Psych

When I held this child in my arms for the first time, I never thought that I would see him in handcuffs.  I never thought he would use drugs.  I never thought I would have to put him in a rehab facility.  I never thought I would hear doctors and therapists suggest diagnoses like attachment disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, below average brain processing speed, depression, psychosis, explosive personality disorder, and bi-polar disorder.  I never thought he would spend time in a psych unit.

At the same time that my son was freaking out in my home, beating holes in my door, and fighting with my husband, there was a terrible school shooting in one of the eastern states.  And, the sad thing about that in my own life was that I couldn’t say for sure that my son wouldn’t ever attempt something like that. When he is raging, he is totally out of control and doesn’t think about anything but the fact that he will do anything to get the results that he is after.  You just don’t know what it is like to see your son beat a hole through your door and then fight with your husband, who is just trying to restrain him.  I had no idea what lengths he would go to if he thought he was being treated unfairly by us, his parents, or the world in general.  It was awful that I even had those thoughts, but I had no idea what was going on in my son’s head.

He was given ten days by the insurance company for the doctors and therapists at the psych unit to try to figure it out.  We were lucky to get them to allow ten days.  At first, they were only willing to let him stay for five days, which would have been ridiculous.  He was rebellious and un-cooperative for the first five days as it was. 

The first thing that his therapist, Fred, said to me was, “You have one stubborn son.”

I said, “No, I have one REALLY stubborn son.”  And he laughed and agreed with me.  He expressed empathy and compassion for what we were going through and for that fact that nothing we had tried in the past had helped.  He let us know that in ten short days, we would be lucky to make any kind of breakthrough.  

Family therapy sessions were tough.  For two or three days, our son was uncommunicative and sullen.  The only thing he said to us was, "Will you bring me some of my own clothes? I am tired of wearing someone else's pants."  Even after those first three days, he would not speak to me or my husband unless he absolutely had to.  Then, he started “playing the game” with Fred, saying exactly what he thought Fred wanted to hear.  I expressed concern about that and he said that he knew what my son was doing and knew how to handle the behavior.  When playing the game didn’t get immediate results—going home and getting his X-Box back—my son started trying to manipulate me by promising to do all of the things that were on the list that he had previously sworn he would never do. 

Fred was amazing and didn’t let us fall for anything that our son tried to pull.  He was trying to make my son take responsibility for himself and for his actions and not blame us for everything that was happening to him.

The psychiatrist (I will call him Dr. Smith) spent a lot of time with my son and after a few days told us that he was going to prescribe a new medication to help calm my son down.  This was one of the breakthroughs that I was looking for.  When I researched the new medication online, I saw that this particular medication was generally prescribed for bi-polar disorder. 

Bi-polar disorder!  I had been asking doctors for over two years if my son had a type of bi-polar disorder.  His mood swings were rapid and cycling and I could often tell when an episode was going to end up in out of control behavior.  My concern was always just brushed off and I was told, “No, he is not bi-polar.”  And that was it. 

During that week of peace and quiet at home, I went to see a movie about a young adult with bi-polar disorder, who left a psychiatric hospital to go back home to live with his parents.  He didn’t like to take his medication and he had raging episodes similar to the ones that my son has.  It was interesting to see an episode portrayed on a movie screen, although the rages portrayed in those scenes were extremely MILD compared to the raging episodes that we experience in our home. 

So, for me, it was validating to know that a doctor had put two and two together to come up with the same feelings about an aspect of my son’s mental condition that I had been having.

This diagnosis could have the potential to be life-changing for him and for us as a family.     

We went back every day during the week to meet with the therapist and psychiatrist, followed by family therapy with our son.  Each time we met with them, they would shake their heads and empathize with us about how hard it was to deal with our son.  It did not seem like any progress was being made.  He still wouldn’t talk to us.  He still played the game with them.  And, he didn’t want to try to let them help him.  Every time they asked him questions about his behavior or choices he would say, “Because, I am bored.  Because, I don’t have anything in my life that I find enjoyable.  Nothing that I used to do is fun anymore.  No matter what I try I can’t find anything to do.”

And they responded with the question, “When you make the decision to be bored and to stop trying to have fun, how does that benefit you?”  He wouldn’t answer them.

As we drew closer to the end of the week, even though nothing had really changed, the next step was for our son to come up with a Safety Plan for what he was willing to do to keep himself and the family safe when he came home.  He was supposed to decide on certain behaviors, expectations, and consequences.  Fred felt that it would work out better for us if our son made the plan because then he couldn’t say, “That’s not what I agreed to do, so I don’t have to do it.”  But, he refused to try, to listen, or to give-in on anything.  Sometimes, Fred was just dumbfounded as he saw how unreasonable my son could be. 

He would send our son out of the room and give us counsel about things that we, as parents, needed to do when he came home.  He said that we should give him his X-Box back, even though we didn’t want to.  According to him, when we take something away, indefinitely, in our son's mind, it is the end of the world, life is over, and he will NEVER be able to get what he lost back.  He said that if we feel that we need to take something away from him, we should take it away for a maximum of two days. 

He also recommended that we put a door back on his room, since we had taken his door off when he smoked marijuana in there.  I was only willing to give him the door with the big hole in it and the Fred thought that was a great idea.  When he presented that idea to my son, his response was, “Fine with me.  As long as they like hearing my TV blast loudly all night.” 

To which Fred forcefully stated, “You WILL NOT be doing that.  Being disrespectful in that manner is not going along with the right to live in your parent’s house!” 

Of course, the rebuttal to that was, “I don’t want to live there anyway!”  And he began to spin everything in that direction again. 

Everything just went around and around.  We weren’t getting anywhere and were at our wits end.  What would we do after the weekend was over and he came back home?

We had just played our Psych Unit card, so what would our next course of action be if things got out of control again?

As the weekend approached, he suddenly began to cooperate and came up with ideas for his Safety Plan, thinking that if he did what was expected at the last minute, he wouldn’t have to stay any longer.  When he asked me if he could go home with us that night, Fred said, “It is not up to your parents.  This decision is not in their control.  I will confer with Dr. Smith and we will determine whether you can go home after the weekend is over, or not.”  My son began to cry and begged, “Please don’t make me stay here.  It is so f-n boring that I can’t stand it.”

I hated to see him cry.  I hated that he was going through this and that WE were all going through this.  I had certainly shed my share of tears.  I knew he was not having a good time there, but I also knew that I wasn’t ready for him to come home yet.

So, of course he got angry and went back to his sulking mood saying again that he didn’t ever want to come home with us and would rather go anywhere else than to our home.  Fred told us that we might as well leave and he would continue to try to get through to our son for awhile that night. 

During their discussion, Fred told him, “if I let you go home on Tuesday, you need to know that you will be going back to high school and that if you screw up at all, in any way, you will be put in residential treatment, immediately.  There will be a standing order waiting for you.  And, if it was my decision, alone, I would put you in residential treatment right now because you aren’t showing me that you have learned a thing in the last week that you have been here.” 

The only thing my son took from that statement were the words, “Residential Treatment.”  I received a phone call from our son a while later and he began begging me to say that if he was good all weekend, would I make sure that he didn’t have to go into residential treatment next week?

I just told him that I wasn’t going to commit to anything and that I couldn’t make any decisions, say yes, or say no to anything without his Dad, the therapist, and the psychiatrist’s input.  He hung up on me.

Five minutes later, a staff member called back and said that our son wanted to talk to me again.  My husband told him that I wouldn’t talk to my son if he was just going to get angry when he didn’t get the answers that he wanted and hang up on me again.  The staff member talked to our son, then put him on the line.  He asked us to come and see him the next night (there was no family therapy on weekends).  I agreed, but reiterated that I would not answer any questions about his release date or his future and that if he started to pester me, I would just leave. 

10 minutes after that, Fred called and told me that he wished he knew what was misfiring in my son’s brain that quickly turns a good situation into a bad one and causes everything to blow up, but he didn’t know what it was.  He wished that our insurance company would let him go into residential treatment, but he knew that it wasn’t a likely option.  He said that he should have left work several hours ago but was trying valiantly to make some progress with our son.  Even though he wasn’t supposed to work the next day, he said he was going to go to the morning meeting and fill everyone in about our son and try to figure out what to do with him.  I have never known any doctor or therapist who worked as hard to help our family as Fred did in that short time.  I will always be grateful for all of the extra time that he spent with us.  I wished we could have continued therapy with him on the outside because he has been the only person who seemed to be able to see past the games and the acting and try to get to the root of the problem. 

At the end of our weekend visit with our son, where we brought him fast food and played Uno, he actually initiated and gave me and my husband hugs when it was time for us to leave.  Wow!   

We had a fairly good time with him, but part of me didn’t trust that.  How would I know that it wasn’t just part of the act that he puts on to try to get his way?  But, then again, maybe a week in the psych unit taught him that it wasn’t as bad at home as he thought it was.

On Monday, I found out that no matter what argument or diagnosis or reason that Fred and Dr. Smith had for putting our son in residential treatment, the insurance company would not budge and would not cover a stay in the facility, or even Day Treatment.  It made me upset that our health insurance, which we had not downgraded or changed in anyway in the last three years, no longer covers any residential or day treatment for mental health or substance abuse.  Somehow they secretly red-lined that coverage without our knowing it.  Nothing was said about that change in coverage when we renewed at higher and higher rates every year.

The honeymoon period of good weekend behavior was certainly over on Monday night.  Once our son found out he wasn’t going to residential treatment, he was ready to be a jerk again.  He didn’t know that it was not allowed by the insurance company, he just knew that he wasn’t going at that point.  But, Fred did his best to put a stop to the rotten attitude by telling our son that if he didn’t shut up and listen and let us come up with a plan, he was going to change his mind about discharging him the next day.

The hour was over way too quickly and he sent our son out of the room to give us a last few minutes of reassurance and advice.  He hoped that our son would follow the rules and everything that we were working on for the Safety Plan, but he had reservations and he told us…”This is off the record.  I will deny that I ever said this to you.  But, you do have a choice tomorrow.  If you choose not to come and pick him up, he will become a ward of the state.  You will be charged with abandonment, but with all that you have gone through, and all of the information that we can release from the records of his stay here, it won’t be that bad for you and you won’t have to deal with him anymore.  I can say that I would not think badly of you if you did this.  I don’t know if anything that we have done here in the last week has helped him and I don’t want to send you home with the idea that things have been fixed because they probably haven't been.”

I almost started to cry as he was talking.  How could I possibly do that?  Would I ever really be at that point?

I asked Fred if we could meet again for awhile before I took my son home the next day and he said, “Yes, I think we should.”   He set it up for 1:00 p.m. and I said, “Are you blocking out 3 hours?”  He laughed and said he thought we would probably need that much, knowing us.  Then, he sent us to a room with our son to try to finish the going-home plan without his assistance, since we hadn’t made enough progress on it during our session.

Our Safety Plan turned out to be different than the one that Fred was suggesting, but we had to get our son to agree to something, so we took what we could get.  And then, he actually hugged us again when we left. 

That night, I either got the stomach-flu or food poisoning or both.  I was so sick all night long.  The next morning, I had to go check my son out of the psych unit alone because my husband couldn’t miss work.  I don't know how I managed it, but I pretended that I wasn’t sick the whole time that I was at the facility.  

Fred told me that if we have to go through this again, he would make sure that he was our son’s therapist and that he would do everything in his power to make sure that if necessary (and because it was the last resort) our son would get admitted to the State Mental Hospital.  

I had just been wondering why anyone hadn’t ever mentioned the State Hospital and was glad to have him alleviate my fears about having no other options.  

He powered through everything again with my son about what was expected of him at home.   My son was quietly submissive and agreed to comply with everything.  

I was terrified to take him home.  I knew that my son still felt that everything that had happened was not his fault and blamed us for all of it.  I was so sick and felt so awful that I knew I could not handle it if he freaked out when we got home.   

I let him know that I planned on going straight to bed when we got home and he said he intended to immediately begin playing the X-Box.  But, surprisingly, he asked me what chore I wanted him to do first.  And, he did one.  

That was unexpected. 

Maybe things were going to be okay.

Yeah, right…..maybe.

Saturday Night #2

11:00 p.m., Saturday night. 

Once again, my son began the argument that he should be allowed to stay up late in the office playing Starcraft.

The answer was no, of course.   We weren’t about to start relaxing the rules for him.  But, no matter how many times he asked why, and no matter how many times we gave him an answer, as long as he wasn’t getting the answer that he wanted, he continued to badger us.  As far as he was concerned, he wasn’t going to quit until he got what he wanted.

Some people might wonder why we just didn’t give in and avoid another conflict like the one we had the week before.  In hindsight, I often think about what might have happened if we had.  I just know that it is his pattern to push and push and push until we get so tired of the argument that we let him have his way.  But, that doesn’t happen very often and when it does, it is on a small thing like buying an energy drink at the gas station, not having a privilege returned that he hadn’t even expended any energy to earn back.  We weren't going to let him push us to do something that we didn't feel good about.  

Once again, my answer was:  “No, you cannot stay up after we go to bed.  Just a few weeks ago, you smoked pot in the basement when you were supposedly in the office playing Starcraft.  You aren't allowed to be downstairs after we have gone to bed anymore.  I gave you this exact same answer last week and nothing has changed since then.”

He ardently argued that he had been “good” all week and that he should be rewarded for that.  It was true that we hadn’t had any real problems with him, but the reason for that was mostly because he wasn’t speaking to us and we had been walking in circles around him just trying to avoid having to talk to him. 

The hospital case worker and DCFS therapist each told him to work on the list of expectations in order to start earning trust back.  But, when we pointed out that not one single attempt was made to clean his room, help around the house, or apologize for the awful things that he had said and done, he said that he didn’t have to do any of that stuff and that none of it was his idea.  

We asked him to tell us what his ideas were.  He wouldn't do it. Instead, he insisted that WE make a completely different list and then he would let us know if he approved of anything on it. 

To get him to be quiet for a few minutes, we actually left him in his room and went downstairs to brainstorm some new ideas.  We hoped that things would settle down and that maybe this would put an end to this episode.  But, it was hard to come up with anything that we knew he would do.  I think he wanted a list of easy things like: take a shower, comb your hair, eat food, and breathe. 

And so, when we read him our newest rendition--which included all previous items and more new ones, he said all of it was B.S. and told us to get out of his room and f*** off.   He announced that he was going to get out of our house as soon as he could and we could plan on him being an a** hole until he did.

We took him up on the getting out of his room and thought maybe we had gotten off easy this time.  We were more than happy to leave him alone, even if we didn’t like the way he had requested it.  One of the reasons he was in the position he was in was for telling me to F*** off and here he was, doing it again.  It wasn't like his acting like an a** hole was going to be such a new and different experience for us, since he had been acting like that most of the time lately, anyway.

We enjoyed some quiet time for about 10 minutes.  Then, all of a sudden, our son came out of his room and told us that he was going to go live somewhere else and insisted that we were NOT to call the police when he left.  He said, "You told me to leave, if I didn’t like it here, so you can't call the police if I do what you told me to do."  My husband reminded him that we also said we would have to know where he was going and that we would have to talk to the parents to verify that he had permission to stay there.  If he just left and if we had no idea where he was, then we would have to report him as a runaway.  Our son freaked out about that and said that we were liars who said he could leave one minute and in the next we were telling him that he couldn't. 

Now he was so angry that the escalation of this blow-up was imminent.    

This time it was worse than it was the last week.

He was screaming, calling us names, and losing control.  It was a little frightening and my husband and I decided that we should go into our room so that we could lock the door and get away from him before things got too heated.  But, our son kept stepping in front of my husband to block his way.  Finally, my husband went to push him out of the way and our son used one of the moves he had learned in Tae Kwon Do and got my husband in a headlock.  Well, even though the TKD maneuver worked, my husband was a lot bigger and stronger than my son at that time and he just twisted out of it, shoved our son into his room, came into ours, and locked the door.

The next thing we knew, our son was punching his way into our room, THROUGH the door!  He had put a shirt over his hand and was in the process of beating a hole in my bedroom door!

He was yelling that he wasn’t finished talking to us and we needed to stop being pussies and come out and face him.  He said that if we weren’t going to let him move out, then he would rather be dead because that would be better than living here, bored out of his mind for one more day of his life.

Since we didn’t want him to do any more damage to our house than he was already doing and we didn’t feel good about that last comment at all, my husband opened the door to stop our son from hurting himself or the rest of the house, and grabbed him and took him down to the floor and held him there.

Our son was so entrenched in the battle that it seemed more about the battle than anything else at this point.  He swore and yelled and threatened and fought.  He wouldn't settle down.  We felt that we had no choice but to call for reinforcements.  Once again, the police were summoned to our house. 

It seemed like an eternity until they arrived.  They ended the struggle between my son and my husband.  One officer took my husband into our bedroom and the other one took my son into his bedroom where they each answered questions about the night’s events. 

As they talked with us about whether we wanted him taken to Youth Services or the hospital again, he yelled down the stairs that he just wanted ME to drive him to Youth Services.  I said that I was not willing to drive him anywhere by myself.  My son just kept yelling and begging me to do it and finally the officer told him to shut up and go sit on his bed.

My son told him NO and said that he was going to just stand in the hall.  Then, the officer grabbed him, swore at him, handcuffed him, and put him on his bed.  I could not believe that he had the nerve to defy a police officer.

The officer apologized to me for swearing and I said, “No problem.  You just got to see what we go through every single day.”  He said he was sorry for us.

It was finally decided that one of the officers would drive him to the hospital for us since we probably wouldn’t get the help that we needed from Youth Services.  We hoped that the E.R. would take him as a follow-up patient from the time we were there a week ago. 

While we waited for the doctor, the case worker, the blood tests, and everything else that you wait and wait for in the E.R., my son’s emotions and actions were all over the place.  He went from not talking at all, to crying and being apologetic, to being so mad that he kicked us out of his room, to saying how he loved me and didn’t hate his Dad, to saying that he was never coming home again and he never wanted to see us again, to wanting us to tell his nephew not to forget about him. 

His blood test showed a positive result for Benzodiazapenes.  He claimed to not know how he could have them in his system and was sure that the blood test was wrong.  I thought he might have gotten something from someone that night while we were gone.  It certainly made sense that he was on something, given the way he became as agitated as he was when he was punching a hole through a door.    

Fortunately, the same case worker was on call this week in the E.R.  I think it helped that he was already familiar with our situation.  With the positive drug test results and the diagnosis of Explosive Personality Disorder along with Major Depression, and the fact that he had said he would rather be dead than have to live with us in our house, it seemed obvious that there was no choice this time, but to have him admitted to a short term psychiatric unit.  

During the long hours that it took to make the arrangements, our son finally settled down and became resigned to the fact that he was going back to the same facility that he had been at for rehab.  He summoned me into his room and tried to make a deal with me.  He seriously wanted me to agree that when he got released, if, for one week, he did the list of things that we had made, would I guarantee that he would be able to get the X-Box privileges back? 

Holy Cow.   NOW, he wanted to do the things on the list?  Good timing.  He couldn’t have decided that this was a good idea before he said that he would rather be dead, got into an altercation with his Dad, and ruined my bedroom door?  I told him that I wasn’t going to guarantee anything and when I wouldn’t tell him what he wanted to hear, he just got more and more frustrated with me and wasn't as broken-hearted as we was a few minutes before.  I was the b****y mom again.

I was so tired of the drama that it was a relief to have the ambulance crew arrive to take him to the facility.  It had been a long night.  

Now, we could only hope that the professionals at the psych unit would be able to figure out what to do with him and how to help him because we just couldn’t keep going through this week after week.   

I am so tired of this trial.  I know I am supposed to understand that addiction and all of the behaviors that go along with it are a life-long battle.  I know I am supposed to understand that my son’s issues with Oppositional Defiant Disorder, ADHD, no motivation, attachment disorder, trauma from the womb, etc. contribute to his behavior and that I am supposed to love him through it.

But, right now, all that I know is that I am very exhausted.

And very sad.

I cried all the way home.

One Week in the Life...

This is what the week after our Police/Emergency Room night was like:

Monday:  I have notes on several pages with phone numbers and places that I had been calling for weeks to try to find a way to get my son into some kind of affordable substance abuse treatment program.  I wasn’t going to just sit back and say, “Okay, he smoked pot and I stopped him.  He won’t do it again.”  I wanted him to get some intensive treatment to see if we could get him back to the point that he seemed to be at a year and a half before. 

One of the places that I found that might have a place for him was at Youth Services.  But, the soonest that I could get an appointment for an evaluation was FIVE weeks after I called them!   No problem, right?  You find out your kid is using drugs again and you happily wait five weeks to see if you can get him some help.  I don’t understand what parents are expected to do in the meantime. 

Now that we had a DCFS therapist who had connections, we were able to get an evaluation a little bit sooner.  Miraculously, this appointment just happened to be the day after we came home from that crazy mid-night at the E.R.   I was so hopeful that this could be a turning point where our son and our family would get help, and that somehow we could move toward a better future.

We met with a social worker who interviewed my son and I together, then separately.  My session was last.  She listened to me tell her everything that has been going on, how awful it was at home, that he relapsed on pot, that I don’t want his drug use to spiral out of control like it did before, and that I wanted him to get into a program as soon as possible.  And then she informed me that since HE only admitted to smoking pot three times, he did not qualify for their Substance Abuse Day Treatment Program.  I just wanted to scream, but I said, “Even though you and I both know that he is lying and that he was probably using for a month or more?”

She said, “Yes, but we will do a drug urine test just in case.  If he has used in the last two weeks, we will know and that could change my decision.”  She said that she knew it was obvious that he needed help but was sorry that he didn’t qualify for their program.

Awesome.  

I had spent the last several weeks playing “warden mom”, doing everything in my power to keep him at home, to keep him safe from doing drugs, and what did I get for that diligence? 

Unqualified.  Nobody told me that while we waited for the evaluation appointment, I should let him self-destruct and smoke all the pot he wanted.  Heaven forbid that I should try to protect my child.  In trying to protect him, I ruined his chances for acceptance into a program that might have helped him.

His urine test came back clean.  

No kidding. 

Tuesday:  I called the Addiction Recovery Center for Healing.  I had been referred to this establishment by our Church Bishop.  I turned to him as a possible source to find a place for my son to go when things got so bad at our house a few weeks before.  It took him this long to get back to me, but finally, he gave me the connection to this facility and told me that he had talked to them and they were willing to take my son on a weekly therapy basis.  Of course, when I called, I just was sent straight to voice mail and I had to leave a message and then wait for someone to call me back.   

That day, I tried to contact one of my senior citizen ladies to see how she was doing and found out that her telephone was disconnected.  This frustrated me because it meant she hadn’t paid her bill.  When I get a lot going on in my life and I don’t have time to spend at least one day a week with her, she tends to shut down and doesn’t do anything but sit and sleep.  I felt really bad that I hadn’t been able to spend as much time with her as I needed to, but it was very hard to always have to be home with my son and also be able to take care of her, too.  

I felt like I was going to have a nervous-breakdown.  When my husband came home from work, I began to cry and was sobbing to him about everything—that nobody would help us, people wouldn’t return phone calls, senior citizens couldn’t function without me, etc.  I looked up at the sky and said, “I feel like telling God that if You want me to take care of my two senior citizen ladies, then You’ve got to get me some help for my son because I just can’t do it all.”

And just as I said that, my phone rang.  It was my return phone call from A.R.C.H.  I thought the Twilight Zone theme song should have started playing right then, but was also thankful that heaven was sending a little bit of help.  The director who returned my call listened to me talk about the struggles that we have been having with our son.  I told him that in addition to the addiction issues, he needed intensive help with depression, mood, anger, defiance, and hating his parents.  He was understanding and scheduled an appointment for us in two days for an evaluation.

Wednesday:  My son, our DCFS therapist, and I met with the principal and psychologist at the alternative high school that he had been attending since August.  He was not enrolled at that time because he had been dropped for having failing grades right after midterms. 

Our DCFS therapist informed my son that we had to come up with some kind of educational plan.  I was glad that it was someone else acting as the enforcer when it came to the topic of school.  We spent two hours there and came up with this—my son adamantly refused to re-enroll at that particular high school for the next quarter.  I guess smaller classes, four hours of school a day, only four days a week, and three less credits required to graduate were not incentive enough to give it another try.

He didn't want to go to school at all, but said that if he had to, he would go back to the boundary high school.  This is the high school that he stopped going to after half of his sophomore year.   They  had referred him to court for truancy and told me that I had to put him in the alternative high school.  And now, I had to try to get them to take him back.  

While he was having a private conversation with the DCFS therapist, I called the high school to find out what I had to do to get him re-admitted.  When I told him that I had spoken to the vice-principal, he stated, “DON’T you sign me up for school without MY permission because I am NOT going to school unless I get the X-Box back.  I am not adding one more thing that is not fun in my life, until I get something back that IS fun.”

Without his permission?

It is so exasperating to have this child think that he is pulling all the strings and know that he expects US to only do WHAT HE ALLOWS US TO DO!

Of course, I explained that he would be re-enrolled as soon as possible whether he liked it or not, and then HE explained in a not-so-nice way that he would not go unless his conditions were met.

The DCFS therapist tried to get him to realize that if he would just make an effort to make amends and engage in basic family expectations, he would be able to have a better home life with us.  He showed me a list of three things that our son supposedly had agreed to do to start working toward getting privileges back.  

1.  Apologize to mom.

2. Help out around the house/do chores without being asked. 

3.  Be nice in speech and no swearing at us.

I could only hope that he would do those three things and I suggested that we add: 

4.  Be honest.  (I was tired of the lying and empty promises).

5.  Go to AA.  (Because he had stopped going to AA ever since he relapsed and I knew that it was so very important that he get back to those meetings soon).

This is what he had to say about the first one:  “You have no room to talk about being honest.  You and Dad told me the ultimate lie when you put me in rehab and you will never be able to make up for that.”

He always tries to go for the jugular and defer the topic away from himself.  My husband has always said that he didn’t care if our son hated us for the rest of his life for putting him in rehab—he did it to save his life and he would do it again.

But, it sure is hard to be hated and to know that he will probably never thank us for what we did for him.  Instead, he will continue to convince himself that he can never forgive us for it.

Thursday:  We were on our way to ARCH to see what kind of therapy they could provide for him and he said, “I will not go to a new place that I have never been to if there are locks on the doors.  You have to be able to go in and out without someone unlocking the door for you, or I won’t go in.”  I told him that it wasn’t residential treatment and he said, “Yeah, like I can believe you.”

When we arrived, I think he was genuinely surprised that it really wasn’t a residential treatment facility.  We met with a therapist and once again we told our sides of the story to her.  She was very young and I was worried that if she were his addiction counselor, he would walk all over her and not let her help him.  But, I was assured that she was really good at dealing with defiant kids.  She talked to him about a process called Neuro-feedback where his brain would be mapped and then targeted in the areas that needed re-focusing and strengthening.  This would help with impulse control, addiction, ADHD, sleep, and any other area that he was struggling in.

And just as I expected, he told me how stupid the whole place was and how therapy and Neuro-feedback were going to be a big waste of time and money.

I don’t know how much therapy helps him.  I am sure that he sits there and says what he thinks the therapists want to hear, refuses to open himself up to them, and resists any of their suggestions or ideas.  But, I am just not willing to stop trying the therapy route.  I know how bad everything is now.  I don’t know how much worse it could be if we stopped it and I am afraid to find out.

Friday:  I spoke with the director at ARCH.  He explained more to me about the addiction counseling that my son would receive.  He gave more details about the process of Neuro-Feedback, and said that we would also be able to have family counseling, too.  He thought they could help my son and he set up a week’s worth of therapy and Neuro-feedback sessions to get us started. 

Other than that, it was a slow day with no appointments, evaluations, or events.  It was nice to have one day that didn't revolve around my son.  

I had no idea that it was the calm before the storm.  

I should have known. 

Once again—I thought we had seen the worst and that we couldn’t hit any more rock bottom than we already had. 

And I was wrong.

Saturday:  We spent the evening babysitting one of our grandson’s.  Being with sweet, innocent babies always makes the world seem a little bit better for a while.  I don’t know what I would have done during the last few years without the joy that the grandsons have brought into this crazy life I live.

And then, two hours after we got home, our world began to spin out of control.

Again.

DCFS

Over and over again, we heard that our son did not want to live with us anymore and that we needed to find him a place to live--or kick him out.  We were going crazy because we didn't know what to do.  
I still wanted to get him into some kind of treatment program, but just kept running into brick walls with every telephone call that I made.   Apparently, the same insurance that we had 2 years ago that allowed residential and day treatment, doesn’t cover either one, now.  Other state or county programs had 6 to 8 weeks waiting lists just to be able to be evaluated,  

What are people--who don’t have the finances to put their child in residential treatment--supposed to do while they wait 8 weeks to see if they can get their child into one of these programs?  Put their son under house arrest?  Let him run amuck and do whatever he wanted to do in the meantime?  Every private program that I checked into ran from $160.00 a day to $6,500.00 a month.  Who can afford that?

A few months ago, we learned that friends of ours had a daughter with a cocaine addiction.  Their insurance allowed them to put her in a rehab facility for two weeks.  Two weeks?  The first two weeks are the weeks that the child is angry and uncooperative.  After that, they slowly let down their barriers and begin to realize that everyone there, including their families, are trying to help them.  And even then, the progress is slow.  Two weeks isn’t long enough.  It made me want to find a way to start a foundation to provide scholarships for young people to be able to have the addiction recovery treatment that they so desperately need.  I had no idea that I would soon need that kind of assistance myself. 

At that time, I felt so bad for our friends, felt that I knew what they were going through, and wished I could help them.  I was happy that we didn't have to go through that and felt good about my son doing so well with his sobriety.  I had no idea what was coming.  You never know what is going to be the trigger that ends the sobriety and starts the relapse.  I guess the battle over school and the battle over privileges were his triggers this time. 

And now, things were not going very well in our home.  Sometimes it was so bad that I almost wanted to kick him out.  No matter how bad it got, I wouldn't do it and definitely didn’t want him to run away, go live with some unknown people, go live on the streets, or have anything bad happen to him, 

I didn’t know where else to turn and even though I didn’t really want to have DCFS (Division of Child and Family Services) involvement in our lives, I thought they might be able to help us figure out what to do with him.  After being transferred around and given different telephone numbers to call, I finally got through to a supervisor and she told me that a 45 day temporary placement might be an option while we got things figured out.  I knew that it would be heart-breaking to have him placed somewhere else, but what else could we do?  

After several weeks of waiting and calling and waiting, a Post-Adoption Family Preservation therapist made his first weekly visit. Our son was not excited that we were having a caseworker come to our house and told me that he was going to leave before the therapist got there, even if he had to go without shoes or coat again.  So, I asked the caseworker to come in the morning instead of the afternoon, just to catch my son off guard. 

He would either be just waking up or would still be sound asleep at that time of day.  He has always seemed to have problems sleeping, but now, just to be obstinate, he was staying up really, really late at night and then sleeping most of the day.  It made it hard for me to sleep because I felt like I had to stay awake too, so that I would know what he was doing. 

One night, I heard him in the kitchen at 2:00 a.m.  He was looking for some food and I told him that he just needed to go to bed and at least try to go to sleep.  He gave me a “make me” look and said that he was going to stay up as long as he wanted to because there was better stuff on TV at night than during the day.

I didn’t get into the argument with him that he seemed to be itching to have.  Sometimes I think his addictive nature feeds off confrontation just as much as it feeds off substance abuse.  I just had to walk away from that “make me” look, even though it frustrated me so much.  He loved throwing it in my face that he had the power to sleep or not and there was nothing I could do about it. 

He was very annoyed in the morning when the caseworker arrived just after he woke up.  The caseworker asked us a lot of questions as he tried to understand our family dynamic.  Our son was defensive and argumentative.  He even stormed out of the room at one point when he didn’t like hearing my husband’s opinion and feelings.  When the caseworker got to the drug history part and asked about our son’s desire to use drugs, he said, “I will probably smoke marijuana after I turn 18, but it isn’t worth the hassle right now.” 

It hurts so much to hear that.  “Why does he not get it?  Out of all of the things that have happened to him, that he has been taught, that he has seen, and that others in AA have shared, how can he still want to smoke pot, or use drugs of any kind?”  He has even said that he knows that he has damaged his brain and is not able to do certain things that he used to be able to do, mentally, because of all of his drug use—and yet he still wants to do it.

Someone who sponsors a lot of young men told me this:  “It doesn’t surprise me when someone relapses, it surprises me when they don’t.”  That is how often it happens.  He said that he went to rehab four times in three years before he finally realized that he wanted a life of sobriety and wanted to help others more than he wanted to self-destruct.

Every time I hear how long the relapse/recovery process can be and think about how bad it gets in our family with our son’s addictive and oppositional defiant behaviors, I wonder how we will ever get to the point where he has learned from his mistakes, is still alive, and ready to make a difference in the world. 

Our caseworker probably thought that we were a really messed up family.  Just to hear us try to communicate and to see how we interact with each other, surely makes us seem hopeless.

He asked my son if he would be willing to go to a day treatment program and he said that he would think about it.  As the interview went on, he changed his tune and began saying what he thought the caseworker wanted to hear.  He said he would check into programs and would see if he could get my son's name moved up on some of the waiting lists.

Being on waiting lists, though, meant that our son was in limbo.  He needed to be enrolled in school again, but I wanted it to be in day treatment, not at our boundary high school (which I call the Den of Iniquity because of his drug connections there).  Not going to school was just fine with him.  He thinks it is pointless because he is so far behind in credits toward graduation, anyway.  For me, having him around all day and night, never knowing what kind of mood he was going to be in or what was going to set him off kept me on edge all the time.  It would have been nice to have that 8 hour reprieve during the day.

When it was our turn to talk to the caseworker alone, we explained again that our son doesn’t want to live in our home and wants us to kick him out or find him a place to live, how he acts like he can’t stand us, how he wants everything in our house to run HIS way and if it doesn’t go the way he wants it to, he works himself into a rage.  

The caseworker said that his purpose was to keep our family together and that he would work as hard as he could to help us with that.  He wasn’t very encouraging on the topic of having our son temporarily placed somewhere.  He said the WE would have to pay $500.00 a month in child support to the state.  That was pretty unrealistic for our financial situation.   He was going to try to help us come up with other options and try to help us work through our problems.   

As the allotted time with the caseworker drew to a close, he warned my son to stay out of the “red zone” (which probably means blow-up mode), to stop screwing up, and to make sure that there weren’t any more incidents between then and when he went to court on the drug charges.  He said that if our son got into trouble again, the judge could give him consequences that he wouldn’t like. 

And then our son responded with, “I would love to go to Juvie.”  He just had to show what a "Bad A" he was and that he could care less if he got a harsh consequence.

The caseworker just ignored that and asked my son what he was going to do for the rest of the day.  I said, “I am thinking about taking him to the guitar store to see what is wrong with his guitar--if he promises to be nice to me.” 

He liked that idea, but had to show that some DCFS caseworker wasn’t going to change his mind about not wanting us to be his parents anymore and asked me this ‘dagger to the heart’ question:  “After we go to the guitar store, will you take me to the courthouse too?”  He was still certain that he could become emancipated.  The caseworker told him that the chances of emancipating were about 1 in 1000 and that he didn’t have anything going for him to show that he could be self-sufficient.  It didn't make any difference though.  He was still adament about going to there.  I really didn’t feel like taking him to the guitar store anymore.   

You just don’t know what it feels like to have your son constantly swear that he does not want you to be his parent.  I wanted this child so much.  I fought to keep him when he was a baby in the legal/risk foster care placement.  And now I was fighting to keep him as a teenager.  I love him so much and it is sad that living in our house, with us as parents is so terrible for him.  This isn’t what I thought his teenage years would be like.    

I tried not to show how much I was hurt by his request and I just said, “I will drive to the parking lot and I will sit in the truck.  You can go into the courthouse and do whatever you are going to do.”  He said that was fine with him.

After we left the guitar store, as I was driving toward the courthouse, he said, “You don’t have to go to there today.” 

I replied, “We might as well.  We are only two blocks away.  This is a good opportunity for you to get started on it.”  But, he just said no and that he was okay for now.

And we came home.

I guess he was going to give it another day.

I would be happy with one more day.

Saturday Night #1

Relapse was just part of the cycle that we found ourselves in.  

We were about to have two weekends in a row disrupted by big blow-ups.  

BIG. 

Saturday night number one:  We were getting ready to go to bed and told our son that it was time to stop playing Starcraft in the office so that we could lock up.  

Ever since I caught him in the basement smoking pot--when he was supposedly in the office playing Starcraft--we have instituted a rule that he has to go upstairs to his room at night when we do.  And, we lock the office, garage, and basement doors, as well as having the alarm chimes set on the outside doors so that he can't sneak around while we are asleep.  It is too bad that we have to do that, but the trust that we had built up over the last year was gone because of what he chose to do. 

This time, he informed us that he intended to stay up late playing the game since he didn't have very much time to play it that day.  At first, we said no, but when we saw that he was going to "lose it" over that decision, my husband said he would give him another half an hour while he stayed up to watch the local Saturday night outdoor television show.  

But, our son had already fixated on the “no” and went into battle mode, ready to fight to the death to get what he wanted.  He kept pushing the issue about how he should be allowed to stay up late and he shouldn't have to follow any stupid rules that we made just because we didn't trust him.  By the time he figured out that we weren’t going to change our minds, the half hour of game time that we were going to give him was over. 

I was amazed that he gave up his campaign and felt myself sigh with relief when he stormed up the stairs and slammed the door to his room.  

I thought we had dodged a bullet that night, but a few minutes later, he knocked on the bedroom door and said that he needed help with his guitar.  It was a little bit frustrating that the problems he had been having with his strings and tuners suddenly had to be fixed in the middle of the night.  But, we wanted to do our part to keep the peace and my husband tried everything that he could think of to help--even though he doesn't have any particular skills in that area--and nothing worked.  We told him that we would have to find a day during the coming week when we could take the guitar back to the guitar shop to find out what could be done to get it working again. 

However, since that didn’t solve his problem immediately, he acted as if it was another life or death situation.  He became more irrational and yelled that if he couldn’t fix his guitar right then, that night, he was just going to quit playing the guitar forever and then he would have NOTHING in his life anymore because we had already taken away everything else that he loves. 

Well, the only things we had "taken away" were the X-Box and marijuana.  

We found ourselves right in the middle of the big underlying issue.  He wanted his X-Box privileges back and since we had "unjustly" taken them away from him—we had taken away everything else that he loves.

We reminded him that he could have had the X-Box back by then, if he had only done the things he needed to do to earn it back.  He said wasn't going to do anything that we told him to do.  So, we asked him to tell us what HE would be willing to do to have the privilege back.  He answered that he couldn’t think of a single thing he should have to do to get something back that we had no right to take away in the first place. 

I said, “Oh, come on.  You know what we want you to do.  Why can’t you just say that you’ll be nice, stop swearing at us about everything, clean your room, go to school and pass your classes, go to AA, get a job, help out around here, and stay clean and sober?”

His response was, “Because I am not going to do any of those things.  I don’t want to live here anymore.  I can’t stand it here.  I would rather live behind a dumpster than live here for one more minute.  So, what I want YOU to do is tell me what I have to do to get you to kick me out!”

One minute we were being as helpful and supportive as we could be with his guitar needs and the next minute, he would rather live behind a dumpster than live with us.

We replied that we loved him and didn't have any desire to kick him out and that we just wanted him to stop fighting against everything, do what he was supposed to do, and get on with life in the best way possible.  But, he just said that we don’t love him, don’t do anything to make him happy, and needed to just tell him what to do to get thrown out of the house.

Even though it broke my heart to do this, I pointed to his shoes and coat and said, “Leave if you want to.” 

He proceeded to rage at me about how I would just call the police and tell them that he ran away and that I needed to kick him out so that it would be my fault if he was caught out on the streets.  He screamed, "If I burn this f***-n house down, will you kick me out?  Maybe that is what I should do.  If I do that, you’ll have to kick me out!”

We just calmly stated that if he did that, he wouldn’t have a house anymore, anyway, and that he would probably end up in jail.

He said, “If that is what it takes, then I will do it.  I want to go to Juvie.  That would be better than living here.  If I have to be here for the next 18 months, I am going to be a total a**hole and I won't do one thing that you want me to do.  So, kick me out or I am going to burn this house down.”

We did not feel safe at that point.  What would happen if we ever even tried to go to sleep that night? 

This situation was just spiraling out of control and I decided that I should call and ask my older son to come over in case we needed him to help us. 

Then, I called the Mobile Crisis Helpline to see if someone could be sent to our house to help us through this.    

I learned that the “mobile” part of their helpline doesn’t mean that they will come to your house, and the “help” part doesn't mean much either.  When I explained the situation, I was told that if he wasn’t already in a program there wasn’t anything that they could do.  I said, “If he was in a program, I wouldn’t be talking to you.  I have contacted so many agencies and programs trying to get him some help or get him into a program and all I get is put on waiting lists, or told that he doesn’t qualify, or that I can’t afford the costs because it is impossible to get a kid in a private program anymore unless you are a millionaire.  I need help and I don’t know what to do.  I was told by Youth Services that I should call you if we got into a crisis situation and that YOU would help me and now you are just like everyone else that tells me there is nothing you can do!”

I probably sounded like I was crazy, but I was tired of being told that there was nothing anyone could do to get my son the mental health help that he needed. 

The only advice she gave me was to call the police and have them come to take him to the hospital for a psych intake.

Well, thanks for that idea.  I never would have thought to call the police.  I was really trying to avoid having to call the police!  

And then I told my husband to call the police. 

When they came, our son was still belligerent and angry, but tried to act as if he didn't know why they were there.  He even had the nerve to say that he had been joking about burning the house down.  Just joking?  I swear I need to have an F-bomb activated recording device so that people can really see and hear what goes on and how it really does get as bad as we say it does around here. 

After speaking with us and trying to get our son to talk to them about what was going on, they determined that because he hadn’t made any threats to himself, they couldn’t take him to the hospital. 

Apparently, Freaking out and threatening to burn the house down did not meet the criteria for the police to help us either.  What a surprise.  As usual, we plea for help and there is nothing that anyone will do or can do to help us. 

The officers did suggest that WE take him to the hospital ourselves and volunteered to escort him into the back seat of our older son’s car, which has child-safe doors that can't be opened from the inside.  I was glad that he was able to come.

We felt that we had no other choice, but to take him to the hospital.  We didn’t know what was going on in his head and we didn’t know if he really was a threat to himself, or to us, or not.  We hoped that maybe we could get what we needed for him through the emergency room route. 

At the hospital, he had blood drawn, vitals taken, and a talk with a doctor, and a crisis worker.  After speaking with my husband and I, the crisis worker indicated that he was leaning toward recommending that our son be taken to one of two hospital psych units for evaluation and mood stabilization.

He spoke with our son at length.  At first he was very defiant and unwilling to talk about anything.  But, as soon as the crisis worker mentioned going to the psych unit, our son changed his tune.  He became apologetic and emotional.  He had tears streaming down his face and promised the moon and the stars that he would change and do whatever he had to just as long as he didn’t have to be hospitalized.

We all had to talk together about what would happen if our son came back home that night/morning.  The crisis worker pointed out the stark realities that might happen to our son if he continued on the path he was on (like prison, dying, etc.).  Our son half-heartedly admitted that he needed to change his ways and be a better person.  It sounded to me like he was just saying what he thought the crisis worker wanted to hear and whatever he had to say to be able to go home. 

And then the decision about what to do with our son changed.  He was getting another chance to straighten up and get his act together.  We did not feel good about this.  After all that had been happening over the course of the last few weeks, I didn’t believe that he was really going to commit to any serious long lasting willingness to change.  He was just playing a game and he was betting that he could win with this sorrowful change of heart act.  

The crisis worker sensed our ambivalence and reassured us that we could bring our son back to the hospital if he blew up again in the next few days and then he would be admitted to a psych unit.

But for now it was the same old story—"We are sorry that you are having struggles with your son, but we can’t help you. Good luck."

We were exhausted, discouraged, and apprehensive as we arrived home in that pre-dawn hour.

We crawled into our beds.  

And we slept.