- Drugs
I’m from Berkeley, California. I like to say that because Berkeley’s sort of known for a lot of things: the free speech movement, radical politics, and other things. But it’s also historically been a place that’s loose about drugs. It’s my opinion that we’ve never dealt with addiction as a community and that Berkeley needs to be more educated about it. That’s part of what I’m working on now; speaking up about addiction.
My daughter’s father has had addiction and substance abuse issues his whole life. We met in high school at Berkeley High and we divorced when our daughter was three—we have one daughter together. So I always knew that my daughter had a genetic predisposition for addiction. It was really on my radar.
I did family support 12-step programs when I was married to an addict. I went through that, kind of knew some things about it, and tried to educate myself. So I was pretty proactive as far as getting support for my daughter when she was growing up. She always had a therapist. My mom and I at different times gave her age-appropriate books about having a dad who had substance abuse problems. He was in and out of her life, and that was hard for her. There were times when he was actually locked up when she was little and she’d visit him sometimes. She was dealing with that and she kind of knew about it and got support for it.
My daughter was a very active kid. She was an awesome soccer player and she was always a performing artist. She has an incredible singing voice so she actually went to performing arts middle school. I kept her really busy. She liked to be busy. She got good grades, was an extrovert, and really kind of a superstar. She even sang the National Anthem at a San Francisco Giants baseball game when she was in eighth grade. She was really the star of our family. We all adored her and she got a lot of love and attention, partly because of her daddy—it was sad to have her daddy not be there for her.
When my daughter was in ninth grade she really started struggling with her grades and it affected what was happening for her at the performing arts school. She became ineligible to sing in a performance. That was really devastating for her. Really, what was showing up was anxiety. I finally got a big assessment done and it showed she was suffering from depression and anxiety, so she started being treated for that.
All this time I was thinking ahead. “What can I do to prevent her from using drugs?” We were talking about it a lot; my daughter was talking to her therapist about it. I was in the room when the therapist told her, “You can’t really experiment, because you could really be an addict. This could really be a problem for you with your family history.” They thought she probably also had some version of ADHD, and there were impulse control issues.
My daughter was telling me she wasn’t feeling good in her body. She was starting to isolate more and being less social (this was all in ninth grade). Then the perfect storm of family situations started to happen, where the adults were all making a lot of changes. This was the summer between tenth and eleventh grades. We had to move, there were some big changes, and there were some divorces in our family. All the adults were kind of freaked out. It was that summer when my daughter started using drugs.
I couldn’t tell and neither could her therapist. She started with pain medication that she found at home, where she was living at the time. In fact, we thought she was kind of doing better because it seemed like she was getting a handle on her anxiety. But it was the pain meds. She was zoned out on Oxycodone. (I made some fatally bad choices during that time—she and I have had to work through that.)
By the beginning of her junior year, she was now at Berkeley High School. And I just lost her. She just slipped through my fingers. I had trouble figuring out where she was half the time. I would see her and could tell pretty quickly she was doing drugs. It happened so fast. It was like she went from zero to a thousand.
Now that I know the story, I can say she started experimenting with marijuana a bit here and there, just with groups of friends. When she liked a boy and the boy had a joint my daughter would think, “Okay, maybe. I want to fit in.” Even though she was sort of scared of it as a young teen she still didn’t have the impulse control not to do it. Then it was the pain meds and she was feeling freaked out by all the changes in my family and the move was hard for her and everything.
Then as soon as school started she hooked up with kids at school who were using and started doing methamphetamine. It just started killing her within three weeks. She was already a very petite girl but she dropped weight. She dreaded her hair out and started looking like the kids who live on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley; the drug street kids. She started disappearing into that world.
I called her doctors because she was a mental health patient at a center here in northern California. They said “Bring her in. We need to drug test her and find out what’s going on.” So there were three attempts to get her to go in, including one where I went with her aunt to the high school and we got security to bring her out. Oh my god. That was a big standoff in the parking lot. She was not getting into the car, and I went in and talked with the therapist myself. Big dramas.
During another attempt, my daughter jumped out of my moving car in front of Kaiser, with one shoe on and a dead cellphone, and just took off. It was really dire and just terrible agony for me.
That time I didn’t even know where she was for quite a few days. Then I did a missing persons report and she was spotted by a Berkeley officer in a park. They got in touch with the family and my mom got my daughter in her car with help from the officer. That time we got her back to the hospital and I had all these police waiting and she was 5150’d into the hospital. I had the magic words. I just said, “She’s a mental health patient and she’s not on her medication” (because she was just starting to take a little Prozac for the anxiety). The treatment center doctor had told me to say that so she’d be admitted to the hospital. So it was this weird blessing that I had the assessment and diagnosis. I tell parents: If your child has a risk factor of any kind, get all these diagnoses and assessments BEFORE they’re using so that you know. I’ve met so many kids with dual-diagnosis and their parents couldn’t get the assessment because they were already using and they have to be clean and sober to do the assessment.
That day when we 5150’d her, my daughter had a backpack packed and she was going to leave with these traveling hippie addict street kids. And they were hitching out, or hopping a freight train to northern California. This was the plan. The backpack was packed. But we got her.
All that lasted a month or so. For us the addiction part of it and the scary stuff where she was using was sort of shorter and kind of really fast and really scary; really intense.But then the recovery journey was maybe a year. That was this amazing part where there was all this strategy that I did with therapists where my daughter was. Behind the scenes in meetings we’d talk about getting her to choose it and telling her, “No, you’re not going home” and “This is what’s going to happen,” and then we’d wait to see her reaction. Thankfully, she kept choosing life in these crucial moments, but it wasn’t easy. You had to set all these boundaries to get her to do it.
So she agreed to go to treatment and I had to fight with the insurance company and the system and try to get them to pay because I didn’t have money to pay for it myself. I’m a self-employed hair stylist, single mom, and have no money. There was insurance through something in the state of California called the Healthy Families Program which was for lower income, self-employed moms like me. But the treatment center was saying my daughter had to do her outpatient program first; that’s the way they do it. I had a kid who was running away! She couldn’t show up to outpatient. So my dad, who’s on a fixed income, paid out-of-pocket for the first rehab. It was $16,000 for two months, which was cheaper than a lot of the other programs.
So my daughter went to treatment and it was sort of far enough away from home that I didn’t think she could run back to Telegraph in Berkeley. But I had to drive there for all these visits and therapy, like maybe an hour-and-a-half from our house. She stayed there. It was really hard. That’s where we did one-on-one therapy. She was still so mad at me. “You put me in the hospital!” she said. She was angry, detoxing, and pissed off. I told her, “Look, this is the system. I had to save your life. I don’t even like this system. This is terrible. I agree with you. I didn’t want any of this happening. But this is my choice and I had to figure it out fast.” Then she told me, “But now I can make choices for myself.” She’s sort of not quite in meth psychosis anymore so she’s thinking she can make her own choices. I said, “If you ever feel like you’re in a position to make a choice for yourself, I’m going to include you in the choice.” And I kept that promise to her. We did some good therapy in that first rehab where we could talk it out.
I had been working my butt off behind the scenes: Getting treatment happening, moving to a better location, figuring out what’s best for my daughter. But when she came home from rehab, she wasn’t willing to go to outpatient at first. She didn’t want to go. She was going to some meetings—her dad was in recovery now and he was taking her to some meetings—and she was meeting some young people in recovery. But she totally relapsed. All this time I was just trying my best to go to meetings myself, stay calm, and to get her to keep talking to me. I was kind of shocked when she told me about the relapse.
Then she went to this really nice place near Santa Cruz. It’s in the mountains with redwoods and it’s all pretty. There are climbing walls, a pool, and everything. And my daughter gets kicked out of there. I think she and I were both hoping, “Yeah, we want her to get well at the beautiful rehab, with all the amenities and the woods.” That didn’t work. So I had to put her in the car and bring her home. She cried all the way home about getting kicked out of that place because she wanted to make it there. We were both really disappointed.
She went back to her outpatient again. This whole time, I have to say, I was thinking I was still feeling guilty. I was still thinking that I had really blown it, and that if I could make it better for her—make all these situations better and a give her a better place to live and a better everything—that she would get better. So I’m still the one who’s sort of “holding” all this for her. You know, doing everything, running around, making it all better, and thinking that I could fix it.
I think my daughter was still kind of struggling in her recovery, but we’re getting along fine. I let her bring home a little kitten; this little, tiny gray kitty. Animals are her love. Before drugs she had volunteered at the animal shelter near where we live. Animals were her passion. So I let her keep this kitten and she fell in love with it, but she was struggling in recovery and was still using sometimes. Then one day she comes home from lunch with her sponsor and I look down the street and there are these kids out in front of my house. I realize that one of them is this boy she had met at one of the residential rehabs and he’s showing up at the house. So, like I do with other kids, I sat him down and asked him what he was doing here and what his story was. I actually already knew that he wasn’t doing great and I looked in his eyes and I had a heart-to-heart with him. I said, “This is a safe place that I have for me and my children and you can’t stay here. “ I just set a boundary. “I’ll talk to you but you can’t come in my home and you’re not staying.” So my daughter grabbed her purse and said, “We’re just going to walk in the neighborhood, I’ll be back.”
She left. She left. She ran again. She took off. I didn’t know where she was for like a week. That’s when I made the shift. I thought I had made it all better. We were getting along; she had a kitten she loved. Other than that first phase where she was so ill and I felt like she was almost dying, this was beyond painful for me. This was really shocking. This is when I “got it” that she had a real disease and that I couldn’t fix it. And it would be her life journey and she was going to have to figure out how to choose life for herself. I had made it all better and she left. She ran away again.
I had some really good talks with 12-step support people. I don’t know what happened in me. I just calmed down during that time. I was somehow able to sleep when she was gone. This is when I started my letting go process of just choosing life for myself and I shifted into a different place. And what ended up happening is that the kid my daughter left with ended up calling me and asking me to come get her because she wasn’t doing well.
I took her back to her outpatient program. The doctor really worked with her and my daughter chose recovery for herself. I shifted into a different, much calmer place. I just kind of kept my heart connection with her and made peace with her.
Then my daughter chose to go to this really tough residential place. The place we were avoiding. It’s not pretty. It’s in Oakland and there are a lot of court-ordered kids there. We’d always heard it was a really tough program. By the time my daughter walked in the door, she was ready to do it. She was choosing it for herself. I had really stepped out. I was still her support person, absolutely; but it was like we were in a different place. She even stayed an extra month. We did really good family therapy there. Her dad showed up for family group and we laid it all out. We told a lot of the secrets we were holding. She totally made it and she hasn’t relapsed since and it’s been 20 months. She has 20 months clean.
We just kept getting along. And then I found a really good high school for her after she left rehab. She was only 17 and she told me she really wanted to graduate high school. I was thinking, “Ohhh.” I was so flexible about school at that point. I just wanted her to stay alive and stay home. I thought maybe she should take some classes at the community college. (Most of the young people in recovery we know don’t go to high school. They do online classes or they go to community college.)
I was pretty scared of the idea of my daughter going back to high school. For me it was like: High school, relapse, death. It’s just so hard to be clean and sober at school. I think it’s the most dangerous place for young people in recovery. So I did an online search. I promised her I’d try to find a place. And I found a small charter school that’s in San Francisco. It’s run by some people from a really good adult program. The principal is 30 years clean and sober. She founded this school 15 years ago. It’s very small—50 or 60 kids. So I called them and they had us come right in. The principal interviewed my daughter for probably an hour. Then they said, “Yes, she can come here.”
She finished high school December 20, 2013. She only ended up being one semester behind in high school. They gave her so much support. I don’t know if my daughter could’ve made it if she didn’t go right into a really good high school program where they totally got it. They called her out on everything, and were very strict. It was almost like rehab, but you go home to sleep. They had a really strict dress code and lots of rules and boundaries, but they were very loving and supportive. They gave her a lot of opportunities; they gave her internships and jobs in the community; and a paid summer job.
Now my daughter’s going to start a college program in the fall to be a vet technician working with animals. We’re in a good place right now, really good. I think if I hadn’t read a few really good books of other parents’ stories my recovery would’ve taken me longer.
When she ran off that time she jumped out of my car, I was a mess. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I was just lying in my bed, sobbing most of the time. Or I was on the phone calling people, trying to find her and get help. I was really freaked out and was in terrible guilt. I thought it was all my fault. The thing is, I did not stay in that place very long and this is the key: I just did it. Somehow, because of my own healing path or my own knowledge of when she was a baby doing support groups, I just snapped out of it. I was probably only in that really deep, dark place for like a week or so. And I snapped myself out of it. I thought, “No! I did do a lot of things right.” Because I was proactive I knew this could happen. As shocking as it was when it did happen, because it was so fast, I knew; and I did a lot of things right.
I really wouldn’t allow myself to be in that blaming-guilt mode for very long. Then I could go into action and tell my story without shame and get people to help me. And lots of people helped me. Police helped me, treatment center people helped me. I kept making complaints to the center about not paying for treatment and I kept fighting that. I took it all the way to Sacramento, and they reimbursed my dad the $16,000 he had paid. I was just all in and decided I was going to go out and tell everyone, “This is what’s happening with my kid” and I’m going to get help. I think because I was getting support for myself and feeling worthy, and thinking that my daughter and I deserved help and could get it…we just did. If I had stayed in that terrible place of darkness, I just wouldn’t have been able to do it. I think too often too many parents spend a number of years in that place of self-blame and then it’s just so hard to get out of that place.
So I read Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction by David Sheff when my daughter was in the first rehab. That was a great lesson because I also realized that all this could take me out; I could get my own health problems that could kill me. So I had my team of my own support people behind me, helping me always, to keep myself going.
There was another book, The Lost Years: Surviving a Mother and Daughter’s Worst Nightmare by Kristina Wandzilak and Constance Curry. They both tell their story in that book and it also really helped me. Reading about these other parents’ experiences of how they got through it; I feel like that helped condense my whole thing into one year where it could’ve easily been three or five or more.
It’s this long journey. I think when it first happened I thought, “Okay, she just turned 16 so I have two years until she’s a legal adult and I’m just going to do everything I can do now and I’ve given her some tools and kind of a foundation to fall back on when and if this shows up again in her life.” I think it was important that my daughter had therapists when she was younger and she was kind of open to the process. A lot of kids just don’t want to talk to anyone, but she was willing and was used to doing that when she was younger.
The gift of this is… I used to study Buddhism as a young woman before I had children and it was kind of this theory that you live in every moment or live every day as if it’s your last. It was just sort of this “idea.” Well now I get to really put that into practice. It’s reality now. This is my real life. And that in a way can be a real gift.
I also want to say—because I don’t ever want to leave her out—I have another daughter, who’s only nine. So she went through this with us, very courageously. And she’s very smart. There are a lot of young siblings who are visiting their older brothers and sisters in rehab and I don’t ever want to leave them out.
My story is about prevention, transformation, hope, facing our fears head on, and how I feel more capable and have found my voice though this experience. I am also beyond proud of my daughter. The idea that one child from a family that has addiction on BOTH sides can walk through the fire and show up for recovery over and over is just amazing. Lots of her family members are still struggling. Our story is about breaking family patterns that no longer work for us. Now we want to give back and help pull others up.
My daughter is speaking to other teens, telling her story of addiction and recovery. We are also starting a support website for families with teens in crisis in Northern California. My daughter named it Rise In Recovery. I am now looking into programs to become a drug and alcohol counselor. So all this has really changed our life plan for the better. I usually don’t go too much into the scary part of my story. I want to live in the light as much as possible. All the good stuff we all want comes with recovery.
Community, support, transformation, finding our strength, speaking our truth. Some of us are lucky enough to be in a situation to be forced to take the leap, full on. Talk about getting out of my comfort zone!! I had no idea I was capable of doing any of this three years ago. I do lots of public speaking now. That used to scare me half to death. Not anymore. Lots and lots of gifts come from being in recovery.