It takes little effort to blame an addict for making “the choice” to use. No one has a “happy” life and then decides to “blow it up” one day because it’s on the bucket list. It took a series of events, moments or trauma(s) to get here and it is going to take hard, painful work to get out of it. Happy people don’t alter their state of being but unhappy people do. It is not your ability to love or make love that determines a life…a relationship…It is your ability to face adversity singularly and as a team that tells the truth. Sometimes that truth is green.
“May 2006
Dear Ryan,
Over the past couple of weeks I have been contemplating the past few months and all the years since your birth. I have been thinking about when you were born and your childhood. It is the need to know, the analytical side of me. I search for answers in my contribution to this. This not being your drug use but this being my part in giving you the sense that you did not belong in this family. That we weren’t happy with you.
I am able to see places where you felt I turned my back on you. At times I even laid down and died. I abandoned you in my selfishness. I said I wanted you to be you but I still tried to color you. In that I left you feeling valueless.
It is in seeing this that I am working to continue to change my behavior. It is not an easy task. I have spent years being one way. At times, particularly stressful ones, I find myself stepping back into old behavior. However I recognize this and can get back on track fairly quickly. I need you to know that I am truly sorry for my behaviors. Sorry does not mean anything if I am not willing to change the behavior. I know you must have these feelings as well about your choices. Parallels are amazing.
The past can not be changed but the future can. My parenting skills were not a reflection of you but of me as a person/parent. You have always been one to challenge me to learn in life and it is one of the things I love about you. Even if it does take me a while to get there and even if your challenges are difficult, I love you for them. I will love you for all of eternity. There is nothing that can change that. Your choices do not alter my love for you. You are in my heart and soul forever.
I have wondered if I caused you to make these choices or if someone else did. I realize that the choices were your way of dealing with the pain you were feeling. As you can not use me or anyone else as your excuse for these choices, I can not use you as mine to not change. I can not lay down anymore. I choose not to.
I am fearful for your choices. That these choices will continue to be the way you deal in life. I watch your choices affect the people who love you. Part of me, the old me, wants to shake you awake. The new part of me knows that you must make your choices. I won’t enable you and I can help myself and your family to learn from those choices – to grow from them.
Taylor and Ashlee realize that while you have fallen down, your stepfather and I are being better parents because of you. They are learning to speak about their feelings, to accept them and to listen. They are not laying down. Taylor hit a ball almost out of the park for you. She said, “You would have done that for her.” She misses you.
You did not have these benefits before. I can’t get that back for you but I am willing and able to give it to you now. We are as a family. You were always a part of me and a part of this family. We will continue to show this to you. You do belong. You are somebody in this family. You are our Ryan and we are your family.
I am fearful that you are losing you. That you are not coloring you. The drugs are and your behaviors are. I am fearful that you have laid down and died. The drugs changed you. When you are using, we can’t count on you. I use to be able to leave and know that all would be well at the house because you were in charge. I never worried because you would bring your best – until the drugs. Even in sports you gave your best – until the drugs. Your family, friends and teammates could count on you. Then drugs came and you laid down and died. The drugs took you and left a stranger behind. He looked like you but he wasn’t you.
You never lied to me before the drugs. You were always accountable. You always let me know when you were telling a story or the truth. I could count on that. I can’t now because of the drugs. The drugs changed everything in you. The drugs brought out the worst in you. I miss those stories and you.
Where are you? I know you have been in the maze. The drugs make you want to stay there. Your family is outside the maze. We want to hear you laugh and tell your stories. We want to laugh with you again. For a long time no one has been able to laugh. We are laughing again now. We want you to share that with us. We want to know what you think and feel. We want to know you, not the stranger.
I miss you. I love you. Kisses and hugs.
Love Mom”
A simple letter of hope and fear. A letter to fill in the empty places in Ryan’s heart by giving him the self worth that drugs took away or replaced. Words from a mother who knew her child and believed this would all go away. He just needed to change. I was scared out of my mind, completely determined and the green truth was what I believed.
Today I know Ryan’s self worth wasn’t being controlled by a “stranger”. The “stranger” hadn’t taken him from me. This outsider was Ryan. He had developed into him while I was believing “he will be fine”. It wasn’t a moment. It wasn’t one failing. It was a series of events that he failed to survive well because we didn’t lead him to survive well. The green truth is in reality a naïve truth and none of us, addict or non-addict, got here in a moment.
That which doesn’t kill us still destroys us but we got this. We are fine. He’s fine. We will be good as new…
Would you notice if your child’s heart was broken? What if it was being chipped off one little piece at a time until the hole was big enough to alter her or his state of being? Events happen, big and small, that affect our children. We just assume they will survive emotionally but there is a big difference between surviving and surviving well. In order to survive well they must cope well. In order to cope well they must know their personal emotional definitions and believe in them. Those definitions are created by their view of life. Their view is as valid as mine or yours. Affect those definitions and the foundation of a child becomes fragmented. A fragmented person will choose to find relief where she or he can. Some cope through drugs or alcohol and others cope through…
“After my parent’s divorce, neither my brother nor I saw our dad consistently. I was only 4 years old and Ryan was just a 1 year old. Right from the beginning my mom taught me to protect Ryan. My mom didn’t trust my dad to keep the pool gate closed when we were at his house. She did not trust him to not leave us buckled in our car seats while he went into a convenience store with the keys still in the ignition. Because she felt she didn’t have any other option, I was placed in the position of acting like an adult at a very young age. It was a lot of pressure.
When our dad remarried he took more interest in us. He said that our living in a city that was a couple of hours away affected his ability to see us. Our mom had moved back to be near her family. The drop off and pick ups for our visits occurred at a McDonalds that was an hour and a half away. There were a few times he didn’t show up. We sat and waited for a couple of hours and then we drove home. Other times we didn’t want to go but we had to.
Our mom did not tell us that our dad was using drugs for several years. Because of the inconsistent visits, I don’t think she thought his drug use would happen around us nor affect us. It did though. At first we thought he didn’t see us because we weren’t “lovable” enough. If you don’t tell kids the truth they come up with the wrong answers on their own. Once we were aware he was using drugs, we thought he chose them over us. When he had more children with our stepmother, it seemed like they were more important. His love was inconsistent and confusing. How do you learn to love when that love has so many conditions or justifications?
During those visits, we felt like unwelcome guests. Everything seemed to revolve around the comfort and happiness of our siblings or our stepmother. Once when I refused to eat my stepmother’s mash potatoes, she demanded that my father force me to eat them. He did and then asked her “Are you happy now?”. Today my relationship with my dad is different but the memory will never fade away. I stopped visiting after that happened.
My stepmother also down played my dad’s drug use around my mom. My mom counted on her to keep her informed and us safe. However at their house she constantly referred to him as a drug addict in front of us. It was as if she was pushing him to use. He would tell us he was going out to get food and then not come back. How do you trust your dad if you don’t know if or when he’s coming back? A lot of my teenage birthdays were spent wondering where my dad was because he would disappear on a drug binge. I couldn’t ever just be a kid because I was worried all the time.
Over time all those confusing messages created by the adults in my life left me in pieces. There was a cloak of “do as I say not as I do”. I learned to not trust my dad or men. My knowledge was that love was conditional. If I was unhappy it was my fault and if anyone else was unhappy that was my fault too. I needed to be perfect or at least appear to be. Part of that appearance was not telling our mom what was really going on. I didn’t want to add to her burden and we wanted to see our dad.
I lived that fallacy until I just couldn’t do it anymore. I didn’t step towards drugs. I didn’t want to become like my dad. Instead, I stepped towards males. I always dated several of them at the same time. I didn’t feel wanted by my dad so I chose males who needed me but couldn’t actually be there for me either. I stayed disconnected from them so none of them could hurt me. I am sure I hurt some of them. I was in control and that brought me relief. It was a vicious cycle that carried into my adulthood. It’s hard to realize that what we learn in our childhood is what we become as adults.”
The dictionary definition of an addict is: to surrender oneself to something habitually or obsessively. Depending on your experience (or lack of) with an addict, your feelings can range from indifference to extreme pain or even hatred. That reaction to the word addict is your emotional definition of that word. It is how you feel. The description is the same for everyone but the reaction to the word is different. Pick any word and think about how you feel about it. Does anyone else feel the same or is it different? How can we talk about and solve something as huge as addiction when we don’t all feel the same about it? How can an addict find herself or himself, when recovery is affected by everyone in their life and everyone has different feelings?
We didn’t get here in 30-90 days but we would be out of hell in 90 days or less…Right?
In life, we act and react based upon our emotional definitions of words that each of us has developed and not by the dictionary definitions of those words. Dictionary definitions create a common theme for people to understand but do not take into account individual pain, happiness, indifference or NORMALCY. When we speak, we speak with our personal words and because of that we can’t solve this based on a “one size fits all”. There certainly are common themes or common behaviors but we gravitate towards the “group(s)” that we connect to emotionally. If you are in pain, you will gravitate towards the group that understands that and has a cure for that, including the use of altering substances. Misery loves lots of company. If you are a desperate parent, you are vulnerable to those who have “the answer” even if that answer hasn’t evolved since the beginning. That’s not a win. That is a delay of game with a loss or multiple losses being a part of the future.
Heading to my son’s court date, knowing that the judge and prosecutor were unaware that my son was out of state at a rehab, was nerve racking. I am sure that a part of me was defiant. Again Ryan and I paralleled a lot. He had needed to go but he fought to the bitter end and I was forcefully determined that he was leaving. Opposites but parallel. Equals that stood across from each other reacting with our own emotional definitions. Both believing we were in the right. Would the judge and prosecutor understand that? Only if they too had a child that became a drug addict. Only if they too had the same reaction as I did. Only if their knowledge included emotional pain and not just definitions of words and laws.
The reaction on the judge’s face as he realized that I had sent Ryan away was more descriptive than any words he spoke. He went from what I assumed was his normal court expression, to surprise, to anger and back to surprise in a matter of seconds. He just kept looking back and forth between Ryan’s lawyers, the prosecutor and myself. It was as if he was waiting for one of us to say it was “just a joke”. When he finally spoke, he asked me “Why I had not just brought Ryan in so that he could have ordered him to rehab?” I was not sure how I would have done that because time was of the essence in getting him away. It was about saving him but years later I realized it was about saving me too. My response to the judge was “Outpatient treatment was not working and he was going to die if I did not do something drastic.” That was the truth. He was going to die…just not that time. I also think there was a part of me that thought being in trouble with the law had not affected Ryan as strongly as it should have. Removing him would keep him from using drugs and being away would give him the clarity he needed. How could anyone argue against that? How could anyone be mad at that? It made complete sense to me but of course I was the one feeling it.
The judge and the prosecutor dealt with what was before them and that was my parenting. The prosecutor was aware of my ex-husband and his drug use so the lecture was about how I should have never allowed my son to be around him. Now let me say that my ex and I are friends today but not at all back then. We interacted because we had children together but we did not teamwork on parenting. I relied upon his wife to tell me the truth about my ex’s drug use, which occurred more via binges, and I thought she was. Once I realized he was using drugs when my kids were around, I tried to stop their visitations. During our court hearings, my ex and his wife spoke their truth which was opposing to my truth. They had sold the courts a better story because the end results was I was assigned a “probation officer” who monitored me, to ensure I sent my kids. So here I was in court being berated for sending Ryan to him even though I had not chosen to do that. Ironically, Ryan was now almost an adult and it was too late for any court to say he shouldn’t see his father. I was not powerful enough to stop the visits, then nor now. If only that child custody court had listened to me, way back when, perhaps we wouldn’t have reached this point. Deep down inside I felt that court had failed my kids and I didn’t trust the current one to do this any better. Subconsciously that played a role in my removing Ryan without approval. I can see that today.
The only thing left for the judge and the prosecutor to agree on was Ryan’s punishment. The judge ordered that Ryan would need to stay at the outpatient treatment program until his 18th birthday. I assured them that he would. I secretly hoped he would stay well beyond his birthday because he needed it. The whole family did. I left court with Ryan’s lawyers. Outside in the hallway I asked “How was I supposed to get him here?”. I felt so angry about everything. I wasn’t the one who made him go to his dad’s. I wasn’t the one who exposed him to drugs nor lied about it. Why was I constantly being blamed? When did I become responsible for everyone’s actions and reactions? His lawyers’ simple response was “You did what you had to do in order to save him”.
I certainly believed back then that I had but today is a different day. Today I have so much more knowledge about Ryan my son and Ryan the addict, as well as myself as a person and reconfiguring mother of an addict/non-addicts. How did my emotional definitions of words play against and with Ryan’s emotional definitions of words? How did they affect my other children and their emotional definitions? How did every single person who crossed Ryan’s life affect or infect him with theirs through their actions and lack of actions? Why is it so critical that we understand that there is no “one size fits all” answer because of those defining, emotional definitions that affect our ability to speak, hear and learn especially when it involves trauma?
In Ryan’s life there is one sibling who is linked to him by having the same parents and by surviving traumas together. Each of them feels the pain of the other and has their own. They were the best of friends that became divided when coping with their suffering took each of them down a different path. One more destructive than the other but both an expression of untold and unheard pain and guilt. Lots and lots of pain and guilt. Ryan coped by using drugs and Ashlee coped by…
Unbeknownst to me, my son had altered his state of being. That snake had whispered to my child that he could make his pain go away with a bite of the apple. When you are in pain, one bite can never be enough and the snake knows this. As the poison set in, a monster slowly began to replace my son. He looked like my son. He talked like my son but HE WASN’T MY SON. Because of that, I changed tactics and took on the monster by having him forcefully taken away. How determined did I have to be to fight this afflicted creature who had possession of my son’s soul?
It never occurred to me that Ryan would suffer serious symptoms as he began to withdraw on the road to rehab. My knowledge of drugs was limited but my concern was his use not his stopping. His level of consumption, however, was so high that the effects of not using could have killed him just as easily as continuing to use drugs could have. After all that is why I had him taken away without permission from the Juvenile Court. His drug use was going to kill him. The manifestations of withdrawal plus the stress of being taken away pushed all his rage to the front. Fortunately the three men who seized him remained courteous and respectful for the many hours that they drove him to his new home. They made a very bad situation a much better one. I will always be eternally grateful for those hired angels who had swooped in and carried off the monster. They were the first real step in saving Ryan.
The rehab was not prepared for the frightening creature that arrived handcuffed and shackled. It’s not that I didn’t want them to know that I was sending a monster and expecting a child in return. It was that I did not understand what or who Ryan had become. I merely thought that sending him away would put an end to it. Was I naive in my thinking? He was about 8 weeks away from turning 18 years old and legally he had no choice. I had chosen to remove him from the influences of the snake and its poisonous apples while I still had the power to do so.
The rehab called me. Ryan had arrived and they were concerned that his heart rate was way up. Of course it was. He was withdrawing, had been taken away and was in a place that was not familiar with people he didn’t know. They implied to me they were worried that he could have a heart attack while hiking in the wilderness. Normally a statement like that would have disturbed me but it did not. I told them that “I would rather Ryan have a heart attack in the great outdoors then die on the streets from a drug overdose. I promised I would not sue them if anything like that happened.” I was completely serious.
He was transported out to forest land where he was going to learn to cope with his addiction while hiking and camping. He would be fed, clothed for the weather and provided a tarp and sleeping bag. He would participate in discussions around the camp fire with other addicts as well as their team leaders. He would receive personal counseling from a psychiatrist.
Ryan loved the outdoors so in theory it seemed to be the perfect solution; hike until either he drops or the monster does. He however was aggressive upon his arrival to the wilderness and didn’t see the value of being in the fresh air. He decided he would hike to a road and then hitchhike home or call for a ride. The team leaders followed him to ensure he stayed safe and only would have stepped in if he had made it to a road or had been in danger. Eventually Ryan had to comply because he had no idea where a road was or even which direction was north.
On more than one occasion in the beginning, the rehab reported concerns about the monster they were working with. Some of the team members were somewhat afraid of him. They were probably right to feel that way based upon the behavior he displayed frequently. Often an addict implies to other addicts that he has used more drugs than anyone else. In Ryan’s case it probably was true. He was the biggest and toughest monster. It was like a badge of courage but the truth is it showed the serious level of desperation and pain. Ryan was a first for this rehab, but true to their commitment, they brought their best under very challenging circumstances.
While Ryan was “away at camp”, as I lovingly refer to it now, I was able to breathe. I had not been able to do so in months. I was not worried. I was not scared. I was feeling great. Of course it was easy to do that because someone else was responsible on a daily basis for what he was achieving or failing to achieve. Its not that I didn’t think about him. I thought about him every day but without the anxiety that normally plagued me. I participated in weekly phone updates with his case manager when he would come in from the field. I wrote letters in anger, frustration and support. For me it seemed like the end of a movie where the character goes off into the sunset and while you don’t know what happens after that scene, it seems happy or easy or just peaceful. I looked forward to picking up my child from camp knowing that the monster would be left in the woods.
I still had to contend with the Juvenile Court. Ryan had a drug possession charge against him. A felony to be specific. Unbeknownst to the them, Ryan had been whisked away to another state and he would not be attending the court date. His lawyers had no idea what the judge or prosecutor would say about my actions nor if there would be any repercussions that I would face. Just as Ryan had been a first for the rehab, I was probably a first for the courts. I was sure that they would realize that my child was a poster child not for drugs but for the All American Kid. He just needed some fresh air, hiking and camping and he would come back good as new.
When the judge came into the room, we all stood. He asked where Ryan was. One of his lawyers began to explain why he wasn’t there. Slowly the look on his face went from serious to shock to…
To fall is to descend rapidly from a higher place to a lower place without control. If you were able to find relief from pain by falling would you do it? What if a snake was encouraging you to take the plunge? Would it matter as long as you found comfort? The snake is the creation of our fear, our hurt, our anger. It knows our vulnerability. It encourages relief from emotional pain via any means regardless of the cost. In my case, because I was feeling such despair, it encouraged me to send Ryan to an inpatient rehab no matter what the sacrifice might be. That snake motivated me to dangle the apple of freeing Ryan from addiction in front of Ashlee. He did not trust me as a parent but he would never think that his sister wou1d betray him. I knew she would be willing to do whatever it took to save him. I was the drug dealer with the solution for her pain. Just like a dealer I kept the cost and long term effects to myself. When people have knowledge they have options. I needed Ashlee’s help and I didn’t want for her to have a choice…
“I was not surprised when Ryan was arrested for drugs in December of 2005. Several months earlier I had told my mom that he was using drugs. He had been for awhile. True to our history of my protecting him, I had kept quiet about it. Ryan denied it when I told her and claimed that he was only smoking pot. She believed him. Why? What did I have to gain by telling her that? What did he have to lose by my telling her? In that moment I decided I was tired of being responsible for Ryan. I wanted to be about me. It felt selfish but I needed that for my survival and so I moved out.
Placing Ryan in an outpatient program after his arrest was not going to work. I knew he was using way more drugs then he had admitted too. Ryan and I had grown up with our father using drugs so recognizing the gravity of this was not hard for me to see. I felt angry that our mom didn’t seem to understand that. Once again it seemed like I was the one lying even though I wasn’t the one using drugs. Why do parents think that their child would tell the truth about drug use? Is it because parents don’t realize that drugs purge the love of family out of the drug addicts mind? It didn’t help that Ryan was able to pass drug tests while using drugs. He knew how to fool everyone.
Ryan began living with me when our younger sister, who was in elementary school, couldn’t handle the stress anymore. She was a mess and my mom was a mess. I thought I could control what was happening in my house. I thought I could take care of Ryan but how do you take care of someone who no longer takes care of anything other than getting drugs? I took on that job even though I had moved out to get away from it.
When my mom approached me about helping her to set Ryan up so that he could be taken away to an inpatient rehab, I had hope. I felt our mom finally recognized that if he didn’t stop he was going to die. I needed her to get that. I needed her to fight for him and I was willing to do whatever it took to make that happen. Tricking him because of drugs was easy for me and I guess he felt the same way about tricking us for drugs.
I told Ryan that we were having a family dinner and that mom was making his favorite food. Maybe it was how I said it, but he didn’t seem to believe me. He asked me if I was setting him up. I said no because saying anything else would have helped Ryan continue using drugs. Saying anything else would have perpetuated the hell we were all living in. That lie brought the relief of knowing he would be taken to safety. That falsehood joined my mom and I together against drugs all in the name of love and in saving Ryan.
Ryan had his girlfriend and a friend with him the night we sat down to dinner. We looked like any other family as we talked, laughed and ate. Outside, at the house across the road from us, was the van that would be used to transport Ryan. Inside three men awaited the signal that would let them know that Ryan was in his room. It was my job to lure him back there. It was my job to keep him there under the pretense that I needed to talk with him. He and his girlfriend followed me to his room while my mom spoke with Ryan’s friend in the kitchen. She told that friend that “he better not move”. My stepfather went to the van. He gave the signal that the time was now. The van flew into the driveway. The men burst through the front door and ran straight to the back.
Ryan was standing when two of the men threw open his bedroom door. One had a gun drawn and the other had a taser in his hand. They yelled at Ryan “To get down!”. As he went to his knees he asked them what was going on. He thought they were the police. They handcuffed him. Almost immediately he realized that they were not the police. He began kicking and head butting these two men. They used the taser on him. They shackled his feet. All the way down the hall he kicked, spat at and head butted these men as they carried him out. His girlfriend tried to interfere but I held on to her. The third man moved the van around the house to a back door.
They passed our mom on the way out the door to the van. I do not know what she was feeling when those men came running into the house nor did she know what I was feeling when they came running into Ryan’s room. I don’t know what my stepdad thought about giving the go-ahead. They placed Ryan in the back of the van. They locked him into place. He asked to speak to our mom. He begged her to let him out. He promised he would go to the rehab in the morning. For one moment I was afraid she was going to say okay. For one second I thought she was not going to stay strong. She was calm as she told him “No. You are going.”
The take down occurred without any problems but it was a disturbing event that I remember the details of as if it happened yesterday. It affected everyone that was there that night including Ryan. Although I hated why and how it happened, I would do it again. There was no other way. I hoped that Ryan would understand that one day. I hoped he knew that the betrayal was of his drug use and not of him.”
Happy people do not alter their state of being but UN-happy do. Why is that? Why is it that when we can’t cope we listen to the snake and we reach for the apple? If that could happen to me then why didn’t I understand that Ryan, who was not yet an adult was even more likely to cope that way? I couldn’t see that while we were going through this. I was breathing normally after he left…but Ryan was facing a long drive and the effects of withdrawal…
Recent Comments