THE SEARCH

I had done a basic search of his room several times by looking under the bed, between the mattress and the box spring, in the pockets of all of his clothes in the closet, and other places.  But, while my daughter and her husband were at our house, they helped me do a thorough search. 

We tore his room apart.  My son-in-law had actually looked online for ideas of places to look.  They took every poster off of his wall because it said that kids can hide flatten a bag and then tape it on the wall behind their posters.

Other places that the online websites listed as places to look when searching your house and kids room are:  inside the cylinder that toilet paper fits on, under the toilet tank, inside wall plates on switches or outlets, in light fixtures, underneath dressers, inside heat vents, inside throw pillows, in the very center of the box spring, inside pens, in battery compartments of radios, etc., in any possible hollow portion in furniture, inside highlighter pens, inside speakers (this one seems to be a very popular one), inside game consoles, under the insoles of shoes, in a rolled up pair of socks, inside a half used stick of deodorant, inside the liner of bags or under the bottom insert of a sports bag or duffle bag, in books (even hollowed out books), inside a paintball hopper, inside a computer tower or printer, in DVD or game cases, inside a deck of cards box, and even under their parents bed.

It also said to look for bent spoons, soda cans with a discolored bottom, tape, and more cups of water than normal.

Wow.

None of those places are where we found my son’s stash places in his room.

We looked everywhere.  My son-in-law did look inside the X-box console.  We went through every inch of his room.  We looked through boxes of things that he has had in his room for years.  We took his dresser apart.  We tried to find all of the hollow places in his lamps and desk legs.  We went through every gym bag and back pack. 

Then, my daughter found a very interesting stash place.  A place that no one would ever really think to look. 

Picture the standard bedroom closet.  It is about 3 feet deep and 8 feet wide.  It has sliding doors that expose either one half of the closet or the other when opened.  We took the doors off the closet and while my daughter was searching it, she happened to look up as she was standing in the closet facing the bedroom.  Cut into the sheetrock wall above the closet door space was a four inch square hole.  The hole just happened to be right above a two by four running horizontally above the opening for the closet doors.  It made a perfect shelf to stash something on that no one would ever see. 

He also had a roll of duct tape and scissors on the top shelf of his closet.  One of the things that the online searches said to look for was tape because the kids will try to tape their drugs to the bottom of things like dresser drawers, the toilet tank, etc. to hide them. 

There wasn’t anything in the hole at that time.  So, we kept looking.

As I moved his gaming “banana” chair, I noticed that it had a tear in the back of it right at the seam.  I put my hand inside the chair at that point and felt my stomach drop.  I found his current stash.

Hidden inside the banana chair I found a homemade marijuana pipe, a hollow highlighter pen used for storing the weed, a lighter, a bag of matches, and a bag of pills.

I was a little bit angry when I found the pills so I tore the whole back off of the banana chair to see if there was anything else in it.  There wasn’t, but I think that what I found was interesting enough.

A bag of pills?  I immediately thought of a bottle of low-dose anti-depressant pills that had been in a drawer in my room.  They had been prescribed for him earlier in the year to try to help him sleep, but they didn’t seem to help, so I just left them in my drawer and forgot about them.  I went to the drawer and got the bottle out, finding it practically empty.  Then, I compared the pills.  They were the same. 

But, my son only used marijuana.  What would he be doing with pills?  My innocent mom mind told me that he must have been selling them to pay for his weed.  He wouldn’t take pills.  Especially pills that he said didn’t work when he tried to use them for sleep, right?

One thing that I have recently learned is that an addict’s mind thinks in a different way than others minds do.  They will think that if a medication is prescribed for a certain health condition, and they don’t have that particular condition, then the medication must be good for getting high.  They will try it with any kind that they can get their hands on, even heart medication.  It is scary to think about and is a good reason to keep al medication locked up, not just hidden away.  They have searched your room and your entire house when they have been home alone and they know all of your hiding places. 

I know that my son used to smoke marijuana in the shower every morning and I have searched the bathroom several times, never finding anything in there.  He admitted to smoking it in the shower the morning that we admitted him to the facility.  The banana chair must have been an easy place to grab the marijuana stash on his way out of his room. He always locked the door and always took really long showers.  NOw, we no long have a lock on our bathroom door.

Later, when we told him about the stash, he adamantly denied that it was his.  He still denies it to this day.  His therapist told him that he very likely might not remember that he had a stash there.  She told him that he could have put it there sometime when he was high and then forgot that he did.  She tried to give him a way to stop needing to deny it so vehemently. 

After tearing his room apart and finding the stash hole cut into the closet, my husband decided to remodel his closet completely.  He boxed in 3 sections with hard masonite, covered with sheetrock.  Now my son will not be able to cut any stash holes in the closet and there are no high, hidden areas anymore.  The closet does not currently have doors which makes everything in it visible. 

There are so many more places in our house that drugs could be hidden.  There are countless places outside in the yard.  I don't know how we will ever be able to search every possible location. 

The highlighter pen used for storing marijuana had the ink portion removed.  But, sometimes they leave the ink portion in half of it so that it still looks like a functioning pen.  For some reason, he taped all around the pen with his favorite lime green duct tape.  He had a piece of the same duct tape on the bag of matches.  His homemade pipe seemed to be made out of small plastic containers like the ones that mechanical pencil lead comes in, all taped together with black electrical tape, with a space in the center lined with metal of some kind.  They can make a pipe out of almost anything.  It makes me laugh when he denies that the items were his, given the fact that he used his own green duct tape on them and we have plenty of electrical tape lying around in our garage.

Sometimes I just have to laugh.

Right before I really start thinking.  Holy cow!  We had drug paraphernalia hidden in our house!  My son smoked marijuana in our house! 

People ask me how we did not smell it.

Good question.