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…
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