I have a daughter. She is the second of our four children and she is beautiful. I can remember back 21 years ago to the day of her arrival onto this earth, into our family, and it is one of my most precious memories. Her birth was fun, filled with joy and we were surrounded by people who love us. As the doctor guided her out into this world and held her slick shiny body up for me to see, I felt such happiness, such pure unadulterated joy that I had been given a girl child.

At 12 years old that same beautiful girl child took her first drink of alcohol. Little did she know that she had opened a door to years of drama and turmoil, years of ruined relationships, loneliness, and feelings of defeat. Years of being in pain. By the time she was 14 that beautiful girl child of mine had become a black-out drinking drug user.

We rationalized that she was experimenting. Lots of kids go through wild phases, but deep inside I think we knew that this was more than that. We were afraid and ashamed and in denial…not a good combination. We worked so hard at controlling and managing what had so obviously already spun out of our grasp. We didn’t want anyone to know the depths of our fear. We hoped and prayed it would pass. But it didn’t.

We sought counseling and thankfully we were directed to Alanon Family Groups. Alanon is a 12 step program for the families and friends of alcoholics and/or addicts. Little did I know I was about to be given a road map that would lead me back to sanity. Because I had most certainly resorted to crazy behavior all in the name of saving my daughter.

Read the rest of this entry »

What do I know about blogging?  That question occurred to me when I was asked by my colleagues to host this blog.  I quickly realized that I don’t need to know anything about blogging — only about this topic, which is near and dear to my heart.  Frankly, I consider myself an expert on drug and alcohol abuse, having used almost every drug on the planet prior to entering recovery over 21 years ago. 

If only there had been such helpful resources in the ’70s, perhaps my parents could have done some things differently.  But then I wouldn’t be here today, with my dream job and this wonderful opportunity to help others.  This chance to share my thoughts, insights and experiences with parents and other caregivers, is tremendously exciting and rewarding.

I began using alcohol and drugs at age 13.  My parents never talked to me about the dangers and were heavy drinkers themselves.  My father traveled frequently so raising me was left pretty much to my mom.  In my recovery journey, I have come to accept that she did the best that she could, but the truth is that her desire to be my friend more than my mother really backfired.  She was one of those mothers who thought drug use was a rite of passage and believed that sharing that experience with me would minimize the risks.  Her intentions were good but the outcome was not.  By the time I entered college, I was a full-blown alcoholic and addict.

The roots of addiction run deep throughout my family.  In addition to being an alcoholic, my mother was addicted to prescription drugs, as were her two brothers and her parents.  My older sister is, thank God, a recovering alcoholic, with almost 18 years of sobriety.  However, I watched her son, my only nephew, struggle with addiction for over 20 years.  Just like me, he began using as a teen, and just like my mother, I used drugs with him, wanting to be a “cool” aunt instead of a responsible adult.  Tragically, he died from a drug overdose almost three years ago, at the age of 36.  I often wonder what else could have been done to prevent his death.  Sometimes I feel that I failed as an aunt by not setting a good example, but I was in the midst of my own addiction, and made terrible choices.  I have made amends. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Enabling means to make able or possible, to give power.  It is a major environmental factor in addiction. Enabling allows the addict to continue in his disease by preventing him from experiencing the negative consequences of his behavior.  Giving in to my daughter Lauren, who had a spiraling addiction, was a recipe for disaster. It mortifies me to think about how I handed out money and gave her rides to be with her drug-dealing boyfriend during her using days. I think the scariest thing about enabling is that most parents don’t even realize they’re doing it — and that was certainly true for me.  I believe my enabling was just another way for me to protect myself while being fed by the lies and deception that Lauren used to hide her using. 

Facing the truth was too hard and I wanted to be able to trust my daughter and give her the freedom that any typical teenager should have.  The problem was that what we were dealing with was anything but “typical.”  

Many times I hear parents say, “But I want my kid to like me.” Dealing with a rebellious teenager is tough enough for most parents; add to that a growing addiction and you are faced with something beyond your control.  Coming from an alcoholic upbringing myself, I struggled at times with codependent tendencies, including weak boundaries and difficulty asserting myself with my kids.  Living with an active addiction in my teen triggered those inclinations.  I was an easy target as my daughter developed into a master manipulator in her quest to acquire the drugs she needed to fuel her addiction. 

Lauren needed professional help for her addiction and I needed help just as badly for my enabling ways around her disease.  One addiction counselor told me that my daughter was not ready to change because she liked her life.  What I didn’t realize was how much I was responsible for providing the comfortable environment in which her disease was thriving.  Once I implemented some “Tough Love” principles and set boundaries with money and rides, and mandated a recovery program for her if she wanted to live in my home, it rocked her world and things started to change.

Many teen substance abusers are able to reach a point where they want to recover because they cannot stand to lose any more of their former privileges. Only when addicted teens are faced with real consequences can they start to make a change.  There is help for parents available in the form of free meetings with other families who are dealing with family addiction. The purpose of these groups is to learn from one another how to stop being codependent and how to end enabling behavior.

Five ways to stop enabling behavior:

1) Attend meetings for families of addicts.
2) Get professional help for yourself.
3) Establish “Tough Love” consequences in your home.
4) Stop providing money and privileges for your substance abuser.
5) Develop a support system with other parents of addicts.

Alcohol and drug abuse was an issue we never talked about in my family.  My father was an alcoholic himself, fighting his own demons with addiction. No one talked to me about all the insanity that had gone down in my family, which included the fact that both of my parents, and some of my grandparents, suffered from addictions of their own. Everyone just wanted to sweep everything under the rug and put on a happy face. 

The problem was that my insides did not match up with the image I was expected to portray. I was left to figure it out on my own.  As a teenager, I vowed to never drink the way my dad did.   Little did I know that I had a genetic predisposition to become an alcoholic and an addict just like he was — and it wasn’t too long before I found myself fighting my own battle with addiction.

With little parental guidance, I found myself easily influenced by my peers.  They were the ones I turned to for the guidance I was lacking at home.  I had low self-esteem and hadn’t been taught positive decision-making skills.  My decision to try drugs for the first time was voluntary. I did it to fit in.  Maybe it would have helped if I’d heard my parents’ voice in the back of my mind telling me that I was making a bad choice, but those voices just weren’t there. Instead that first high gave me was a sense of wholeness and confidence that I had never felt before. 

I felt like I had finally found the thing that was going to fix me. My low self-esteem seemed to disappear when I was high, and the feelings of emptiness were temporarily gone. But after a while of numbing myself, no amount of drugs or alcohol could take away the emotional pain and insecurities I felt inside. Getting high just gave me artificial confidence and when it wore off I felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness and fear of not knowing how to stop abusing drugs and alcohol, or who I could trust or turn to for help.  What at first seemed like a way to have fun and fit in soon turned on me and started to feel like riding in a car without any breaks. I didn’t know how to stop my addiction.

Read the rest of this entry »

With our emotional wound still open, our entire family, including my stepdaughter Katherine, began the process of building back the trust we once shared.  This would prove to be rewarding as well as exceptionally painful. 

Sitting, circular fashion in a room with at least 10 other families we openly disclosed our feelings of anger, fear, loneliness, distrust as well as resentment.  “Family Week” had begun and there would be no holding back as we were guided through various discussions with our loved ones.  The building blocks to fostering a new cohesive, trusting and loving family were being tossed around the room while we slowly, and painstakingly, examined the cracks that were created, their affects and how to seal them and move on.

The dynamics within the family are key to opening the doors to change.  When an addiction is present the need it is vital to focus on new ways of coping and “non-enabling” behaviors.  Both patients and family members often rationalize behaviors which creates an environment that hangs around like a thick fog — perpetuating feelings of inadequacies and creating the dysfunctional cycle that is extremely hard to break.

There were at least four general areas of focus that our family concentrated on, which I elaborate on below.  Keep in mind, that although I went through the recovery process with my stepdaughter, I am not a certified authority; I was just a family member trying to recapture and rebuild what was lost.  Every family’s issues will be different, yet similar in many ways.  Issues will surface and may compound as you work on restructuring your family -– it’s not easy.  But having experts, who allowed us to express our emotions and feelings in a controlled, safe and healthy environment, was incredibly instrumental.

1. BLAMING:  DO WE BLAME OURSELVES OR OUR CHILD?

It almost goes without saying that when an addiction is present, family members will find the blame game is alive and well.  We had elements of blaming ourselves as parents and role models, believing that the reason Katherine defied everything we believed in was an attempt to “get back” at us for our wrongdoings. 

At Family Week we opened up the floodgates, allowing ourselves to examine with minute detail (on both sides) where our thinking had been

Read the rest of this entry »

We live in a society of excess, where street drugs are readily available, so it is not surprising that many teens experiment with drugs. However, more is known now about teenagers who are not only experimenting, but who are self-medicating because they have other disorders, such as depression or anxiety. Dealing with a child who has co-occurring disorders is of course even more difficult. If you are reading this blog, this already means your eyes are open and you’re taking steps to be fully informed.

For me the most challenging part of parenting has been that in my family, substance abuse has been intensified by co-occurring mental illness and a family history of genetic vulnerability. So much more is known now about the brain and chemical imbalances than when my husband and I and our children first began to experience the ravages of both in the early 1960s. Truly, we hadn’t a clue.

Months before my wedding, the man I was to marry, the star athlete and class president I had fallen in love with five years earlier in high school, climbed out onto the ledge of my mother’s fifth-floor New York City apartment, and in a state of drunken bravado, threatened to jump.

Off and on over our fourteen years together and the parenting of two children, he continued to go through episodic periods of binge drinking accompanied by wild behavior and threats of suicide. In 1977, when my children were eleven and thirteen, he did kill himself.

All through these episodes, we always thought of it as a problem with alcohol. It was not until his death, and when I finally sought professional help, that I realized that of course he had a mental illness, most likely a bipolar disorder.

And even though I was now much better informed, I still did not fully understand how vulnerable my children were. It was not until they reached their 20s that one of my children became willing to see his problems in terms of co-occurring disorders. The other son never sought help and ended his life at the age of 28.

When mental illness and suicide are part of a family’s history, the whole question of when to hang on and when to let go becomes much more complicated. Drawing the line when someone is in the midst of a psychotic break is more than a tough call.

Though it is important not to rush into labeling a difficult teenager, not to rush into medication as the answer, parents are wise to become informed about symptoms and seek counsel with highly qualified professionals who can keep an eye on what’s going on, especially if there is some family history of depression or manic behavior.

My husband’s father, a man who majored in psychology in college and was the director of a children’s home in a large city for many years — and who himself carefully monitored bouts of acute anxiety — revealed to me after my husband’s death that when he himself was a boy, he would come home from school hoping his mother had not stuck her head in the oven, as she had threatened to do before he and his sister had set out that morning.

I do not want to end on such a bleak note. Though I am reluctant to steal any more secrets from family members, I do want to say that my son has gone through a long period of recovery and is now, day by day, leading a productive, creative life.