Compassion Antidote (eBook)

Chapter 1

The Beginning

I can’t change anyone’s behavior, but I can influence that behavior by my actions. —Robert J. Meyers

I’m on the same journey as the rest of you. Ups and downs.
Hopes and fears. —Kathy W.

Growing up with my parents and my three older brothers, I don’t remember experiencing my family members having an issue with alcohol. My parents seemed very conscious of not drinking too much.

My dad had been married once before he married my mom. His first wife, Judy, struggled with alcohol—so my two older brothers from my dad’s first marriage had a very different experience. One of my brothers, who wrote a book for his family, said:

“My memories of those days are of survival in the midst of chaos. We were on our own and we made the best of it. There were drunken parties, fights, broken heads, and the frequent visits by the police. Mother was happy and carefree until she got drunk, and then she would be a mean drunk. We tried our best to stay out of harm’s way. There was an outside door to our bedroom, which was sometimes used as an entrance by strangers and as an escape hatch for us. We were often scared at night and would hide in the closet, fall asleep, and not wake up until the next morning. We were at times alone in the house for days.”

I have to give my dad credit for intervening. He was transferred to Indiana from California in 1949 soon after he married my mom and he insisted on taking his two sons, who were ten and twelve at the time, with him. Judy had legal custody, so this was technically kidnapping, yet he was willing to take that chance because he believed his sons would be safer with him. They lived with us in Indiana, and later after our move back to California, until they went to college. While I’m sure it was traumatic for them to leave their mother, whom they didn’t see for four years, they were both successful in life and neither has had any issues with alcohol. This was during a time when there was very little help or resources for alcohol dependence.

I tried drinking several times in high school. A group of us went on a YMCA trip to Lake Havasu my senior year. Someone had snuck some beer along, and of course I had to give it a try. I enjoyed the risk taking. I didn’t love the taste, however, so it wasn’t something I turned to as a habit. From that first experience of drinking alcohol with friends, I thought of it as something fun to do on the weekends. Most of my friends and I drank in college when we were ready to kick back.

It was the 1970s, and marijuana and harder drugs were prevalent. Yet I knew of no one taking pills, heroin, meth, or any of the other riskier drugs. Many of us experimented with alcohol or marijuana at parties, but it was minimal. We had fun and sometimes pushed the limits, but thankfully didn’t do anything to ruin our lives. Things seemed less complicated back then. 

I was lucky that my alcohol and drug use didn’t open a Pandora’s box. I had fun, but my life never revolved around getting my next drink or my next high. Like most people, as an adult, I’ve had my ups and downs, but I have never felt that I needed substances to get through my day. 

When I became a mother, I expected that my kids would follow a similar path, even though drug and alcohol use was more common when my kids were teenagers. I knew the teen years might be challenging, but I figured they were a phase that would pass. My children would muddle through, shake off their teenage angst as I did, and find their place in the world. They would grow into healthy adults and find meaningful work, good friends, and love. I never dreamed that their lives would be shackled with the burden of drug use, which would evolve into dependence and addiction.

Instead, I’ve had to live through the despair and helplessness that come with watching your child make devastating choices, from excessive marijuana use to crystal meth use. For many years, I believed that I was responsible for their substance use. It was my job, yet I wasn’t able to guide my kids in a better direction. Addiction had touched our family because, as a parent, I had done something wrong.

Like other parents, I felt the stigma and judgment around drug use and was hesitant to speak up. I feared friends and neighbors discovering our shameful secrets. I experienced the pain of divorce, which affected me and my children. While their early years were positive in many ways, having their family uprooted by divorce most likely played a role in their later substance use. While it was hard, I am grateful we were able to agree on custody. My kids’ dad and I were both involved in their lives and they spent a good deal of time with both of us throughout their childhood, which was a good thing. Like many families, we have some addiction genetics in our family background. But they each had their own reasons for turning to drugs to numb the pain of their feelings. 

The most frightening part is that there is no instruction manual on dealing with this. Information can be conflicting and confusing. It isn’t easy to know where to turn and what information to trust. While we may want to believe that a crisis can bring families together, the longer addiction goes on, the easier it is for families to fall apart.

Reaching Out

As time went on, I attended several 12-step support groups to get help. As I met more parents with struggling children through these groups, I was touched by what their families were going through.

I had been an educator in an elementary school for fifteen years and had recently retired from teaching. Now was the perfect time for me to take on another project. I knew how confused I had been when I first learned my kids had drug problems. Sharing ideas with other parents seemed like the right thing to do.

We were eventually able to enlist the help of two treatment centers (one sober living facility, one interventionist) and therapy for my kids. I worked hard to let go of blaming myself for things that weren’t perfect. After my daughter and son had been doing well for a few years, I decided to create a website. I’ve always loved technology, so creating a website and connecting online intrigued me. 

I have always loved psychology, too. I became fascinated by trying to understand what makes a person turn to substances and then not be able to stop. It seemed wrong that so many young people were losing their dreams for their future, or even their lives. I became passionate about the topic, and my work became therapy for me. I wanted it to be a beacon of hope for other parents who were as confused and frustrated as I had been.

I started reading other parent blogs on the same topic. One I found early on was Ron Grover’s “An Addict in Our Son’s Bedroom.” Someone from the Partnership to End Addiction read a comment I had left on Ron’s blog, and I was asked to become a parent volunteer for the Partnership’s parent network.

In 2013, the Partnership offered its first training for volunteer parent coaches. Psychologists would teach this training from the Center for Motivation and Change in New York City in August. I was interested in participating; I had already decided that I wanted to work with other parents, so this seemed like a perfect fit. So I was off to New York as part of the charter group of eleven parent partners to be trained by Jeff Foote and his team. What wisdom and foresight these two organizations had! Their efforts have helped parents find their way and saved countless lives.

Community Reinforcement and Family Training (CRAFT) was developed by Robert J. Meyers, PhD, who is the director of Robert J. Meyers, PhD and Associates and a research associate professor emeritus in Psychology at the University of New Mexico’s Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse, and Addictions. While CRAFT was designed for anyone who has a misuser resistant to treatment, the pilot program in New York was focused on training parents on the research-based tools and strategies that they could use at home to help their struggling teen or young adult. As parents, we learned so much from the training, which none of us had ever heard about before.

It was great to meet Ron Grover and the other parent participants. Ron explains his thoughts on the training this way: “I learned so much about helping other parents living the life I lived for so long. What was amazing was exactly how much sense everything made in Jeff’s presentation and how well it worked. Those days, all eleven of us learned so much from Jeff and his team but we also learned so much from each other. To say those days were life-changing would be an understatement. So much credit goes to Tom Hendrick and the Partnership. They were the ones with the foresight to bring all this to fruition for so many.”

My entire outlook on how a parent could help their child through addiction and recovery changed. Like many parents, I had been told there was nothing I could do to help, and I needed to let go. From this training, I learned that parents could use strategies that would help...