Addicted Like Me Page 19

  We compromised by buying him a few toiletries and a couple of cartons of smokes before he left. He asked me for a couple of dollars as well, so that he could buy a few TV dinners to eat once he got back home. I moved into the role of the parent, feeding money to the addict-child. I gave him a hundred dollars because I couldn’t bear the thought of him going without. There was a sad mood among us all when my father said goodbye. As I hugged him he squeezed me tighter than he ever had before. It was as if he didn’t want the hug to end, so I held on as long as I could. I waved goodbye to him, thinking that might be the last time I ever saw him again. His life could only go on repeating our legacy. He called to say that he had one of the best times in a long time with Ryan and me. I told him once again that I wanted him to stay with me for a while, but I didn’t press the issue too much. I told him that I loved him, too, and that I had to let him go, so that I could get to work. I grabbed my cell phone during work the day after that and saw that I had missed four calls from my grandfather in Montana. I instantly knew something was wrong with my dad.

  First I tried to call my grandfather, but there was no answer at his house. Before I could call anyone else, I got a call from my mother. She asked me where I was, and I said I was at work. She told me to stay there and that she was on her way, but I wanted to know right then what was going on and argued with her until she would say. My mom hesitantly confessed that my father was dead. I was running through the halls at the bank where I worked after that, and I was crying hysterically, and I remember people stared. I tried to unlock the security door at the back to get to the employee lounge, but I couldn’t see through the tears in my eyes. I couldn’t stop shaking enough to unlock the door with my keys. A coworker saw me panicking and ran over to let me in. After she let me in, I tried to walk to the lounge, but my legs gave out, and I collapsed to the floor, where I lay and cried and cried. My coworkers knew about the things I faced with my family. Nobody had to ask what happened when they saw me on the floor.

  My fiancé arrived soon after. I threw my arms around him and cried even harder. He just held me and let me cry until I could stand on my own. A few minutes later my mother arrived, and we all cried together. I realized that my brother, Ryan, was the only one who hadn’t heard. The entire drive to his home, all I could think about was my father. How did he die? I really wanted to know what happened. I dreaded knocking on Ryan’s door when we approached it. I hated to tell him that our father had hit the bottom that all of us had hit but decided to let it drop out beneath him and freefall into death. Ryan already knew that with addiction, the choice at the end is always extreme: to recover for good or let the addiction kill you. He saw our tears when he opened the door, and his expression turned to dread. We didn’t waste any time telling him what had happened to Dad, and we cried a little more. We all just wanted to know more details, so I called my grandfather to find out how it happened. It wasn’t shocking news, but it was painful. My father had shot himself in the head. I wished after hearing that that I could lose myself to the instinct I had to numb myself to everything, but I knew if I did I would end up like my father, and our shared legacy of addiction would be death.

  I couldn’t believe how overwhelmed I was with grief. It doesn’t help to know that an addict is always making choices that may lead to death. I always knew that but still couldn’t understand how my father could choose to take his own life. Knowing what can happen to an addict is not the same as understanding why it has to happen, I realized, especially because by then I had been able to change life’s terms so that it didn’t have to happen to me. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, and I couldn’t understand why he killed himself. That dream little girls have about having their father walk them down the aisle had been taken from me just months before I was to be married. This was the time in my life when I really needed a father to share my happiness. I had to have some kind of truth to help sort out my head, so I went to a meeting.

  As the meeting started, I didn’t say a word about his suicide until it was my turn to speak, but when it was, I broke down and told my story. I was experiencing such stress and such grief that I can’t even remember what I said. I was consumed with hopeless-ness and anger. It had been left up to my brother and me where we wanted to bury my father. After the meeting, I was going to have to sort through the additional emotions of this process. Ryan and I decided that the only thing that felt right was to bury our dad in Montana, alongside my grandmother. She had died by this point, and in Montana my dad could also be buried close to Jason, the brother I never knew. He was the first in our immediate family to die as a result of our family addictions. Attending my father’s funeral was the hardest thing that I have ever done. He was the second person to go. Maybe it would have been easier if he had died some other way, a car accident perhaps that wasn’t his fault, or from a heart attack. Any ordinary thing would have been better for me than to face the anger I felt at his choice. He took his own life, and we were left to deal with the messy consequences. At the end his own addiction remained the most important thing in his life, and just like always I was a casualty along the way.

  This was salt on a fresh wound and almost too much to bear. It felt as if my father had been brutally murdered, except I didn’t have anyone to turn my anger toward. He was his own murderer, and his mess spilled over into many lives, from mine to my brother and mother’s lives, to the life of my grandfather, and into my world of recovery, into my meetings, into talks with my sponsor, and into the community where I shared my grief.

  During this whole time, everyone tiptoed around me. No one knew what to say, so sometimes people didn’t say anything at all. My sponsor opened up her home to me in the event I would need her. She helped me do the work I needed to deal with the anger at my dad’s addiction, and at addiction as a disease. I had to work through the pain. She helped me learn what my bottom line was with my feelings and helped me to face them and to not run from them. That bottom line was the fact that I never thought that a parent could kill himself. A lot of things in life seemed like an option for even a terrible parent, but not that. My shock to discover that this was not the case was not going to be the thing worth giving up my sobriety for, however. I was determined to not let the tragedy ruin my life. My terms were made to recover. My father’s terms for life were made to die.

  Addiction is a disease capable of killing anyone. Somewhere in every family legacy, someone has to break the cycle. I am that someone, and so is my mom. Every one of us is that someone when we choose the hope that makes our beast powerless.

  PART III.

  WATCHING US RECOVER

  A Mother-Daughter Guide to Recovery Strategies and Hope

  CHAPTER 14

  DOES YOUR KID HAVE A DRUG PROBLEM?

  AT ONE POINT or another, your kid will be faced with an opportunity to use drugs and will probably be given that opportunity by a friend. At this defining moment, the decision that your child makes is one of the most important, because it may be the choice that changes his or her life forever. Teens often don’t see the link between action and consequence, and yet more teens than not repeatedly report that they have experimented with drugs or alcohol. None of us can know who will or will not succumb to addiction, or when. It could be the first time your kid chooses to try drugs that a long-sleeping addiction wakes up and takes hold.

  My mom and I woke the beasts of our addictions by abusing alcohol. We did this to numb some sort of pain in life that we didn’t want to feel. In this chapter are possible forces, like pain, that may trigger addiction in your child. Of course, no two addictions look identical, but the forces that feed any beast of addiction are similar. You can examine your life for these pressures. After you look for these pressures, the next step that may tell you if your child has a drug problem is looking for physical signs. I have listed the signs my mom could have caught in me if she had known to be looking for these things, or, more important, if she had decided to look for them. Denial will keep any parent from discoveri
ng a drug problem that may be right out in the open.

  ADDICTIVE FORCES

  FAMILY HISTORY: Genetic research shows that 50 percent of the vulnerability to alcoholism is linked to genetics. My mom discovered that my dad’s family had an addictive legacy lying one generation back. His parents didn’t drink and raised my father using strong morals and standards. She later learned that both of his grandfathers had drinking problems and one of them had owned a bar. Do you know about documented cases of alcoholism in your family lineage? Do you know about addictions that may be one or two generations removed?

  FAMILY MODELING: The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reports that in addition to the 50 percent of vulnerability to alcohol addiction caused by genetics, 50 percent is triggered by environment. Is your house a culture where heavy drinking is common? Does your child regularly spend time in a culture where heavy drinking is common?

  EMOTIONAL ISOLATION: You can’t cure a sick brain with a sick brain, my mom says. This basically means that we learn how to cure our hurts by using techniques we have seen. My mom and I both saw sick people around us isolate themselves emotionally to withdraw from feelings that were hard, like pain or shame. We did the same thing before we learned tools to feel these real emotions, because that is what we had been taught. Do you notice that your child is resistant to handling a range of feelings? Are you resistant to a range of feelings?

  EXTREME CYCLES: Many addicts have witnessed extreme incidents that end only to see another situation that is equally traumatic. The risk of even one of these incidents would be unlikely in the life of anyone else, much less a string of them. In my family I watched my father marry and divorce several women, be arrested and jailed several times, and attempt several suicides. Do members of your family watch intense things happen multiple times?

  PHYSICAL SIGNS OF ADDICTION

  When I first started my using, I was smoking pot and drinking. I was always fearful that my mom could tell I was high or drunk. Paranoia may be an easy sign you can spot in your child if something is going on that your child is trying to hide. It is a physical sign of addiction to many types of drugs. For kids who are addicted, it’s like their parents can actually read their mind or something, so they will freak themselves out often. They might also freak out if their parents choose to make a straightforward confrontation about their paranoid behavior. When my using began, I started to become very paranoid all the time. The other physical signs I displayed were changes in what I could talk about, objects I began to acquire, smells I created, my ability to keep track of time, and my temper and body.

  TALK CHANGES

  Talking in a straightforward way will tell you a lot about what is going on with your child, even if you don’t ask directly if drug use is going on. I entrenched myself in the world of marijuana smoking and learned from fellow pot smokers the ins and outs of the drug. This meant that I began to know words that I couldn’t have otherwise. A few you can listen for are listed here: toke, hay, bud, herb, grass, weed, ganja, cannabis, and Mary Jane. To roll a joint, I had to learn about rolling paper, so I could put the weed in it. If I wanted to cover the smell of my joint, I said I was going to roll a spliff, a half-tobacco, half-weed joint.

  I learned a new list of words when I switched my drug to crystal methamphetamine. It was in a class of stimulants that went by a bunch of nicknames on this list: tweak, zip, speed, chalk, Tina, bennies, black beauties, crosses, hearts, L.A. turnaround, truck drivers. If I wanted to do the drug in a smokable form, I had to learn to ask for it by a different nickname, like any of these: ice, crystal, crank, glass, fire, go fast.

  All the drugs I did forced me to learn new words, and all drug scenes will teach your teen a vocabulary that you can listen for. My mom may have even succeeded in finding out what I was doing if she had used a keyword from the list below in an unexpected context, because that would have really shocked me. This goes back to the paranoia that will be there in children if they are hiding a problem with drugs. I doubt I could have hidden the terror in my face if I heard my mom say something like, “You know, Lauren, all the robo-tripping that’s going on these days is crazy, don’t you think?” Here are keywords related to cocaine, heroin, the prescription drug Ritalin, and over-the-counter medicines:

  Cocaine goes by coke, C, snow, flake, blow, bump, candy, Charlie, rock, toot, nose candy, he or she, lady flake, liquid lady, nosebleed.

  Heroin is sometimes called H, dope, junk, black tar, smack, brown sugar, horse, mud, skag, lady, white girl, goods, Harry.

  Ritalin is one drug that represents a new vocabulary that was not really around when I was a drug-addicted teen. It’s called vitamin R, R-ball, smart drug, Rits, or West Coast. The newness of this vocabulary is due to the fact that prescriptions are common now for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other behavioral conditions. This happened in Ryan’s case. Numerous studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of methylphenidate (or Ritalin) for treatment of ADHD, but it can also be abused as a stimulant. If that’s the case, it is easier to listen for the nicknames. Over-the-counter drugs go by many nicknames because there are so many products that are possible for an addict to get a high from. One craze is for cough syrup. Teens are likely to drink an entire bottle, and NyQuil and Robitussin are brands your child might seek out. Another cold preparation used is Sucrets. It can be crushed and boiled to come up with a powder that contains dextromethorphan, the high that goes by the initials DMX. Code words that apply to this scene are skittling, tussing, skittles, robo-tripping, red devils, velvet, triple C, C-C-C, robotard.

  NEW OBJECTS

  There are multiple ways that pot can be used, so if you look, you may be able to spot items around your house that you don’t recognize. My mom easily found a few of my pipes. Looking around your house will better help you to know if your child is hiding a drug problem. Have you seen anything that looks like the descriptions below?

  • BONG: a long cylindrical glass jar where the marijuana smoke is inhaled from the canister.

  • PIPE: There are small and big ones; it is basically a tobacco pipe for weed.

  • BUBBLER: a type of hand-blown glass pipe that has a pouch for water so that the marijuana smoke filters through the water as it bubbles.

  • VAPORIZER: This is a way of smoking weed without any smoke. This machine heats up the marijuana so just the THC is burned off in a vapor and inhaled. This gives out minimal smell and is considered to be better for the lungs.

  • EDIBLES: brownies, cookies.

  • HOOKAH: Many teens now go to cafés or bars where there are hookahs with flavored, usually fruity tobacco. Teens can buy their own hookahs and add pot to the flavored tobacco, which covers the scent.

  • MEDICINAL: If teens can get their hands on a marijuana prescription, then they can eat marijuana energy bars, pills, and chocolate-infused pot.

  Eye drops were constantly with me after I used any of the methods above to do my dope. I had to hide my bloodshot eyes before I came home and had to make eye contact with my mom. I also had pot paraphernalia hidden in my room. This was usually the portable things like rolling papers, lighters, little baggies to bring weed back and forth, my stash of the drug, and pipes. There are pipes available that look like a roll of mints, a makeup brush, a battery, or a cigarette lighter. If you are searching your child’s room for paraphernalia, it is wise to keep this in mind and check out anything that does not seem to quite fit with what your child would ordinarily need.

  It would have been harder for my mom to look for the evidence of my drug use by the time I was using crystal meth. Amphetamines come in crystals, literally chunks, or a glittery powder that is off-white to yellow in color. You may not be able to spot the chunks or dust. My personal preference was to smoke meth in what is called a glass pipe, but stimulants can also be swallowed in a pill form or snorted in a powder form through the nostrils, where the drug is absorbed into the bloodstream. Needles are also used. If you find a syringe, consider that ser
ious, because it means you may be dealing with an IV drug problem. This will carry serious health risks in addition to the risks of the chemical substance.

  DIFFERENT SMELLS

  I knew exactly what time my mom got off work, how long it took her to get home, and how long it would take for the garage to air out so that she couldn’t smell the weed if I did drugs at home. Right before she would get home is when I would leave the house to go gallivanting around the neighborhood. This aired out my clothes, but just to be sure I would shower myself with perfume or cologne. I also quickly learned to carry gum or mints with me to hide my smell after getting high.

  Using stimulant drugs didn’t carry as much of a risk that I could be caught by the smell. One thing you may notice is a “fishy” or ammonialike smell if you find the chunks or powder that is used when the drug of choice is crystal meth. If meth is being used in a smokable form, the odor is not distinct enough to notice; you can’t place the smell, and it doesn’t alarm you.

  TIME CHANGES

  If I didn’t come home after I smoked pot and left my garage to air out, it was because I was going to find my next high. I usually continued my pot smoking down at the park or at a friend’s home. This is when I started to miss curfew and skip coming home for dinner. I frequently didn’t come home due to the fact that I had gotten too high and was in no condition to come home. Many times I just didn’t care, because getting high was way more important than any consequence that I would receive.

  When I was smoking crystal meth, I always had time for everything. I would not sleep and would stay up all night in my room while my mom thought that I was fast asleep. There were times that I would stay up anywhere from three to five days at a time. I would continuously clean my room, even down to washing my walls. I would spend hours painting my nails, studying, trying on clothes, grooming myself, and talking on the phone.