Drug Addiction: A Mother’s Story

Putting painful memories into words is difficult for me. The first time I sat down to write, a pounding headache forced me to stop after a few paragraphs. All families have some sort of issues that are just hard to talk about, but if sharing a bit of this will help another person…it’s worth it to me.

I feel like I’m a pretty tolerant person, but there is one word that makes me cringe every time I hear it. That word is methamphetamines, meth for short. Here is the story of my own personal meth hell.

So many times I hear stories about young teenagers or young adults with drug addictions, and the comments that accompany those stories. “It’s the parents fault, they raised them that way” , or “where were the parents?”, or “they had to get this behavior from somewhere”.

That may be true in some cases, but many times that is not the case at all. I’ve never done drugs, my husband has never done drugs…even my ex husband never did drugs. I have spent my life trying to raise my kids to know right from wrong, and to do the right thing.

The Beginning

The year it all started was 2004, I believe. I should have seen the signs, but truthfully I just didn’t recognize them. My son was a freshman in high school when he suddenly decided to stop playing football, something he had always loved doing. I remember the meeting at the high school with the long time football coach, attempting to talk him into staying with the team. I practically begged him to continue (for selfish reasons..I loved watching him play). Nothing any of us said or did could change his mind. He was finished.

His grades were slipping, and we were seeing angry outbursts from a boy that used to be kind and caring (although ornery). He started sneaking out at night. I started figuring it out and my husband would drive me around to look for him. Sometimes we would find him and make him come with us. Often his friends (and even one parent of a friend) would lie about his whereabouts. Sometimes we never did find him and I would spend another sleepless night tossing and turning.

He once told me that all of his friends called me “crazy mom” and that none of their parents cared where they were or what they were doing.

Our light bulbs were disappearing. They weren’t just burnt out, they were gone. We were completely confused at that. It wasn’t until my older son (who himself was no stranger to trouble) explained to me what drug users do with light bulbs that I understood what was happening.

I was so naive. There was a girl that kept coming by leaving notes that she wanted him to go with her to get some “ice cream”. Much later I discovered she was talking about meth. He was also using other drugs. He was expelled from school for huffing in the library, and had to finish the rest of the year at an alternative school.

He began stealing from us and others. My sweet boy was gone, and someone entirely different took his place. When he was little I could always tell if he was fibbing, because he couldn’t look me in the eye. During the height of his addiction, he would look me directly in the eye and lie to me. I had to take my purse to bed with me at night.

I tried everything I could think of doing. We took him to addiction counseling. I had him turn over his keys to me each night (the car was titled in my name), so that I could get some sleep by knowing that at least he wasn’t driving.

One night around three a.m , I received a phone call from my oldest son telling me that his brother was in jail. He then told me that the car had been impounded. Since I saw the keys sitting right beside me on my bedside table, I told him that couldn’t be right because I had the keys. Again, I was so naive that I never even thought that he had just had a duplicate set made.

That night he and his friends had been “car shopping”, which meant they were breaking into cars and stealing items to sell for drugs. I was devastated. Since he had turned 18 years old, he was charged as an adult. He walked at his high school graduation wearing an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet while he awaited sentencing.

He received a thirty day jail sentence followed by 28 day inpatient rehab and two years probation. This was his first adult offense, although definitely not his first time to get in trouble.

Rehab

My husband and I attended family day every week at the rehab center, to be supportive and to educate ourselves. It was a positive experience for all of us, and at the end of the 28 days I felt very hopeful for the future.

While he was in rehab, we cleaned and painted his room and threw away anything we found that was possibly drug related. On the day I picked him up, he hopped in the car and we headed out for the two hour drive home.

The first thing he pulled out of his personal belonging bag was his cell phone. He picked it up and immediately called one of his “buddies”.  We weren’t even ten miles away from the rehab center. My heart sunk. I was devastated.

We set strict rules and boundaries. The first step was a job. He got a job at a local factory, but lasted less than two weeks before he decided to just stop showing up. While we thought he was at work, he was out with his old friends doing the same old things. Because of this, we told him he couldn’t continue living with us.  He moved in with his brother and slept on his enclosed back porch.

Hope

A few months later he asked to come back home. Again, we set strict boundaries. He got a job, and there he met the girl that eventually would become his wife. They have been together almost twelve years now. I truly believe she saved his life.

I’ve learned that with drug addiction there is no rosey “happily ever after”. There have been many struggles through the years, but with his wife and kids as his priority he has turned his life around.

Just a few weeks ago I had a conversation with him about his life. He told me that he misses some of his friends ( the ones that he considered real friends), but he also realizes that just being with them is a trigger for him..so he has to keep his distance.

Drugs (specifically meth, in our case), can turn a family’s world upside down.  Just when we thought all of that was behind us, we went through a similar experience with one of our adult daughters. How could this be happening with our ultra responsible girl that graduated high school with a 4.0, had her associates degree and well into her Bachelors, and worked two jobs? We were blindsided.

As of today, all is well. Even though I can say this today, I am constantly on edge. In the past few years I’ve made a conscious effort to concentrate on myself and not let worry overtake me. I’m proud of all of my kids, and just try to have faith that they will make the right choices in their lives.

Many families go through their own private hell but never share it with anybody. If any of you just need someone to talk to about things, I am a listening and non-judgmental ear. I’ve been there, and it’s hard.