- Alcohol
- Drugs
- Friends & Family
- Mental Health
Submitted by: Susanne Johnson
Trent is a married man from Birmingham, Alabama, with three children in their twenties. He was in treatment himself for abusing depression medication, which was prescribed to him. He was taking as many as 16 prescribed pills at a time. His own addiction overlapped in time with his son’s problems, but was not caused by it. He also was prescribed Xanax and took as prescribed. He stopped drinking while taking this medication. Then he started to drink again and discovered black-outs. His own treatment made him aware to stay away from certain medicines that lead to abuse and addiction for him.
Depression came on pretty strong and he didn’t recognize it. Then they had to deal with his son’s addiction during this time as a family. Trent’s son went to treatment before his own addiction and depression had hit a critical point. His son was a help to discover his own problems. Trent went to lots of meetings and got involved into his son’s recovery and says that he learned during this process more about himself than in his entire life before. Trent describes it as a revelation to learn from his son through the recovery process to be more grateful, more humble and other things about his own life. “I learned to be more peaceful. I never understood any of this until my son became an addict.” He says, “I give all the credit to him that I learned to be grateful.”
Trent and his lovely wife have three children. His addicted son is the middle one. They noticed alarming signs about a year prior to his entry to treatment and decided to keep a close watch on him to see if this was just a phase he was going through that he would grow out of, or if it was a more serious problem. Six months before he went to treatment they knew there was a decision to be made. He was nineteen at this point and at age twenty he entered recovery.
A friend of theirs was an interventionist and led the family in the right direction and helped them to choose the right facilities. A stage of concern turned into a plan of action. Trent’s son went through 70 days of treatment in Utah and then entered directly from there a sober living facility in South Florida to go through a six month aftercare program. As this finished, he moved into his own apartment, sharing it with another sober young man, which he met through his journey. His siblings were integrated in the whole process of their brother’s recovery; they went to family week, sat in the ring of fire, and knew their roles in his recovery. The family recognized addiction as a family disease and activated family resilience to get recovery for all.
Trent’s son went to college at Texas Tech University and found there a collegiate recovery community that was a huge part of his continuum of care. At this time the family knew nothing about it and there were hardly any resources to find out how to pick a recovery friendly college for a loved one in sobriety. This was enough inspiration for Trent to start Recovery Campus Magazine as he was all his life in the magazine publishing business. He wants to raise awareness about collegiate recovery communities all over the country with the magazine, which is also a source of hope and information for those seeking to enter or finish their higher education after being in recovery.
Trent’s son graduated with honors. There is no such place as a relapse-safe town or a relapse-safe college, but there are ways to make it easier for people with substance use disorders in recovery to stay away from anything that might kill them and focus on a healthy, active life with goals, plans and dreams just like anybody else does. Being in recovery should not exclude people from getting the education and career chances they like to obtain. Trent’s son is celebrating five years of consecutive sobriety and Trent believes that relapse does not necessary need to be a part of the recovery process. His son is hiking the Appalachian Trail at this moment for a total of about 5 1/2 months. He loves to write music, is writing while hiking at the moment and hopes for a professional career in the music industry.
Recovery Campus is an uplifting resource for young adults and their parents to find treatment options and collegiate recovery options. It is also a resource about success in recovery, working to break the stigma of addiction through testimonies. Trent likes to emphasize, “You can fulfill all your life’s dreams, if you just stay the course and stay on the path.”
To other parents, Trent would like to say that there are a lot more possibilities to get in trouble as at the time when they were young. If parents today think there is a problem, there is a really, really big chance that there is a problem. “Don’t be naïve and stick your head in the sand thinking it will go away,” he says during our interview, “children start a lot younger today and you have to watch it really closely.”
There is nothing shameful about addiction, in Trent’s opinion, if your child or a loved one is going to treatment for any kind of substance use disorder or mental health disorder. Also parents need to be willing to be in it for the long haul, addiction is not cured in a 30 days stay anywhere and your loved child goes back to school and the thread is over. Trent adds, “Treatment needs to be as long as it needs to be– and the parents need to get out of the way and let the professionals do what they need to do.”