Addiction...What Now?

I am posting this to provide help for anyone else going through similar situations with a family member.  This is the first in a series of postings which are in order of importance.

The text message from his friend informed us that my step son was once again in jail and my husband and I could bail him out in an hour.  The charges were driving on a suspended license and not maintaining his lane.  His friend lied to us when he returned the car keys, expressing his worry over my step son and that neither of them knew that his license had been suspended.  The lie was revealed when his friend, assuming we had posted bail, sent a message to my step son letting him know what he had said to us.  After retrieving and searching his car, bedroom and social media accounts, we chose to leave him in jail, buying us a week to make decisions.

My husband and I were in a rush to make choices in the first 72 hours.  We chose to leave his son in jail because we knew where he was and that was one less thing to worry about.  We searched the internet for drug rehab options and were overwhelmed.  I reached out to my employer’s drug free workplace provider and was given a lengthy list of rehabs in Georgia.  Just a list with phone numbers and addresses.  I was shocked to see how many were listed and started to make phone calls.

Action Items:

1.    Check your insurance company first.  They may have a list of centers.

2.    Most health insurance plans will only cover in-hospitalization detox.  This will be covered for only a few days until the patient is out of danger.  If an inpatient program is covered, it is only for 30 days.  You are not cured of anything in that short time period.

3.    Get a notebook and pen and keep it with you at all times.

4.    Anyone you speak with is a well-trained sales person and may even have a counseling background or is a recovered addict, too.  They will put you at ease, promise you that everything will be okay and sell you on their program.

5.    Can you afford to pay $15,000-50,000 in cash?  There are no payment plans.  Check with family members for help, credit cards, home equity lines of credit and look at loans from your 401k including medical hardship loans.

6.    Ask family and friends for help with the research.  This is the time for action, and you need all the help you can get.  If they make phone calls for you, provide them with the basics:  insurance card, date of birth and social security numbers.  Compile all research in your notebook.

7.    Check all reviews of any rehab center. Use the reviews on Google, Facebook, Better Business Bureau and call the police station in the town.

8.    All facilities have rules.  Find out what happens when rules are broken.

9.    If you can, tour the facility before selecting it.  If it’s too far away, start reaching out to family and friends in the area and ask them to tour it on your behalf.

10     Read “Setting Boundaries With Your Adult Children” by Allison Bottke.

11.   Sleep. Eat.  Talk to others.  Attend Alanon.  It’s amazing how much addiction has touched others.  You are not alone.

Sampling of Centers We Contacted:

1.  Talbott Recovery Addiction Treatment Center in Atlanta.  Our insurance plan was not accepted.  The living quarters were separate from the treatment center.  Cost for a three-month in-patient treatment plan are $47,000.  Out-patient treatment is also available.

2.  Blue Ridge Mountain Recovery Center in Ball Ground, Georgia.  The 30-day program costs $22,750 discounted to $15,750 if you are considered self-pay.  The deposit is $10,000 and then the rest must be paid soon after.  They contract with a lending company which will allow for a monthly payment.

3.  Freedom Treatment Center in Albion, Michigan.  This is an in-patient onsite facility.  The cost for this is $15,000 for a three month program.  The program is based in Christian Science and uses sauna therapy to help with detox.

4.  Phoenix House (multiple Locations throughout the United States).  This is an in-patient onsite facility.  The cost is $15,000 for a three month program.  You can pay $5000 each month or pay $12,100 for all three months up front at a discount.  The fees are non refundable, however if the patient leaves, he can always return at a later date to finish out the program.  It is dorm style living and not coed.  Patients are either self-pay, insurance or mandated by the court system to attend as opposed to jail.  Keep in mind, your loved one’s behavior and addiction will land them in the legal system including jail so I don’t actually feel it’s a negative to be exposed to addicts who are already in that situation.  This facility has a 12-step program available to patients, daily AA meetings and an in-house nurse and psychiatrist.  Medication and the psychiatrist are separate costs.  The psychiatrist is $300/hour.

Once we made the decision, the rehab facility provided us a list of items that my step-son could bring.   We discussed the plans during visitor hours with him and told him we would bail him out in the morning and drive him to the facility.  The jail was listening to the conversation and shortly after we left, we received a phone call that they were releasing him on his own recognizance since we were taking him to rehab in the morning.  We immediately put his cell phone on suspend (lost/stolen) so that it wouldn’t work, removed the internet from the house and brought him home for a shower.  The next day, we drove him to the facility which was located six hours from our home.  He was willing to go but then again, he was all out of options with us.  This was the end of a 5+ year downward spiral that we could trace back to his junior year of high school.  At his point, he was a 23-year old adult with two bags of belonging and nowhere else to go. 

The Row

A few years before my father retired, he decided that more exercise was in order.  He’d already tried a gym membership numerous times, he had already discovered a mummified squirrel in his golf club bag a few years before and the rusty 1980's stationary bike was moldering in a back corner of the garage.  My father felt that a rowing machine was the golden ticket to healthy living.  He placed it in the center of the family room and avidly used it for several weeks.  For the next few years, the rowing machine became a source of contention between my parents.  My father insisted he was still using it and my mother would point to the laundry she had placed on the machine’s seat months before.  Dad would eventually move the laundry and mom would show him layers of dust.

Mom put the rowing machine in the back of my truck for my garage sale.  No one wanted it even when I marked the sales tag down to “Free”.  My father finally noticed that it wasn't in the center of the living room anymore and demanded that I return the stolen property.  I returned it but placed it in the garage, much to my father’s chagrin.  He wanted it back in the house.  “Bring it inside then,” I told him curtly.  He never did and several years in his garage/woodworking shop added saw dust to its charm.

The day my mother had been waiting for over many years had finally arrived.  My father decided to do some spring cleaning in the garage with the help of the English Boy.  My father declared that the rowing machine was broken and it could be hauled to the dump.  My mother was so excited.  The English Boy pulled the rowing machine into the driveway and polished it with a bottle of Lemon Pledge and a dust rag.  He then gave it a test row and declared it to be in perfect working condition.  My father was unwilling to give up the shiny, nearly new again piece of equipment.  The English Boy, ever helpful, put the rowing machine on their newly landscaped front yard and rowed, quite expertly, for the entire neighborhood to see, the garage sale price tag still dangling from a string.  I believe my father finally won the row.

Overboard

You've asked me many times
Do you know what you're doing?
I'm unsure and hesitant.

Is this the start of something new
or the end of a beautiful mistake?
I'm directionally challenged.

Lost in a sea of emotions
Drowning in an ocean of thoughts
Loneliness overwhelms me.

My sails are battered and torn
Am I able to withstand the storm?
Questions left unanswered
My life has been tampered
But is it to the point of no return
Or have we crossed that line?

So now I ask you the same
Do you know what you're doing?
Why are you so confident?

Is this your redemption
for your past mistakes?
Why are you sure I'm the one?

Lost between your past and future
Drowning in two places in time
My lifestyle overwhelms you.

My sails are battered and torn
Am I able to withstand the storm?
Questions left unanswered
My life has been tampered
But is it to the point of no return
Or have we crossed that line?

2009

Commodore Perry Elementary School

My most memorable friendships were forged on the playground of Commodore Perry Elementary School in Mahwah, New Jersey.  It was a time when kindergarten wasn’t mandatory and only lasted a half day.  The playground seemed enormous and was divided into sections:  the black-top, knee scraping hop-scotch area, the swing set, slide and jungle gym region, and the field for kickball, racing and other sports.

Boys had cooties and reveled in flinging earthworms that seemed numerous on the asphalt after a hard spring rain.  Hop-scotch would entertain us for the duration of our allotted playtime and I had my first experience of shoe envy when Kim could stomp a lion-shaped sole pattern into the dirt with her new lace-up shoes.  Nike was years away from being cool, but having a pair of Kangaroo sneakers with the tiny zipper pouch on the side earned you instant celebrity status.  The girls would plan our outfits ahead of time if the play of the next day was the gleaming silver jungle gym, hexagon in shape with promises of danger.  Dresses could only be worn if shorts were underneath.  The only girl who didn’t seem to care was Becky.  Second grade brought a newcomer to our group, whose parents just returned from a missionary trip.  Jennifer was blonde and exotic with her tales of travel to places like Africa.  We would spend time along the back fence of the field picking buttercups and holding them beneath each others’ chins to see who liked butter.

One day, the teachers decided that the boys and girls could no longer play with each other, perhaps due to a worm flinging session gone awry, and play time was divided in half with the playground divided between the field and the other areas.  At half-time, a whistle would sound and we would dutifully switch sides.  The girls field time was spent with “Mother May I”, “Red Rover, Red Rover”, “Red Light, Green Light” and “Octopus, octopus, by the sea, octopus, octopus you can’t catch me!”

I have forgotten a lot of things over the years but it is true that you never forget the kids you grew up with, the childhood games you played and a time that still seems within reach.

A Battle of Wishes

For the past several years, the Englishman and I have engaged in a battle with the dandelions in our yard.  In the beginning, there were more dandelions than grass and wrestling the stubborn weed from the earth created large, reddish-brown circles in the yard with barely there glimpses of green.  We filled buckets and bags with nothing but weeds and after a seemingly successful day of warfare, we awoke to bright yellow blossoms darting across the yard, oblivious to the carnage of the previous day.

Last year, my mother joined the ranks and she and I crawled across the front yard, pulling the roots with a screw driver and other specialty tools.  We talked, pulled, and crept until the sun disappeared and our buckets overflowed with thick roots, leaves and dandelion heads.

Spring in Georgia has arrived and our yard is absent of the yellow heads.  The adult in me is glad that the battle is over and we have emerged triumphantly.  My childhood memories are still vivid and I mourn the loss of flower chains and the sticky yellow residue left behind on tiny fingertips.  I miss the joy of carefully plucking a dandelion with the soft feathery seeds and gently blowing my wishes into the wind.  And on occasion, I long for a time when Winnie the Pooh wisdom said it best:  “Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them”.

Spinning a Yarn

Mom and I were in Virginia, house sitting and kid sitting for my friend who was travelling in Australia.  It was February and Virginia was cold.  Snow and bits of ice still gripped the frozen ground and I was unprepared for the weather.  My grandmother always nagged me and my sister to wear our hats in the winter when we lived in Pennsylvania.  We ignored her.  Hat hair was unattractive and would interfere with our big 80’s hair.  Her words of wisdom came back to me as we wandered through Wal-Mart and I passed a display of $3.98 knitted hats.

Mom swatted my hand as I reached for a pink one.  “I can crochet one for you in an hour,” she declared.  “Don’t buy that junk!”

Back to the house, mom pulled out her crochet hook, pink yarn and located the one-hour hat pattern on her I Pad.  She rocked slowly in the wooden rocking chair, creaking the floorboards beneath her.   With the snow slowly falling outside the window, it was a cozy scene.

An hour passed by quickly, and Mom’s language became just as colorful as the yarn she had on her hook.  She would start the pattern, and then take it apart.  She watched the video over and over on her I Pad.  Four hours into the project, she became so desperate she made me watch the video in spite of my complete inability to crochet.

The long weekend was finally over and after we put the kids on the bus to school, Mom and I headed South for home with me driving the entire way.  Mom was still working on my one-hour hat.

I finally received my hat in May.

Snack Pack

The English Boy sizes up my purse before making his selections.  He stuffs his choices into it as we head to the window to purchase tickets.  Once inside the venue, he picks a seat and then rifles through my purse for his treats.  The movie begins and the English Boy happily consumes his contraband food items.

Sometimes he brings his own candy, but there have been other occasions where nothing would suffice except a taco or hamburger or even a massive piece of Cheesecake Factory cheesecake.  Striving to be neat, he even tucks in cutlery and napkins.

The most recent outing involved a pre-movie stop at Kentucky Fried Chicken.  After watching the English Boy devour a large chicken sandwich and mashed potatoes with gravy, he asks if I have room in my purse for potatoes.  I think he means fries and tell him they will fit.  He brings back a to-go bag containing a large tub of mashed potatoes and gravy.  Unbeknownst to him, my “purse” is actually an insulated lunch bag that will keep his items hot.  I pull out all of my belongings and shove his bag within, adding a biscuit, “spork” and handful of napkins.  It was show time and we head to the discount movie theater for “The Lone Ranger”.  I hand him his steaming mashed potatoes and he proceeds to mix in the gravy.  The English Boy promptly burns his mouth.  The potatoes have remained lethally hot inside my bag.  He runs for the water fountain, leaving the potatoes behind in the cup holder.  The distinct smell of KFC potatoes permeates the small theater so I am positive everyone knows we have secreted in illegal foodstuffs.  The English Boy returns and continued with his snack which has now adequately cooled. 

As the theater dims for the main show, I am positive he is using his cell phone as a flashlight to aid in his fine dining efforts.  I am thankful that the show has a minimal amount of patrons on this late evening.  The English Boy finishes his snack, places it back in the paper bag and loudly crumples the brown paper during a particularly quiet moment.  I make a note to feed him more before our next movie adventure.