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  This was another of the periods when Rick was doing well enough to be in communication with the kids. I contacted him about the situation, and he decided it was time for him to make a surprise visit. Rick had been released from prison, was sober, and had separated from Sylvia because she had continued to drink during his recovery. The look on the faces of our kids was priceless when their dad walked through the door. At first, Lauren had a look of excitement, but she caught herself after she realized this visit was not for fun. She sat down with Rick, Ryan, and me, and as parents we told them that we were no longer going to accept their behavior. I told them that if they did not straighten up, we were moving from Colorado back to Arizona, close to Rick, where we at least had support.

  Lauren and Ryan listened attentively, not happy with what Rick and I had said. It was beginning to get tougher for the kids to enjoy their lifestyles of addiction, which was a change I wanted to make after our counselor had said the enjoyable way of life I had allowed was part of our problem. The week after Rick left, I got a phone call from the hospital. Lauren was trying to enjoy her addicted lifestyle in the hospital instead. There had been some hysteria because a few patients had taken hits of hallucinogenic LSD. Lauren was the one responsible for bringing the drugs to the program.

  I had no idea she had been smuggling in drugs. It went back to the fact that I had been letting go of my control issues, because there was no way I could have searched Lauren’s clothing, backpack, body, and purse every day. If she wanted drugs that badly, she was going to find a way to outsmart me, yet the hospital was up in arms and wanted to throw her out. Why was the counselor so surprised that Lauren was acting the exact same way at the program as she acted at home? Why did the counselor think I had brought her there for treatment in the first place? I wanted the counselor to be able to control the problems I couldn’t, and here I was listening to the staff at the hospital complaining about their inability to change Lauren’s behavior. Weren’t these the experts?

  I expressed my outrage, and the counselor backed down from threatening to kick Lauren out. They started coming down hard on her with consequences instead. She was switched from the outpatient facilities to inpatient for a day and forced to spend the night in the program, as one punishment. She had been caught bringing in someone else’s urine for her drug test. I later found out the urine she had taken belonged to a neighborhood girlfriend of Lauren’s who had been in trouble with the law and had urine to share because she was required to supply it for weekly drug tests.

  It seemed logical to me that if Lauren needed to be monitored constantly to catch all her tricks, perhaps the professionals should have recommended inpatient treatment. Nobody ever did. The hospital actually encouraged me to give Lauren some freedom and allow her to occasionally see friends. I was at the end of my rope. I felt overwhelmed, hopeless, angry, and discouraged. Though I had threatened Lauren and Ryan with the possibility that we would move back to Arizona, it wasn’t what I wanted, and yet a series of things led straight there. I found out that a large Canadian corporation was purchasing the company I worked for, and my department of two was to be downsized. I opted to take the severance package the company offered me. Afterward, I sent out job applications and within a week had two positions offered to me in Phoenix. I had enough money saved by that time to purchase a home if I took either job, so Lauren, Ryan, and I moved a third time.

  The home I bought in Phoenix was close to the church we had attended the last time we had lived in Arizona, and it was located only two miles from my friend Shirley’s home. Shirley and her daughter, Lindsey, were still having issues at that time, but things had improved since she had learned the Tough Love techniques and applied them in their home. My kids had not improved in the least. Before we left Colorado, Lauren stole some of my checks in the hope she could run away again, rather than move; however, she did not follow through. Ryan was adamant that he was not going to live with me and decided to go live with his dad, in Cottonwood, Arizona, a two-hour drive from the house where Lauren and I ended up. It upset me, but I let Ryan make his own decision. He wouldn’t be that far away, and he would come home to spend the weekend a couple of times per month.

  I continued to attend Tough Love meetings in Phoenix, with Shirley, and made sure there were consequences for any unacceptable behaviors Lauren tried to pull. As I settled in with her, things were less chaotic than they had been in Colorado. She even seemed to become inspired. She asked to go to a new, charter high school where the courses were designed to let her work at her own pace. Lauren actually went to school most of the time after I said yes and enrolled her, and she also got a job at a telemarketing company. I was pleased she was making progress in her life. Both the kids, in fact, seemed renewed. Perhaps it was due to the surprise they felt when I actually followed through with the threat of the move. In any event, this was a period when things were fairly peaceful, and I welcomed the needed break. Lauren was keeping from me what was just around the bend for her.

  CHAPTER 4

  FALSE HOPE

  LAUREN TURNED SIXTEEN the year we moved back to Arizona, and she resumed old friendships. I was so relieved. She had been close to her friend Steve since they were three years old. He was a good kid, and I couldn’t have been more pleased when Lauren contacted him. She also spent time with Shirley’s daughter, Lindsey, whom she had known for a number of years. I was a bit concerned about Lauren’s involvement with Lindsey, because she had caused Shirley so much trouble, but the girls had known each other for a long time. Might they be good for each other? Shirley’s advice had certainly been good for me. Lauren also met Robert, her boyfriend at the time, shortly after we moved. He was a nineteen-year-old she had been introduced to through her godmother Mary’s family. Robert seemed like a nice kid and had known Mary’s family for years, although I remember thinking he did not seem like Lauren’s type. I didn’t understand what she saw in him.

  Halfway through the semester Ryan attempted to move home, but that move was put on hold. I called Rick, and we decided it was better for Ryan to finish the school year first. At the time I was unaware, but found out later on, that Rick had relapsed. I had wondered what was up when Ryan wanted to come home. Turns out, Rick was drinking pretty heavily and so was his wife, and things were rocky in their marriage. It’s distressing to think Ryan had to tolerate the same type of environment I did, when my dad married Nora and they were both drinking a lot. He still came home on weekends, and when he did, Lauren, Ryan, and I started going back to our old church together. It was comforting to once again walk through the doors of the sanctuary, where so much healing had occurred for me.

  I was where I belonged, but Lauren was not. She was still trying to figure out if she belonged to herself or to her addictions. I had high hopes. Our church had one of the biggest teen programs in the country, and I had told Lauren that if she went on a retreat, I would pay to get her driver’s permit. She looked angry at first that she had to participate to get the privilege she wanted, but she quickly reconsidered her response and said okay. That spring she attended the teen retreat, with over one hundred other teens. When she came back she was quiet and looked angry. It wasn’t quite what I had hoped for, and I wasn’t sure how to read her. My initial take was that she must not have liked the retreat. Perhaps she was irritated with me for having forced the issue. What I found out years later was that she had a wonderful, spiritual weekend. Lauren had made the decision to stop using drugs, which had been an overwhelming release.

  At the time Lauren came home, I had no idea what she was thinking. She seemed so withdrawn. But soon after, Lauren started looking forward to going to church on Sunday and agreed to attend the eight-month-long confirmation program at our church. The problem was that her addiction had progressed too far by this point. Although she had decided she did not want to belong to her addiction any longer, there was no way Lauren could stop with just one promise at a weekend retreat. I certainly remember being at that point, when I believed I could quit u
sing drugs on my own. It was shortly after my divorce, and probably a few months after I had started attending church. I had gone out with a friend to play pool and drink a few beers, and that night my friend ran into someone who had some cocaine, and the next thing I knew I was snorting lines with her in the bathroom of the pool hall. I couldn’t understand how I could let myself down after I had decided to never do drugs again. Lauren wouldn’t be able to follow through either. It feels like you can reclaim your life when you promise to quit using, but you can’t, not without a bigger change.

  That summer was fairly quiet for us. We had no major incidents that I can recall. When school started in September, Ryan was living back home, just as I had promised, and Lauren was back at the charter school. It wasn’t long after that that I began receiving the same calls I always did. Ryan wasn’t showing up for school. Lauren had started to break curfew, skip school and work, and spend most of her time with her boyfriend, Robert. I got fed up with it all one day and told the children that I wasn’t going to accept the rule breaking and that if it continued, the consequences would come. I began by removing every TV and radio from the house. I drove them all over to Shirley’s house, to store in her garage. I couldn’t lift the big TV, so I simply cut the cord with a pair of scissors.

  After I started Tough Love, I had consistently issued consequences, and yet somehow Lauren and Ryan remained in disbelief that I would follow through. It was actually part of a cycle I didn’t see. After my consequences, the kids seemed to settle down. Then because of the improved behavior I would loosen up the reins, and they would take to their old behaviors again, and we were back at the start. It was a wild balancing act in those days. I had parenting, work, church, recovery meetings, and life in general to contend with. It was during this time that I met Bob, my current husband. We met at work and started dating, but out of embarrassment for my situation I didn’t initially volunteer any information about the problems with Lauren and Ryan. As Bob and I got more serious, I told him what had been going on. I was surprised and relieved when Bob said he supported me and would help me in any way that he could. He seemed like a nice, normal, down-to-earth guy. It was good timing for me to meet a man like that, because I had stayed out of relationships while I worked on my recovery issues. I had reached a point where I was ready to date, trusted myself to make better choices, and knew I could use all the help I could get.

  The kids and I went to Florida that year, to my sister’s house for Thanksgiving, and our problems from home followed us there. Money began disappearing from the purses and wallets of family members. My brother-in-law pulled me aside and told me about the thefts. I couldn’t imagine who would do something like that, because despite all the proof otherwise, as a mother I still refused to imagine that I had raised bad kids. “Please,” I thought to myself, “don’t let it be my children,” but of course it had been. My brother-in-law had set a trap by putting a wallet on the dining room table and setting up a video camera, and it was Ryan who was caught on tape. Thanksgiving morning my brother-in-law confronted him, but Ryan denied it, and then on the day we left for the airport, my brother-in-law came running out of the house and grabbed Ryan again. What now?

  “Where is it?!” my brother-in-law screamed. “Where’s the gun!” I was stunned when I heard the word “gun.” I thought this was still about the wallet, but it was not. Things had gone almost as far as the possibility of the dead person in my basement. My brother-in-law informed me that someone had taken a loaded pistol out of a hidden place in the house. At this point my sister grabbed Ryan’s suitcase and began to go through it. “Nothing here,” she called. She yanked Lauren’s suitcase out and started going through it as well. Sure enough, there was the gun. Ryan had secretly hidden it. Lauren’s eyes got wide when she saw it, and her mouth dropped in shock.

  Lauren firmly stated that she had nothing to do with the gun. My brother-in-law was screaming at Ryan by this time, which caused him to run off crying into the woods behind their home. We were already late for the airport as Ryan tore off into the forest. We all yelled for him, but he would not answer, and the woods behind my sister’s home were thick, so it was unlikely he could hear our calls. My sister took charge. “You have to get on that plane because you have to go to work tomorrow.” She told me that she and my brother-in-law would find Ryan. I followed her advice, boarded the plane, and was overwhelmed with feelings by the time I reached Bob at the other end.

  I had gotten on a plane without my fourteen-year-old son, who was lost in the woods in Florida and had just stolen a gun. I called my sister a couple of times in flight but there had been no sign of Ryan. Lauren and I were both upset and talked about our fears during the flight, which created a bond between us that felt real. What if they didn’t find him? we wondered. What if he got so lost in those dense woods that he couldn’t find a way out? What were we going to say to Bob? We were both in the same shoes, feeling traumatized, affected by the addiction of someone that we loved. When Bob saw this on my face and noticed I was missing one child, he sat me down. He had been waiting with flowers in hand when Lauren and I landed. This is when I told him everything. If we needed to, he said, we could catch a flight back and find Ryan.

  We called my sister again before making a choice. When I reached her, she informed me Ryan had been found. He was huddled in a corner on her back porch. She had found him sleeping, curled up with the dog. She was going to let him sleep it off and get him a flight out to Arizona the next day. I can imagine he was frightened to death in those woods, and even more scared when he came out to learn that his mother and sister had got on a plane and left him, thousands of miles away. I believed this was for the best, and that it was a powerful, natural consequence for Ryan. Once I got over being worried, I also felt justified. I was forced into the choice to a degree, and I had been angry, but it was necessary. My son had stolen money and a gun and had dragged the entire family into his mess.

  I called the psychiatrist who had prescribed Ryan’s depression medication, and when Ryan returned to Arizona we went in and talked to her. She recommended that we speak with a substance abuse specialist. Ryan met with this person, who then asked me to step into his office to discuss what he had learned. The specialist told me Ryan had no interest in stopping his drug use. There was a program, but the specialist suggested that I not bother because it wouldn’t do any good given my son’s attitude. I couldn’t believe the discouraging news. If there was no hope, what was left? At this point I was also dealing with another school situation. Ryan and another boy, Justin, had both been found in possession of drugs. Ryan had LSD in his pocket and a marijuana pipe. The police were brought in, and Ryan was suspended indefinitely.

  I refused to function without hope. I was not ready to concede defeat, and I decided that if I had to fight to get my kids help, then so be it. I contacted the psychologist who had said Ryan wasn’t ready to get help for his drug problem, and I pushed to get my son into the substance abuse program anyway. It was a six-week program in which kids met three nights per week in the evenings, reserving Wednesday nights for treatment that included the whole family. This meant Lauren, too, which was essential, because as a unit our family had become an unmanageable force. These family sessions were intense and confrontational. Most kids we met in the program had been court-ordered to attend. None of the kids attending appeared to like the program, and the parents just seemed overwhelmed and depressed. I was uncomfortable. At some of the sessions, things got heated between parents and their kids.

  It almost felt as if the families were being humiliated in front of everyone. There is an intense shame and embarrassment about addiction. Allowing others to look at your life makes you vulnerable. Addiction makes you feel like such a mess, that you should have been smarter, and you can’t believe how enormous you have allowed the beast of addiction to grow. Five weeks into this process, Ryan’s weekly drug test came up clean for the first time. Everyone clapped, and he looked proud. What I didn’t know was that he went out
that night and got high to celebrate. He had no desire to stop using drugs, but I was happy in a deluded bliss that he was finally sober, and I thought that Lauren might learn a thing or two from him. Ryan just went along for the ride to appease me, which made the celebrations we shared with the other families in our adolescent drug group a kind of false hope. The real hope was in remaining vigilant for my children. When Ryan graduated from the drug group, I asked to know more about a twelve-step program I heard about. Attending weekly meetings was one of the conditions of his release.

  The other kids in his adolescent drug group badmouthed the twelve-step program. They said it was a cult. This was because in the twelve-step program addicts weren’t allowed any slack. They were out if they continued to use drugs. One mother pulled me aside to confirm that in the program her son had been sober and done fantastically when he had been attending. It was only his own choice to leave, to go back to using, which had caused him to end up in the adolescent drug group for teens. The twelve-step group was for kids who wanted to get sober permanently and learn to live a happy life. At previous counseling and programs, Lauren and Ryan were told that they had better change or else terrible things would happen, but they were never given any solutions as to how they might make changes. In contrast, the twelve-step program was supposed to teach them how to get and stay sober. I needed the hope of this promise that my kids could have a great life.

  I called the contact number for the twelve-step group and was asked to meet with a parent at a coffee shop, located at the center where the teen group met. I was also interested in asking the parent how to sign Ryan up for the “sober” school I had heard about, which many of the kids involved in the twelve-step program were attending. Bob and I arrived early at the coffee shop. It was located in a large outside mall area. Soon after we got there, kids and parents began showing up at the coffee shop all around us, and the energy level of these kids left me stunned. The young people ranged in age from thirteen to seventeen years old. They were laughing and happy and playing around, having the time of their lives, something Lauren would be taken by later. These kids had the energy she remembered herself having, before her addictions had caused her to become a withdrawn shell of her former self.