was shooting up and the drug had taken over his
life. I kept asking myself how this had gotten so out of control so
quickly when I had no clue, no warning, no nothing. Welcome to the world of
heroin addiction, the hell of living with a heroin addict. Looking back
now, yes, there were signs all the time; I just did not know that I was
supposed to look for them. I had an honor roll student so would never
think that he was using heroin, the furthest thought from my mind.
The first
flag should have been the need for money, all the time. My gut instinct
early on was right and I should have pressed the issue more, given him a drug
test, and at least we may have gotten to the root of the problem earlier.
Weight loss: this boy was melting before my very eye but; I did not really see
it because teenage boys grow tall and thin out. Water, constant thirst: I
thought he was just hydrating. Acne: his face was always breaking out,
but what teenager’s face isn’t. My spoons: where did all my spoons go;
wasn’t it odd that there were never any clean spoons? The reality was
they were gone because he was using them to heat up the heroin. His
hoodie, which he wore morning, noon and night: I thought he was just cold as we
kept the heat down, seemed to make sense to me. The reality was he was
hiding the track marks on his arms from us.
There was
more: mood swings, fights with his girlfriend, freaking out because he locked
his keys in his car. He had just gotten his license so he always wanted
to use the car, to meet his friends for breakfast. It was odd that he
would get up and leave early in the morning because mostly he slept till one in
the afternoon on the weekends. His school attendance, how many excuses
for not wanting to go can one person have? Yet, the grades were always
good, still made the honor roll; I never heard any concerns from his teachers.
One sign I didn’t see that was right in my face was in our family picture,
taken at the height of his (unknown to me) addiction. Looking at the proofs,
I could not find one where his eyes did not look like “bug eyes.” Later I
would learn those are what they call heroin eyes; they are hollow with deep,
dark circles. Oh, the things I know now that I wish I had known
then.
So now that you know your son is a heroin addict, what do you do? First,
scrub your house with bleach, because whatever disease this is that just
invaded your house you need to get out of there. If only it were that
easy—the life of insanity had just begun. Second, you take him to the
doctor; they’ll know what to do. Wrong! Chances are your family doctor
doesn’t have a clue. Next, check the Internet for a place to detox your
17-year-old son. Wrong! There is no detox facility for 17-year-olds; you can
call all the detox facilities you want, but there is no place to go unless you
pay cash because chances are they won’t take your insurance no matter how good
it is. Take him to the emergency room. Wrong! They don’t detox 17 year
olds.
No, you keep
looking until you find someplace that will make him better, because he is sick
and needs help. Mostly though, you pray every night that he will not die,
because this demon that has taken over your house does not care how many
victims it takes. You become as sick as the addict, your life as you know
it ends, you can’t sleep and you stop living until you realize that you, too,
need help because this is an illness that has affected the whole family.
The truth is it isn’t going to just go away and certainly not as quietly as it
appeared. This is the ugly truth about addiction: it is a long, long,
road to recovery and it is not an easy road.
My story does not end with a short stay in a recovery program. How naïve I was
to think we would get better after four weeks of an intense program.
Looking back, I now know that was the beginning of our journey, and it starts
only when the addict is ready to admit he is powerless over drugs and his life
has become unmanageable. I could not make that decision for him; I wanted
to, oh, how I wanted to. I would have carried him to the ends of the
earth if it would make this sickness go away. But he had to do it, had to
make the decision to turn his life over to his higher power and admit he was
powerless.
We are
approaching our two-year mark. Today, I can say my addict is clean and
sober. He graduated from high school, is almost done with his first year
of college where he made the dean’s list last quarter, and finally completed an
outpatient program. He is doing great and we are so proud of him.
He still has his whole life ahead of him and we can see that he is taking his
recovery seriously and that makes all the difference. But as we all have
learned it is truly one day at a time. Today he is clean, and we pray
tomorrow he will be strong enough to stay clean.
Anonymous