"ADDICT"

Sometimes I feel like I am the addict as well as my son. Not because I feel the addictive urges, nor because I vicariously feel how he feels as an addict, because I can not know how he feels. I say this because I feel the stigma. I feel the frustration. I feel people's lack of faith or interest in offering help. I feel the emotional roller-coaster. I share the fear of what tomorrow holds. I feel the pointlessness of it all. I feel the intense isolation. I feel the pain of being misunderstood. I feel the need to make it all go away. I feel the insanity. 

                        

Despite years of seeking help and being involved in many services, I feel discouraged. Despite having a few friends I can count on one hand, I feel alone. Despite loving my children, I feel I have failed them all as well as myself. Despite trying, I feel like giving up. Despite feeling like giving up, I keep on trying and hoping, then I feel like giving up again. Despite loving a handful of people (which includes my three children) I feel like running away and being alone, then I am sad at feeling alone and want to be loved. I want a fix. I want euphoria. I want love. I want happiness and I want it NOW.

Is there something wrong with me that I believe in giving people a chance and being there for them 100% but I also believe that sometimes those who give also need to be given some love and support and belief? I believe in love and friendship and that we can help each other. So when I sit in a meeting regarding my son's potential eviction because society does not have any room for individuals with tortured souls who can not conform to society, I loose belief and feel like it is not only my son but myself as well who is being punished and ostracised with the throw away label of "druggie" as if that label dehumanizes the human who is suffering. "We do not like to evict young people who have no where else to go and no other housing project will take. We are concerned that you will have no where to sleep since the homeless shelter will not assist you because you are in arrears; however, sometimes we have no alternative. If you can change than we will reconsider". I want to scream while I sit calmly and try to express myself in a civilised manner that they are not "supporting" my son at all because they are judging him on past or current drug and alcohol misuse issues! I feel ostracised and judged and unsupported and betrayed. If I  feel these feelings, how on earth must my "druggie" son feel? How must any addict feel?



I am a parent of a drug addict. What we often hear as parents or loved ones is that the addict must come forward and ask for the help and "engage", and that sometimes the addict must first hit rock bottom. In the meantime everyone seems to turn their backs on the addict who is indeed an addict but is suffering and does not know how to deal with life. Maybe I am a hopeless hippy who truly believes in peace, love and happiness in a non hippy world and maybe that is the reason for my constant cognitive dissonance but I can not change who I am....though I would love to change the world!

I seek support, I seek advise, I seek understanding. To illustrate my dissatisfaction with it all, let me use a little incident that occurred during a large support group meeting. Three separate groups were brought together to listen to the manager of a local drug and alcohol support service to talk to the parents of young people with drug and alcohol misuse issues. While doing a great PR presentation of all that their service provide (mind you, the parents are being sold this wonderful dream of recovery, but we are told we can not force our children to "engage".....talk about dangling the carrot in front of the rabbit!) I made a comment on how my son differs in a certain "typical" behaviour of addicts. This "professional" looked at me and simply said in front of these other parents, "sometimes we just pull the short straw". Thank you, Mrs Drugs Recovery professional. I have pulled the short straw when it comes to one of my children. Excellent. Should we just give up now then? Is that what you are telling me in your professional opinion? What does she tell the addict who comes in frustrated and broken and rejected and desperately wanting change yet suffering relapse after relapse? "Sorry you poor pathetic excuse for a human being, we don't help the short straws here"

                                                           

Currently my son is in the psychiatric ward, once again. How many times has my son lost sense of reality? How many hospital visits has he had? Does the hospital look at his records and try to work out what has been going on the past year? No they do not. Do they seem concerned that each time it happened there were different interpretations of why it was happening? In the first incident we were written off with the dismissive, "it is alcohol withdrawal", to "it is from his kidneys not working properly due to lack of his self care in eating and drinking sufficiently" (but what led to his inability to look after himself), to "it maybe due to undiagnosed epilepsy", and of course the "its unexplained but more than likely due to his drug usage in the past and or present".

Am I expecting too much for some medical professionalism? When I brought my son into the hospital it took the ER doctor a few minutes to see that me son was not in his right mind and could not follow basic requests and could not answer questions appropriately. Waiting several more hours for a psych evaluation from a "crisis team worker/nurse" he too quickly assessed that my son had lost his grip with reality and experiencing things that we were not. That resulted in finally being admitted to the psych ward, approximately 12 hours after we first arrived to the hospital. In all that time my son's records were not produced, he received no care or medication. In the 72 hours that followed my son saw no doctor. When the appointment with the psychiatrist (and 3 other members of staff) finally took place, which I attended, he knew nothing of my son's past admissions, my son was coherent but anxious yet able to communicate sensibly. So this doctor did not see my son when he was hallucinating and not in our reality. The doctor did not take the time to assess the situation by reviewing the patients notes. The discussion started with, "Do you know why you are here?". I almost retorted with, "Do YOU know why he is here?" It quickly digressed into a discussion about generalised anxiety and also continued questions and remarks regarding drug and alcohol issues. Never was it discussed why he may have lost his sense of reality, nor was it discussed how this has happened on more than one occasion. I sat there feeling smaller and smaller and in the end I could swear I nearly just shut off while looking at the doctor looking like a caricature with a speech bubble saying "blah, blah, blah"So who is crazy? My son, the doctor or me? I think I may be the crazy one! I had a very strong urge to loudly speak out, "This is Bullshit! One does not hallucinate and is unable to identify simple objects and talk to imaginary people simply because one is anxious about things".


                                 


For me it is so difficult to watch, to understand, alone. I never have anyone to hold my hand though I hold my son's hand and care for my daughters as well. I never have anyone to give me an understanding hug when I go home after 9 hours of sitting with my child who can not string a sentence together. At home my son is a taboo subject most times. My middle child looks at me as if I were the bad one if I mention his name, as if I should not support a drug addict regardless of the fact that he is my son. I go home, barely speaking myself and carry on with life as "normal" but I want to cry and I want to be comforted.

So we are back to where I began this post, I feel like I am the addict at times but I do not have a drug to make all the suffering go away, even if only temporarily. I feel agitated, depressed, lost, alone, misunderstood, angry, hurt, labelled, used, pathetic and craving something to make it all better but there is nothing for me except hope and longing for things to change.

Happy & Homeless

Yesterday afternoon I received a phone call from my son that he needs a lift to the emergency room, because he cut his hand badly last night and today noticed that there are big chunks of glass wedged deep within the wound which he can not remove.



Of course, as mothers do, I said I would pick him up and take him to the hospital in 20 minutes. I had to know though, how did it happen? He slipped, while walking,  on the wet pavement and he was holding a bottle.

My youngest was not impressed as it was her last day at home from her winter break, her sister had gone back to her school the day before, so today should have been just about her. Not a fun way for an 8 year old to spend her last afternoon of her holidays!

As I pulled up on the street corner, I saw my son a few yards away, smiling and chatting to another young man. He looked good. My son looked to be enjoying himself, fully engaging in conversation, smiling, laughing. He looked like a good looking young man enjoying himself. He looked happy.
My first glance at my son made me happy. Then reality sunk in and I was no longer happy. I was not looking at my nearly 19 year old son hanging out with his class mate after uni, waiting for me to help him do his grocery shopping before I dropped him at his flat where he shares with other classmates....just a nice hypothetical example, one of many "nicer" alternatives to the truth.

I was watching my homeless son, chatting to his fellow homeless mate who was enjoying a can of cider, standing outside the drug and alcohol clinic, waiting for me to take him to the hospital to get his hand stitched up. This was not right. This was causing me a great sense of cognitive dissonance. This was making me feel edgy. AND he was making me wait, because he was enjoying himself!

Upon arriving at the hospital, he tells the true story behind his injury. The day it happened he had gone to the corner shop and stole a can of extra strong cider and a bottle of wine. He then proceeded to the park where he consumed all of the wine and cider. He was, according to him, enjoying himself and got a bit drunk. This led him to want more, so foolishly he went back to the SAME shop and attempted to steal another bottle of wine. He thought he got away with it, but once outside a man from the shop and a guard dog chased my son down the street. This is when and how my son fell and fell with the bottle of wine which smashed in his hand as he fell. The man caught him, and according to my son, dragged him back to the shop by the scruff of the neck. When my son tried to escape his hold, he threatened to sick the dog on him. Once back at the shop, the manager decided there was no point calling the police since there was no longer evidence that he took anything, it was broken and all over the pavement somewhere. They let him go with the warning that he is not allowed to ever enter the shop again.
           
                                        
                 

Having finished his story, he also told me that his hand was bleeding quite a lot after it happened and he wondered around and eventually went into a church that was holding an evening service. When some of the parishioners noticed the state of his hand they were concerned and offered him tissues. After the service the clergyman helped my son with his first aid kit, and everyone was very nice and helpful, though he didn't think the cuts in his hand were a big concern. All the while when he was telling me this, he was calm, relaxed even smiling and chuckling at times.

As he stood by the car door, very comfortable with the fact that he was going into the emergency room to get stitched up, he did not seem too bothered. I told him that I hope this is not the beginning of things to come. He said that it probably is and that he will probably get into fights and such and receive much worse injuries. I drove away sad, worried, and disappointed.

I reflected on our car journey home, how he was telling me, with his young sister in the back seat, how it is actually good being homeless. He gets a room and taxi. He gets fed decent food every night. There are churches that they go and hang out in to get warm and get light lunches during the day. He has free time and he is out doing a lot of stuff, not just sleeping and sitting indoors all the time like he was at home. He has no one hassling him, and the people don't judge and they are nice.

                                           

Right now being homeless, having a shelter with a special night provision, doing your own thing is an adventure my son is enjoying. I hope he gets housed in the supported housing project (that excepted him in early/mid December) has an opening soon, before this adventure turns into a chosen way of life that my son chooses over an improved living accommodation where he would get support with the intention of moving forward toward independent and healthy living. Something tells me once in a house with rules and boundaries to adhere to, he will look at homelessness as the better option for him. I hope my feeling is wrong.

Sunday, Not So Funday

Generally you would think that a weekend in the life of an 18 year old would be busy and maybe you would not see too much of him unless he was hungry or needed some cash to go out with his friends or wanted to borrow the keys to the car.



Things are a bit different in our house, except the not seeing much of my son part, but that is because he has slept most of the weekend away, as every day. While I write this, it is 6:45 pm and he has still not surfaced. We are about to have dinner...hmm oregano chicken and rice for breakfast son?

His weekend has been one of sleeping during the day. Drifting in and out of sleep on the sofa at night while watching TV. He became extremely anxious on Friday night because he was asked to meet a friend and his friends at the pub. He was anxious because it has been many months since he has done any socialising. After taking copious amounts of opium to calm himself down, the plans were cancelled. Saturday he was meant to meet that same friend at 1:30 pm at the park since Friday's planned fizzled out, but my son slept through the day, until his friend was trying to get some sense out of me, but I was not home. Saturday afternoon and evening he spent feeling guilty and anxious about not knowing what to do about said friend because he did not know what to say. I also tried to talk to him about "things" Saturday. Sunday morning he went to bed at about 7:30 am after more than likely falling a sleep for a bit on the sofa. I came down to see that the sofa was drenched in beer because he probably fell asleep with the beer in his hand and eventually spilled it. During the course of the weekend he has had opium, benzos, barbiturates (phenobarbital), quaaludes (methaqualone in the UK), codeine syrup, alcohol, and smoked some substance in his vaporiser. Saturday he never even got dressed. He talked to no one other than me. He did not go out.



So my son does not live alone of course. I am here and so are his two sisters, 8 and 13 years old. Saturday was OK because I had plans to take my youngest to see a friend and her mom for coffee. While getting into the car when we finished we bumped into another friend of mine and I ended up giving her a lift to work and having another coffee and a chat since she got to work so early! It felt good to be out and be spontaneous and share a few laughs and not being at home!

However, I was disappointed that my other daughter would not come, she is starting to get into this, "I don't want to do anything" stage and I am sure much of this is to do with the emotional stresses at home. Once home though, my energy vanishes and my mood changes. I spent some time on the computer and cooked a nice meal, which unfortunately we at in front of the TV because none of us can really face sitting down around the dinner table together any more.

Sunday has been a very lethargic day for us all. I feel responsible for this in regard to myself and my daughters. Can you believe we woke and came downstairs, I saw the wet sofa cushions and the room reeked of beer. I knew my son had just gone to bed so that he would be out all day. I felt ashamed that he bailed on his friend and no contact had been made. I was disgusted by the mess of ground up opium poppy husks and all the mess from his detailed preparations that were still in the kitchen. I knew we had no plans for the day. We were cold and it was grey and dismal outside. My daughters and I sat down, had breakfast and all of us sat like zombies (either playing on a phone, on the laptop, or watching cartoons. We sat like that for 3 hours, I am quite embarrassed to admit that!



No one understands that the atmosphere in the house is hindered by this constant involvement from drugs and the affects it has on us all. We have all become dysfunctional to some extent or another. The mere fact that I know he is sleeping it off all day and has no life, drains me from wanting to do anything. The guilt in me that even if I would try to have a "normal" life with my daughters while he is locked away in his room either sleeping or taking drugs or doing nothing, alone, alienated, excluded is too much for me sometimes. If he was away from home than that would be less of a powerful deterrent to me, but I do not know of course how I would feel if he was no longer here. Much would depend on the circumstances on where he was and how he would be living.

Finally we all showered and dressed, besides my son, who continues to sleep. We did manage to go into town and do a few things. The low mood in the house remains. I feel I should have within my power as a mother, the head of the household, the only responsible adult here,  to shake myself out of it and get energised with outgoing enthusiasm and teach my daughters to get up and lets enjoy life to the fullest....but I am not doing that and it feeds the vicious cycle of guilt.



Tomorrow though, we will get up and start our day fresh. My daughters will go to school, see their friends, enjoy themselves and come home and tell me all about my day. I will get up too and make sure the girls get to school and come home to make my phone calls and run my errands etc and talk to my friends. We will have appointments, training, clubs, meetings etc during the week, thank God! My son....he will sleep. He will start his week as an unordinary teenager which will be exactly the same as his weekend.

 I know my blog posts can vary from being contemplations to informative to just venting, so I hope you all bare with me if my posts sometimes seem to be random at times, but like the life we are living with an addict our lives and thoughts are on a roller coaster and maybe so to are my blog posts at times!

And if anyone is interested in some of what my son is taking, names some of you might not be familiar with, here are some links. Most bought on the internet. Many times disposed of by me, but always replaced by him, often after the stealing the money from me to do so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methaqualone

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbiturate

Drugs on the Brain

We all know that addiction to drugs and/or alcohol can have detrimental affects on the addict's mental and physical health. Long term abuse can lead to a damaged brain and liver as well as a damaged life. This is particularly true in brain development if the addiction started in adolescents. Recently I have been reading some articles that say the adolescent's emotional development stops at the time when their addiction begins. Others believe this to be untrue, while of course they do not deny the developing brain is damaged, the damage maybe restored since the brain continues to develop until 24 years of age. I certainly hope that the damaged can be repaired because this is my latest fear for my son.

I have been trying to research more on the damage caused to the developing brain, yet when I do it is hard to ascertain exactly what damage my son may have done to his brain since he has been using natural opium in tea form for many years, not heroin, and most of the research on brain development and substance abuse in teens are centred around cannabis and/or alcohol. Also he has been using so many other drugs, most of them depressants, that I imagine that would make the damage more likely to happen. I am familiar with the risks these combinations have, primarily on respiration, and can cause death by respiratory failure, but not so much about what it is doing to his brain.



My concern recently was my son's mental health due to brain development and possible damage. Now I wonder if it is mostly chemically induced, and temporary, since the behaviour I was concerned about the past week (being extremely withdrawn, placid, not eating, etc) changed dramatically yesterday because his substance changed. Apparently he took some buprenorphine which he was stashing away when he was on the drug replacement program, and when I commented to my son how I had been concerned the few days because he was so withdrawn but now he is aggressive again, he confessed that that is because he was heavily sedated on several different depressants the last week. However, even with her mood swings, there seems to be an underlying  feeling of "something is not quite right" with him any more. Of course this is not even mentioning that even the most "healthiest" of use would start to develop some signs of mental health issues if we had virtually no one to talk to, no social interaction, no life outside of our bedrooms etc!



Despite how the different substances alter may son's temporary behaviour, I am still concerned what long term damage he has done to himself. Not only on his brain development, but on his emotional development since he has lead a very unnatural adolescence and therefore I fear that my son has not developed as he "should have", which in turn makes it even harder for him to deal with the fear of changing his life from what has been his norm all of his adolescence.

Habit and the Hard Wiring of the Brain

As self help gurus are quick to point out, if you do something for long enough it becomes automatic. Nowhere does this wisdom more hold true than in adolescence. Though teens may change clothes, ideas, friends and hobbies with maddening frequency, they are developing ideas about themselves, their world and their place in it that will follow them for the rest of their lives. Adults may spend years trying to create or break even the simplest habit, yet most adults find that their most profound ideas about themselves and the world were developed in high school or college. This is because, by age 25 or so the brain is fully developed and building new neural connections is a much slower process.

- See more at:   www . samafoundation.org

Maybe there is still hope since he is only 18!