It may seem sensational that I’m saying this, but I can’t really share the full story here (in this chapter/book) for fear of legal action. That disclaimer out of the way, I can tell you that my son began his journey with Adderall as a recreational substance due to its abundance at his home. Until college, my daughter still had scripts for both Vyvance and Adderall. For what? White upper-class competitive high school bullshit. Or the lie that everyone is doing it, so we need to do it too to keep up.
I remember when my son mentioned to me that he’d been trying it out. Sophomore in high school. He didn’t need a prescription. “It’s all over the house,” he told me. “Everyone’s on it. The bottles are everywhere. They’ll never notice.” He was right.
“That’s not shit you want to play with,” I cautioned him.
So, here we are. After several setbacks in college, primarily with the failure of his extracurricular e-commerce idea, he got even more flexible the use of pharmaceuticals. We can point the finger at his two adult keepers. We can point the finger at any MD who would prescribe Adderall and Clonapin to a kid with compromised emotional maturity. We can point to the summer when he convinced the MD to give him a 90-day supply of Adderall. He was going out of country, but…
That summer on his way to Bulgaria, I tried to get in touch with him nearly every day. Often he would never call or text back. He learned that from his mom. She’s the classic, “Oh, I missed your text.” Or, “My phone died.” Or…
Yada yada. That summer, with his two adults staying up late and sleeping until the afternoon, it wasn’t expected that he get a job to help PAY for his trip. Or that he should be up before 2 pm. It was Summer, after all.
I was able to offer him some noise-canceling headphones for the long flight. On the day of his trip he finally responded, “Can you bring them by, we’re running behind on packing.”
“Um, no. I am happy to meet you and your mom on the way to the airport. I think you will be really happy you have these.”
For several weeks after returning to their house from college, my son had no schedule, no responsibilities, and no agenda, and a large supply of Adderall. What do you think he was doing all night? I could ask the same of my ex-wife, but that’s already implied, right? It was a house full of parasympathetic methamphetamine salts enthusiasts.
A couple hours later he texted, “We’re running late, can you just meet us out in the parking lot?”
I did. My son looked like a pale skeleton. My ex-wife looked more frazzled and gaunt than usual. I handed the headphones through the window and patted him on the shoulder. “Have a great trip.” And they sped off.
Classic insanity before any trip. Late and rushing. Late and freaking out. Everyone freaking out, ’cause we’re all in this together. I did my best not to freak out at my ex-wife. And he was off to his summer abroad, a trip that would have a huge impact on his trajectory.
Jumping here to the present moment, we’re in a similar movie. My ex-wife was resistant to in-patient care over the last two months. She was going to architect and execute an alternative treatment plan, keeping my son in the house of retired adults and Adderall enthusiasts who sleep until 2 pm, in the hopes that it would work out.
The Saturday before Father’s Day I began to press for a real-life intervention. My son’s behavior was increasingly alarming. It was time to step in, again. As I broke the silence with the husband, more lies were illuminated. It was also notable that my ex-wife was not being honest with her husband either. She was keeping things from him. Like the burner phone my daughter discovered on the flight to DC, to be with her husband’s family over Thanksgiving last year.
“Oh,” the husband said. “That makes sense. He had TSA Pre-check, just like his mom and me. He chose to go through the normal line, “To be with my sister,” he said. “This is starting to make sense.” Um, good morning husband, where have you been over the last two months? In the dark?
When my daughter saw the second phone going through security she was alarmed. She told me about it a few weeks later.
I hit the “fuck no” button when she told me. I’m the reason for the trainwreck. I stole his bag of “product” he was selling, as well as the guns that he kept buying for “protection.”
“What do you need protection from?”
To my son, I am probably still the bad guy. Perhaps recovery and the “amends” step will help him get clarity. Perhaps not.
The week after Father’s Day, I was pressing on the intervention idea. Red flags were being posted daily. He claimed to be going through “withdrawals.” Yes, this was his patent excuse over the last two years. At least, four times, we could all recall. Yet, he maintained, he was not addicted. Each day of his “trial period” in the Air BNB the contradictions would come in. I would reach out in the morning with a hello text, and perhaps an offer for lunch or some activity. He would usually respond by 2 pm or sometimes as late as 6 pm. There was part of him that was gaming all of us. Waiting on his proof of life text. I was done waiting.
He accepted a random dinner invitation and we met at the nearby Whole Foods Market. From days before, when I brought him the Juiceland on his deathbed of withdrawal detox, he seemed revived. He expressed optimism and hope.
Uh oh.
My brain didn’t assemble the information into a cohesive story until 24 hours later. He was not detoxing. He was using. He’d reupped. And without a psychiatrist. He’d taken a left turn.
As I expressed my deep concerns to his mom and her husband, the intervention agenda began to come together. But his mom was worried. She still wanted to protect him. Her fear sounded like this, “What’s going to prevent him from just living in his car?”
I suppressed my laugh. “Um, he’s a privileged white kid, even if he did sleep in his car, he’d last a day.”
She remained unconvinced. We continued negotiating how to get him into in-patient treatment.
“How would it even work? If he walks out, he’d just end up in a homeless camp.”
“Again,” I said. “No. He will not begin a homeless period.”
“What’s the leverage? How can we make sure he doesn’t bolt?”
“Here’s how I think it would go. At the end of the intervention, we offer him one choice: go to treatment. Yes, he could continue to refuse and walk out the door. This time, however, he walks out the door on foot. Without his keys or his phone.”
She was unconvinced and wanted to change the subject to which program we should look into. This is TWO MONTHS after I offered “the mountain” in Taos and got it preapproved on their insurance.
Within twenty-four hours he’d destroyed the getaway car. No one was hurt.
In a moment of lucidity, his mom said to him, sitting on the side of the road with him looking at his crushed car. “I think it’s time you consider in-patient.”
“I don’t care,” he said.
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