Unrest of Jail vs. Protective Custody

In the not too long ago we saw jail as protective custody. It was a respite from the madness of having an addict in our life. We took the time to recharge our batteries in preparation for his release and a resumption of the madness that had invaded our life.

Today we suffer the effects of having a loved on in jail that we wish to be around. That is quite a change. To compound the effects of this time our "enlightened" system in Leavenworth County allows visits ONLY Monday thru Thursday, 1pm to 4:30pm, no weekend or holiday visits. Who in their infinite wisdom designs a system like this? Plus like every system I am aware of there are only collect calls and they are $10 for 10 minutes.

I've never really given much thought to the US penal system; its mission and its methods. What is the balance between punishment and rehabilitation? What should it be? Should the mentally ill be as part of the general population? (there was an article in the KC Star today about that) How or should we help the addicted in jail, take the time and put forth the effort during this time clean to introduce them to recovery options and life? Or is it lock'em up throw away the key? Can we really afford that attitude? To many questions by one not familiar with the system and few answers.

Luck Runs Out :-(

We live in the corner of a county that allows access to 3 other counties all within just a very few miles. Because of that it was easy for our son during his time of using to spread out his offenses across many counties and many municipalities. Now he is going to court and trying to clean up the messes. Last week I told you all he got a couple of weekends in jail in two of the counties. Today he went to court in another county. It didn't go as well, he got 6 months in jail. They took him into custody immediately.

Looks like his luck ran out but I keep in mind that it could have been worse. He may not have the same opinion.

Thankful

We all have many things to be thankful for in our life even if we do have a loved one addicted to awful substances. Sometimes it is so hard to remember that in the midst of drama and crisis that seems never ending.

So I don't forget I am listing a few from my list as it relates to addiction and this blog.

I am thankful my son is clean today. Today is what I have been given and tomorrow will be another not to be feared or celebrated, only to be lived.

I am thankful for all of our family and friends that support us when we needed it in dark times.

I am thankful for every word of advice all of you wise friends have offered on this blog and in person.

I am thankful for all of the parents that are lost in their child's addiction and have searched and found blogs and resources to help with their pain and education. We were those parents not so long ago.

I am thankful I never lost sight of hope.

I am thankful that there are people so willing to give of themselves to help others in this madness. They are the ones willing to stand up in front of others and admit that have walked this tangled path, there is a way.

I'm sure there are many more things but I have to get to work now, of which is another thing I am thankful for.

Reading Material

I just finished reading a blog from a person that made a comment to one of my posts. This parent has a son that has been in recovey for 2 years, his drug of choice was opiates.

I want to highly recommend this writing. His writings and reflections are so insightful. Please visit his sight and read all of his posts to date. He just began writing in October and all of us should feel lucky that he has shared his thoughts and learnings on his sons addiction, recovery and his own recovery.

Addiction Journal


ps.: The Partnership @ Drugfree.org has published another one of my essay's on their Intervene site: Been There, Done That: How Personal Stories Can Help Fight Teen Pressure to Use Drugs

Relief

Yesterday my son passed a couple of milestones in justice. He had two court appearances that could have carried significant time in jail. The first appearance in the morning he had been advised by his attorney chances were likely he would receive 90 days in the county jail. I don't know what was done or said, maybe the the judge did see a different young man standing before him. The sentence wound up being 2 weekends in jail, and my son gets to choose the weekends of his convenience.

The second appearance in a different county also carried a high chance of an extended stay at the county resort. Again only 2 weekends however the judge did mandate they be the next two consecutive weekends.

It's such a relief by all; the outcome was best as could be expected. Alex is still stressing from all of the fines. I tried to comfort him by explaining something that took me many more years to learn than he has been alive.

Money is easy. His initial response was a "HUH, yea!" I went on to explain, every single day we get an opportunity to make more money. Money is easy what comes today goes away tomorrow and more comes to take its' place. Money is nothing more than dirty paper and heavy metal. It provides a measure of comfort but fails by its very nature to provide joy.

Time and relationships are what's important. When you lose time and relationships that is irreplaceable. Every minute that goes by is gone forever, every dollar through your fingers gets replaced by another later. Joy is what you get from time and relationships. It's not the discomfort of jail that is the punishment. The loss of those minutes towards creating joy for yourself and in others is the punishment.

He seemed OK with what I said but I know from personal experience it takes a lot more life experience to accept a belief like this rather than acceptance because someone telling you it is so.

Lately Alex and his girlfriend have been joining us on Friday Date night. It is fun having them with us and we have been connecting with him in a way we have missed for several years. Looks like he will miss a few Friday's but that is OK. We'll catch up later.

ps.: almost forgot he does get to have Thanksgiving with all of us. :-) wonder if I will be able to think of something to be thankful for this year?

Fair and Equal???

I just wrote a post about the philosophical meaning of fair and equal as I feel about the concepts to me. I read the thing to myself a couple times and thought to myself, what a load of crap. Just spit out what you wanted to say without justifying.

Fair and equal are not the same thing. Given a choice I'd rather be treated fairly every time over being treated equally. Fair means sometimes my expectations of myself and the expectations of others of me are much greater than for others. Fair means a recognition that my skills and abilities in some areas are below par and due to my nature I may never reach average or adequate in some peoples eyes. I want this recognition of me as an individual. I do not want to be just lumped into a mass and treated equally.

This subject is particularly striking today. Our system here in the US is based upon "all men are created equal." To me a fallacy in concept. None of us are equal. We all have differing strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, fairness is impossible to achieve on a mass scale so we settle for a flawed but easy concept of equality.

As parents we tend to waiver between fair and equal. How many of you with more than one kid has caught yourself saying, "If I do this for ____ then I have to do that for ____." A recognition that maybe you are doing something for one person that they need but in an effort to be "fair" we try to make everything "equal". Guilty as a parent here at times, equal is so much better than hurt feelings or explaining yourself.

This is weighing on my mind today because Alex is once again in court. This time he could be looking at up to 90 days in jail for driving on a suspended license. He got caught driving to work a few weeks ago and I didn't even know he had a suspended license. The harsh reality is that when he was using he got his license suspended and got caught once driving then too. Now he is facing the consequences. I am all for consequences but this is where the concept of fairness and equality get thrown into the mix and I struggle.

I don't envy judges and probation officers. How do you look at a person and recognize sincerity versus a con job? What does our justice system have in place to facilitate rehabilitation and restitution instead of punishment? And how do people in the system make an educated decision about a person when from what I have seen in courtrooms you usually get 10 minutes with a public defender and 3 minutes in front of a judge?

Why am I whining? I was an advocate for locking him up when he was using, we wanted him locked up and believe each time he was incarcerated that was a step forward that helped all of us to get to the point we are today. We are at a point today that my son is a different individual with very different values than he had 6 months ago. 6 months ago my son was suffering from an active disease and its symptoms called addiction. Today he is struggling but his disease is in what I think of as remission. Never cured but controlled.

My hope is that today in court someone recognizes that the young man standing in front of them this morning is not the same person that has been in that room so many times before.

case continued - waiting on background reports. (whatever that means, I'm not very literate in all this court stuff)

A Tangible Outcome

These are a couple of messages the sponsoring teacher left for me following our talk. One she posted as a comment in the last post and the other was an e-mail. I hope they are as inspiring for you as they are for me.

a comment:

I am the teacher who was present when Alex and Ron spoke with the students. Today I spent 45 minutes talking with a student who was moved by the experience. This person had been involved with drug, and her brother is a drug addict. She said seeing Alex, and listening to him, gave her more confidence that she did the right thing getting away from the drugs and her brother. She says she is the only one in her family clean, and that she knew how much strength it must have taken to come speak with the class. She said, "Alex was amazing! I know he'll make it! I hope that he will come back and talk with other students because he made a difference in me."

an email:

Uh, tell Alex, he did have an impact.  Since the 3rd block 

presentation, I've had 3 kids speak 
out about someone in his/her family being an addict.  And, the pain of not being able to see 
him/her because of the addiction. Opened up some 

conversations! 

UNBELIEVABLE!!!

Unbelievable is the only way to describe what happened speaking to the students at our high school.

This morning I went out to speak to Alex and tell him I wouldn't be having lunch with him today. He inquired why we wouldn't be having lunch together and I told him I was speaking at the high school to students about addiction. In the past my speaking and writing sometimes irritated him, especially if I was speaking to people at his former high school. So naturally I was reluctant to tell what I was doing but I was straight up with him.

His response to my speaking today was an inquiry if it would be possible for him to go with me. He wanted to talk to the kids himself about what he had been through. I was nearly speechless. Do you have any idea how huge this was.

We went for lunch and headed to the school. The sponsoring teacher was actually a teacher Alex had in school. I did my talk and Alex contributed some comments and after the main talk was finished the teacher ask Alex a couple questions and then the students opened the floodgates with questions. Alex handled everyone of them. The students were riveted to him. I just sat down at an empty desk.

I'm am telling every person that reads this blog; I cannot remember when I was so proud of my son. I was so proud I stood up in front of all of those kids and told them with my voice cracking how proud I was of him to step up to this place with me.

What a day, what a thrill.

ps.: I had invited the Superintendent of Schools for our district and he attended the talk and listened right along with the kids.

Invited Back

Last year I was given the opportunity to speak to students at our local high school about the effects of addiction on a person and family. I have been invited back to speak to another group of students at our high school again on Wednesday, Nov. 10.

This is a chance for every one of you to stand with me and send your message to freshmen students with a few sophomores and juniors sprinkled in the mix. Tell me the one thing they absolutely need to hear from us. My plan is to use the same basic presentation format but if someone has a point that needs to be said please let me know. It's not to late to add something that may be the key to a message.

For those that didn't read about last years presentation and its effect here is a link to the communication from the sponsoring teacher of that presentation.

The Response

Follow-up To Previous Post

Two requests/questions have been ask by readers concerning my post about how much work it is parenting an addict. One, detaching with love, how? Two, what is, working on things that didn't accomplish or mean a thing? Both of these questions are complex. The difficulty in these issues involve relationships with your child and yourself.

Detaching does not mean not loving or believing in your child. Detaching does not mean walking away and giving your child to the drugs and washing your hands of the whole situation.

Detaching with love is difficult. Mom and I struggle with this daily and it it is ongoing. But it is something that is good for us and good for our son. If, as a parent you want to do what is best for your child no matter how old they are and how much they are struggling you will work on this every day.

To detach with love requires a little bit of selfish behavior that rewards both entities. Detaching with love requires good boundaries. Without taking the time to set good boundaries and understanding exactly how your boundaries match your core values you will find yourself forever in rescue mode.

Operating in rescue mode means you will react to every emotion, crisis and incident of drama in both your life and your addicts. Rescue mode will consume you and every ounce of your energy and it is self perpetuating. The more rescuing you do the more you will find to rescue. Think of those people that have made it their life's mission and job to rescue: firefighters, police officers, military specialists, lifeguards; not a single one of them attempts to rescue anyone without first understanding their boundaries. Without clear boundaries rescuers become the rescued. This applies to parents of addicts too.

Detaching with love means you understand and buy-in to your own personal values and how they relate to the behavior you exhibit to your addict. I know very well this is complicated. This requires you to study about boundaries, create the quiet time to really analyze what you believe about addiction and your child and depending on the person and family it may require you to seek outside counsel of friends, counselors or outside groups. But even with all the help this is a deeply personal task.

Working on things that did not accomplish a damn thing. With most of us this does not just apply to our addict, it applies to our lives. A wise man once counseled me that if I spent my life making only new mistakes then my life was truly a life of learning. When I think of the things I did and worked on with my addict much of that time could be considered wasted or even worse repeating the same mistakes I had already made. Many of the specific examples I could cite are actually repeated mistakes and most of them relate to being in rescue mode that at the time I didn't even recognize as a method of parenting or living with an addicted child.

Wasted efforts and wasted time is the effort and time in which you learn nothing and in which you do not change yourself. That's the simplest answer that only becomes complex when you think about application. The problem is the application again can vary based upon the family, addict and circumstances.

20/20, Teens Hooked On Heroin

In case you missed the ABC News show 20/20 did on teens and heroin here is a link to the entire show.

Teens Hooked On Heroin

How Much Work Is It?

How much work is it parenting an addict?

This is going to a be a selfish post. Not one of self pity but one of realization. For over one seventh of my life I have been parent to an addict in active addiction. Of course for the first two years we existed in oblivion of his disease. I'm finding that is not uncommon, unfortunately.

Addiction doesn't recognize vacations, time off, or holiday's. This is a 24/7 disease. The drama invades every waking and sleeping moment of a parents life. Phone calls at all hours and the overwhelming fear of each ring that the message is that ultimate horror.

Relationships crumble dealing with the drama of an addict. Let'em go, stop enabling, cut'em loose, kick'em out of your life, just ignore them, are all phrases that cut you like a knife through hot butter. Every one of them spoken by people that love you and are well intentioned but don't seem to realize that this is your child. Words come easily from those that have never worn these shoes.

Addiction is work. Not just for the addict that struggles every single hour to find a way of getting that next hit but also for all of those that love an addict. Work for those parents that now find themselves raising grandchildren. Added stress for those parents struggling with jobs. Our struggling with parental shame and self doubt caused by the inability of our society and nation as a whole to recognize the effects of this disease. Struggling with our own conflicting beliefs about drugs and drug addicts.

Detach with love. If only it were that easy.

But detach with love is what we must do, not just for our own sanity and life but for the health of our addict. Detaching with love is just another "thing" we must learn to do as if we don't have enough already.

It seems a lot easier to sit back now and come up with what we should do while our son is in recovery and doing well but isn't that the way it always is for most things. Reflection and deliberation is how I learn. Without a time of peace it is hard to take a moment for yourself but it is something that you must do for your own health.

There is no doubt in my mind that this has aged Mom and I considerably. No one goes through this with a child without an nearly unbearable heartache. Sleepless nights, financial stress, the compromising of our own personal values does damage I am not sure is measurable.

Just because right now our son is in recovery does not mean our work is finished. There is a path of destruction behind us in our own wake with our own life and issues. Most of it I am not going even worry about cleaning up. Selfishly, I want a break, but at some point some of the work needs to be done.

How much work is it? It's a hell of a lot of work, but it's worth it if you are working on the right things. My biggest regret is I spent so much effort working on things that didn't mean or accomplish a damn thing.

Continuing Education

Nothing stays the same.

Have you heard of K2? It's the stuff that is sold in "head shops" and quickie marts as "incense". Many states are in the process of of banning this substance, Kansas has already banned it. But already there is a new version out called K3. Methodology of the product is it is actually being smoked like weed although the packaging does explicitly caution against using the product in this way.

The new one that is hitting the scene is "Bath Salts" . A common brand name is Ivory Wave. The active ingredient is MDPV and it provides a high similar to Ecstasy. This can be snorted and some even just use it as a bath salt and experience a high. Unfortunately people are dying using this "legal" product in the way it is not intended on the package. The UK has already banned this substance.

It amazes me how the people who manufacture and sell these types of materials always seem to take the high road by prominently posting on the package to use this material only in the way prescribed.

It is sad there is a few people with such a lack of humanity that they would profit on destroying humanity.

Whatever Works For You

What a great week we have had with everything going on here at our place. At the end I will post a link to the Fall Festival pictures.

Our son is still doing wonderfully. He is working. Plus he is going to court for his stuff he committed in the past. I can't help but think that has to be hard. If you're clean and trying to fly straight and have to go and take care of past issues, must be discouraging but he doesn't complain and he always takes money with him to satisfy the judge and PO that he is taking care of his obligations.

I went and spoke to a group of parents last week. A parent expressed her happiness about her son had been clean 62 days. We all felt great for him and expressed our joy to her. But for myself that was exactly the topic I had recently been deliberating on concerning recovery, the "day count."

I am a very goal oriented person so I very well understand the nature of keeping track of progress and goals, Gant Charts are not considered foreign language for me. But as I focused on my son's "day count" which I really don't know, I begin to feel conflicted. What exactly is a day count. I have spent countless hours of trying to accept the way this disease works, the minute by minute struggle for an addict at times. But in recovery it becomes day count. I was ask in the meeting about my son. My response was that he was clean today. My attitude today is that his sobriety is his business and the most important day in the world to me is today.

Now I may be upsetting to some about that kind of attitude. I read about and hear from others about their day count and their anniversaries. Despite what I said, I honestly feel joy for them and their day count. The most important thing for anyone is, whatever works for you, works for you and I'm happy about that.

I'm not a NA or Anon 12 step person. I went to meetings but they did not work for me. I've done the counselor thing, but likewise I'm not a person that does the counseling thing. I'm not a church or prayer person. But I'm going to tell you I advocate for all of these things. The most important thing in all of this for a parent or an addict is "what works for you." And, if it ain't working find something that does.

Hope that doesn't sound conflicting to others but the old saying, "There is more than one way to skin a cat." Each of us must skin our cat our way. My trouble for quite a few years was that I was trying to skin my cat and his too. That doesn't work. Plus I was trying to skin my cat just the way everyone else was doing it and my cat isn't exactly like your cat, our cats may be similar but no two cats are exactly alike. Each of us must skin our cats the way best for us, but the most important lesson I learned was to I could only skin my cat.

As I have mentioned before and wrote about for the Intervene site I find lifeboats invaluable. One of Mom and Dad's lifeboats is entertaining. One of our big events of the year is Fall Festival. Fall Festival was last weekend and if you want to see the pics you can find them here:

Fall Festival 2010

A Month for Boobies (o)(o)

How do you like that title? Spoken like a real man, right?

All of you ladies out there are sporting pink and making sure everyone knows what to do about getting that annual mammogram and doing self exams. 3 cheers for each of you.

Mom is very diligent about her awareness. HER SISTER IS A BREAST CANCER SURVIVOR!!! But sadly her mother and her aunts have all died from either breast cancer or ovarian cancer.

So, a message from all of us guys. Ladies, please do what you have to do to be aware and take care of yourself. Without those boobies we'd have to look you in the eyes when we talk to you.

Another Partnership Posting

The Partnership at Drugfree.org has published another one of my essays. Julie and Olivia at The Partnership sure have a way of making me look a lot better than real life. They added the pictures.


Lifeboats: Taking Care of Yourself During Your Child’s Drug Addiction

Speaking Tonight

I am speaking with a parent group tonight. If there any of you in the KC area that want to attend it is an open meeting and the talk is structured in an open format.

Church of the Resurrection
13720 Roe Ave.
Leawood, KS 66224

6:30 - 8:30 Room 217

Addiction Recovery Process for Loved Ones

I have been struggling with a whole new problem within myself as it relates to my son and his recovery efforts. What is the role of a loved one when an addict is working on their recovery?

Just like all of this when dealing with an addicted child, when you finally think you are getting a grasp on the new learning you have experienced; there in front of you is a whole new world that must be experienced and digested.

Enabling addiction is what we all seem to do in the beginning. Then as this disease progresses in our child we begin to learn that what we are doing is helping the disease to progress, so we struggle with changing our paradigm concerning addiction and the progression of this disease.

Now we are facing a new change, what is the role of parents to support recovery?

I’m a simple guy without a formal education so in my deliberations about everything concerning addiction I have to break down very complex issues dealing with this disease into simple examples as they related to the learning I have based on my personal experiences. (some of you have been exposed to my examples before.)

My son, just as I am sure many other recovering addicts have done has dug himself a very deep hole in which he stands at the bottom. When you are actively using I am sure the bottom of that hole may actually provide a measure of security and insulation. But after a profound experience an addict stares at the walls and the light that seems so far up. All of us are standing at the top staring down. What do we do to help?

Somebody at the bottom of a hole, I got lots of options to provide and assist a rescue. We can fly a helicopter over and lower a basket on a winch they can climb in and be lifted out. We can drop a long ladder slowly into the hole and they can climb out. We can throw a rope over the edge and they can pull themselves up and out. We can pitch a shovel into the hole and they can dig themselves out. And, I could just stand at the side of the hole and holler down, “Looks like you are in a world of shit, good luck.” And wash my hands of the whole mess.

I have helicopters, ladders, ropes and shovels and sometimes I can yell real well too. I’m sure each of these tools have a place in recovery but the struggle for me as a parent is; when you have all of these tools at your disposal, what tool do you use and when?

The dichotomy in all of this is most of the time the answer is we probably should do the minimum. But I am conditioned just as most people in our nation and society are conditioned to help those that are in trouble and need help. This involves helping people afflicted with diseases and even people in conditions in which they may even have had a hand in creating. For example; people were told to evacuate New Orleans before hurricane Katrina. Many people did not evacuate for a variety of reasons that made sense to them at the time. As a nation we flew in helicopters, provided food and housing and money, in the final analysis even our national efforts at help were woefully inadequate. During floods we provide help to people we do not know, but with a little effort it is easy to determine where flood plains are located and we all know not to live in a flood plain or drive into rushing water, right?

Speaking the truth from inside of me, what do I do? I am lucky, I have the resources to help him but what is the right thing to do in helping my son?

Worldwide Problems with Drugs

Another mum from New Zealand writes about her son's addiction and their experiences with methadone treatment.

This truly is a worldwide scourge on society.

No2Methadone.A Sons Addiction

Rejoicing, One Moment and Event At A Time

I'm not a superstitious guy but deep inside I think most people get that fear of jinxing something good if you acknowledge it, I guess I can be counted as one of those people too. But sometimes we must live on the edge.

It is so nice to have my son in a place where we can sit down, enjoy a meal together and talk.

It is so nice not to look at my son and be afraid.

It is so nice to see my son smile without pinpoint pupils.

It is so nice to feel a level of trust in him to make decisions that creates honor for himself.

Enjoy today and rejoice. I have seen the possible. I believe in the future and I believe in my son.


Its seems so long ago but just like yesterday Monday, July 12, 2010 and Tuesday, July 13, 2010. Where there is life there is hope.