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.

Holidays Part 2 or Santa Came to Rehab

It was a Christmas of firsts.

My grandson’s first Christmas!

My daughter’s first Christmas away from home.  She was spending it out of state with her husband’s family.  I was very sad about that.

And, it was the first Christmas with my youngest son in rehab.

When he came home Christmas morning, he sat at the dining room table and dumped out a Christmas stocking containing small games and candy.  I asked him where he got it and a glimmer of the son that I know and love, shined through his angry exterior as he answered, “Santa came to rehab.”  

I laughed.  It was so good to hear just a bit of his fun sense of humor, even if it was laced in sarcasm.

It was the best Christmas morning for my grandson.  He was in awe of the display in front of him when he woke up.  There were so many unwrapped gifts from Santa and a mountain of wrapped gifts from his mom and dad.  He did not know what to think or what to touch first.  Being totally enthralled with watching him shift his attention from present to present, sometimes faster than he was ready for, was healing for my soul.  He is such a fun, happy, and wonderful little boy.

I honestly don’t know what I would have done without my grandson in my life this past year.  He has brought so much happiness and has been such a joy to me as I spend time with him every week.

I just loved having my grandson (and his parents!) in our home for his first Christmas.

Luckily, there were no big conflicts or problems during the entire day.  Earlier, my oldest son asked my younger son to do him a favor and help make the baby’s first Christmas a really great one.  He agreed to try and I think it helped.

Now when it came to the gifts that he received himself--he wasn’t that excited.  He didn’t ask for anything other than “something to do” in rehab.  So, we got him an acoustic guitar.  He has electric guitars at home, but we thought that an acoustic would be better to play in rehab, since they wouldn’t let him have his amplifier there.  He took it out of the bag, strummed it a few times, and put it back in the bag where it stayed for the rest of the day.  Oh well, we tried.

The two things that made him the happiest were the yo-yo that my parents gave to him and taking advantage of my older son’s gift—a Black Op’s X-box Game.  He spent a lot of time trying to perfect some yo-yo tricks and as much time as he could playing the X-box.

When it was time for him to go back to the facility that night, I cried again.  It wasn’t a perfect day, but it was as good as it could get.  I loved having him here and I missed him so much. 

I couldn’t wait for New Year’s when he would be able to come home again.  Even though he only had about 2 hours to spend with us on New Year’s Eve, we had a good time eating pizza and playing X-Box Kinect games at my oldest son’s house.  My daughter and her husband were back from their trip and were going to spend the night with us.  It was so good to have them back.  It was a really fun night!

The next day, we went sledding at a hill near our home.  It was freezing cold, with temperatures below zero, but it was sunny and seemed like a good day for sledding.  One of my favorite parts was when my son took my camera from me, gave it to my husband, and dragged me up the hill so that I could sled down it with him.  He said that he wanted some mother/son bonding time.  It felt so good to see him smile, laugh, and enjoy himself.

I will probably never forget that day of sledding. 

I will grab onto every little triumph over the depression, anger, and drugs that are trying to take my son away from me.

It felt like a good step forward that we really needed. 

It made me feel optimistic about how things were going to go in the future.

HOLIDAYS PART 1

He was in rehab over the holidays. 

Four days after he was admitted, it was my birthday.  Enough said.

He was still in the orientation phase when Thanksgiving came.  He was one of two kids that weren’t allowed a pass to go home for a few hours on the holiday. 

I just did not want it to be Thanksgiving.  We were going to my sister’s house for dinner.  My sister and her husband were the only ones that we had told about our son.  We hadn’t even told my parents.  They tend to be judgmental and I just wasn’t ready to deal with their thoughts about it when I was still trying to deal with my own.  I didn’t even know exactly what I was going to say when someone asked where my son was. 

We went to visit him at the facility a few hours before the scheduled Thanksgiving dinner.  We took him some Cheetos and a piece of pumpkin pie.  Two things that he loves to eat.  We played a couple of games with him and he really seemed to have moved past his mad at us phase.  I think it was because my daughter and her husband were with us, but it was still nice to have a pleasant time with him for a few hours.

When we hugged him goodbye, we told him we loved him and he said he loved us, too.  Wow, Thanksgiving was becoming my new favorite holiday!  I think he was very sad that he was in there alone on Thanksgiving and that brought out the love in him.

I cried on the way to my sister’s house.  This wasn’t how the holidays were supposed to be.

We had a good meal and no one really pried into the reason my son wasn’t there.  We just said, “He really has never been into Thanksgiving, you guys know that.”

They all accepted that answer because of the fact that he has never eaten Thanksgiving dinner.  He has always been a very selective eater.  We have even brought him his own food like pizza or chicken tenders to Thanksgiving dinner in the past, just so that he would have something to eat.

Some of my sister’s family asked her why I looked so sad and she told them that I was just having a hard time with something right then.

I was glad when it was time to go to my oldest son’s house to see him and his family for Thanksgiving.  We played some games with them and had a good time with our grandson.

About one month later, it was time for Christmas.  He had progressed enough to be allowed a pass for a few hours on Christmas Eve and for the whole day on Christmas. 

I went to family group therapy by myself the week before Christmas Eve because my husband had to work.  When I walked my son back to his building after therapy, I told him that I was excited that we were going to get so much time together on Christmas Eve and Christmas.  I asked him if there was anything special that he wanted to do.  I should have known better than to ask that.

His answer was, “Listen to my I-Pod and play the X-box.”

I said, “Well, we are going to be doing a lot of family things, so I don’t know how much X-box time you will get, but you might be able to play it for a couple of hours or so.”

Then I heard about how that was stupid because he had a lot of X-box time to make up for since he has been in rehab for 6 weeks.  He didn’t want to go visit relatives or grandparents and have to have everyone ask him how he was doing.   I told him just to tell them that he was doing fine and then he said, “So, you want me to lie to them?  I am not fine.  I have been going through hell in here!”

He wanted to know “who knows” where he is and I told him that no one in my family knew, except my sister.  He said that when he saw my parents on Christmas, he was just going to tell them himself.  That would have been great.  I knew that I was going to have to tell my parents so that he wouldn’t shock them on Christmas Day.

I asked him if he really wanted to come home for Christmas and I told him that I hoped we could make it the best Christmas that we could.  “Christmas is going to suck this year no matter what.  There is no way it can be a good Christmas since you stuck me in rehab.”

When I tried to talk to him about all of the things that he had just said, he told me not to “go all therapist on him” and that just because I put him in rehab, it wasn’t going to change anything, especially his desire to smoke marijuana.

I stopped trying to talk to him and just left.

I was so excited.

Now I couldn’t wait for Christmas to come.

Opening My Eyes

We did not talk to our son again for 2 days.  We called and the staff gave him permission to talk to us on the phone.  But, he did not say anything other than, “They took away my shoes and I have been sitting on a couch doing nothing for 2 days.” 

During the first few weeks the kids are in what is called the orientation phase. They are considered high risk and are kept under close watch. 

We tried to ask him how he was and told him how much we loved him, but he wouldn’t respond or say anything else.  He was very mad and was making himself feel hurt that we would do what we did to him.

We finally saw him 6 days after we left him there.  It was a group family therapy meeting.  He still would not talk to us. 

In that meeting we had our eyes opened when one of the kids in the group read his drug history in front of the group to his parents. 

The starter drug for him was spray air freshener. 

He went from there to marijuana and ecstasy.

It is disturbing that parents like us and all of the other parents in the group had no idea that our kids were doing these things.  How could we even imagine that it was dangerous to keep air freshener in our bathrooms? 

A few weeks later, I got a phone call from my son that got me thinking that maybe he had used other drugs, too.

At first I was just so excited that he even called me!  I thought he might be getting over being mad. 

But, then I realized that he was only calling to ask me to bring things to him.  This would be the pattern for phone calls through most of his stay there.  He would only call when he wanted something.  He asked for a hacky sack, more shirts and pants, something to do, and a pair of old shoelaces.

I was suspicious about the old shoelaces, since the staff takes their shoes away from them for the first couple of weeks for obvious reasons.  I thought that extra shoelaces would be a risk for kids who are already at high risk.  I asked him what they were for, but he said he would have to explain it to me when I brought them.  I told him that I would ask his therapist about that.

At our family therapy session, I asked her what she thought about the shoelaces.  She asked him what they were going to be used for and he said, “To tie socks to and practice ‘glow-sticking’.”

She said, “Absolutely not.  That is not a good idea at all.”

She did not explain why and I had no idea what ‘glow-sticking’ was.

But, I knew that I could find out easily enough on-line, later.  I was surprised at what I learned that night while I was doing my internet searches.  Glow-sticks are related to the use of Ecstasy or MDMA.  I learned that glow sticks are used while on ecstasy because when they swing them around, they enhance the brain’s reaction to light and music while “rolling”.

My son and his roommate wanted to practice the technique of swinging around glow-sticks?  Practicing something that kids do while using drugs—in rehab?  That is just crazy.

I have seen teenagers walking around with glow-sticks hanging around their necks like a necklace.  I didn’t know that parents should be suspicious of kids wearing glow-sticks around their necks.  But, ecstasy’s use is just as common in neighborhood basements as it is at raves.  Its use as a recreational drug is getting to be as common as the use of marijuana and cocaine.

I started to feel like I might have just found out more about my son than I was prepared for.  I was pretty sure that he had not ever had a chance to go to a rave, but if kids are using it in the basement of the house down the street, then maybe there was a chance that he had used ecstasy.

It made me sick.  I had another one of those deep, heart sinking feelings. 

If he really had used ecstasy, what was he thinking?  Well, kids who use ecstasy or any other drug don’t think that its effects will have any lasting impact on them. 

Ecstasy causes confusion, depression, sleep problems, drug cravings, anxiety, and paranoia.  These effects can last for weeks after taking ecstasy.  Just think about what the effects can be if the use goes on for a long time!  Physical symptoms during and after use can be muscle tension, involuntary teeth clenching, nausea, blurred vision, rapid eye movement, faintness, chills or sweating, and increases in heart rate and blood pressure.

It is SO DANGEROUS!

Then, there is the long term brain damage.  Ecstasy causes damage to the parts of the brain critical to thought and memory.  It damages and degenerates neurons.  A neurologist said that even a few uses of ecstasy can lower a person’s IQ from high to low.  She said that ecstasy and other drug use is just as bad as a traumatic brain injury in a teenager’s brain.

I learned a lot by reading some quotes from kids about ecstasy:

“I love glow sticks while I am rolling on ecstasy.  I loop them on my clothes and wear them in my hair.”

“Glow sticks are best when you are coming down, with some marijuana on board, while you’re half hallucinating.”

“Your vision is altered, so a glowing stick moving around really fast looks so cool when you’re tripping.”

“Glow-sticks can be fun, but they’re so much better on LSD or shrooms.”

“I don’t have to be listening to techno music with a bunch of people twirling glow-sticks to roll.  I would rather be riding my bike through the night air.  All I need is a plastic straw to chew on to prevent my teeth from grinding.”

“It really intensifies your emotions.  Like, when you’re happy, you’re really happy.  And, there is the whole skin thing where everything you touch and everything that touches you feels really good.”

I also learned that some people call ecstasy the hug drug because of the desire that it creates to hug and touch, so sexual activity while using ecstasy is common.  Did I even want to go there in my thoughts as I wondered whether he had used ecstasy?  That was just too much to even think about.  He is 14 years old, and he could have had sex while on ecstasy?  Oh my gosh.

Many kids on ecstasy use pacifiers, straws, or suckers to keep their teeth from grinding while rolling.  It also causes an uncontrollable thirst, so they drink a lot of water while on ecstasy.  Kids have died from drinking too much water or from having a fever-like seizure if the environment that they are in is very hot.

There are many warning signs that parents may not have even known about.  They should watch for glow sticks, lots of water bottles, straws, suckers, or depression, difficulty sleeping, anxiety, and nausea.  It is happening right in front of parent’s faces and they don’t even know they should be looking for it.  I trusted my son.  I was sure that he would never use drugs. 

Here is One final quote from a teenager about ecstasy:  “I was unusually happy and laughing at home around my parents and they didn’t even suspect that I had been using ecstasy.”

We heard that statement eight weeks after we admitted our son into residential rehab treatment.

From him.

The Hardest Day of My Life

Putting my son in Rehab was undoubtedly the hardest day of my life up to that point.  I have nearly died in childbirth and my father-in-law was killed in a terrible automobile accident, but I can honestly say that leaving my son at that rehab facility was the most heart-wrenching thing I have ever had to deal with. 

Neither my husband, nor I could believe what was happening and where we were at with our son.  My husband was a champion, though, and immediately began making phone calls to find out what our options were. 

Our son may have thought that there was nothing that we could do about it, but we were not willing to leave it at that.

My husband spoke with our family therapist for recommendations on where we could get more help, with our bishop, and with several different rehab facilities.  The therapist thought that based on the depression getting worse and our son’s statement that he was going to continue using marijuana no matter what we said or did, that he needed to get inpatient help.

What a hard decision!

We finally found a facility that our family therapist recommended, that our bishop recommended, and that seemed to be equipped to provide help with drug addiction, depression, and even medical issues.  They had an opening coming up the next week.

Then, we had to get ready for his admission date.  I had to secretly buy all new personal care items, make sure he had enough clothes, and pack his bag without his knowledge.  Getting your child ready to enter rehab isn’t an inexpensive project and the entire time I was packing his bag, I was in tears. 

We told him that on Wednesday, we were taking him to have his depression evaluation.  He knew that his family therapist had scheduled one for him—and during our 3 hour admission interview with a therapist, medical doctor, and psychiatrist, he would be evaluated for depression -- so we were telling the truth on that part.

As we drove in separate vehicles to the facility, I just had to try to not think about what we were doing and where we were going so that I wouldn’t be in tears before we even got there.  Our son just sat in my husband’s truck on the drive there with his head down, eyes closed, listening to his I-Pod, so he didn’t even know where he was. 

We had to ring a doorbell to be admitted into the facility.  There were 2 signs on the door that said, “High AWOL Risk Alert!  Please keep all doors locked at all times.”  I had this feeling of dread when I saw those signs and wondered what my son would think about them when he saw them.  But, he walked in with his head down, which was his usual depressed manner, and did not even look at the signs on the door or see the sign on the building that said “Residential Treatment Building”.

At one point during the question and answer period, they sent us out of the room and just talked to him.  I thought they were asking him questions about his marijuana use and wondered what he was admitting to.  After the question and answer period with the therapist and doctors, they told us right in front of our son that they were recommending residential inpatient treatment to help him with his chemical dependence and depression.

He didn’t understand what they meant.  I started crying and asked them to explain to him what that meant.  When, he finally got it, he became angry, but sad at the same time.  He had tears streaming down his face as he jumped up out of the chair swearing and saying how he felt about it.  He asked us why we were doing this and when we told him that we were doing it because we care so much about him, he told us that he didn’t want us to care.  I thought my heart was going to break.  My husband was trying to be strong, but it was very hard for him, too.

When it was time for us to leave, we gave him hugs and told him that we loved him, but he wouldn’t respond.  He had totally shut us out. 

Walking out of that room and then out of the building was so painful.  It felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest as I left one of the most important people in my life behind, knowing that he hated my guts for it. 

In the parking lot, I just cried and cried on my husband’s shoulder.  He was crying, but still trying to be strong for me.  The sad thing was that he had appointments for work scheduled and I was going to be alone for the rest of the day.

I couldn’t handle it.  I called one of my best friends.  She asked, “How are you?” 

I sobbed, “Bad.”  And she told me to come right to her house.  I cried and cried the entire time that I was driving there.  I spent the rest of the day with her because I couldn’t bear the thought of going home to my house where my son would not be coming home from school, or would not even be home at all that night or for weeks to come. 

3rd Strike

Our family therapist thought that our son might have depression.  He was arranging to have our son tested.  He knew about the marijuana use and said that kids who are depressed think that marijuana will help their depression, but actually marijuana makes it worse. 

Before we could get him tested, he got sick.  This winter, there was a virus going around that gave people a bad cough that lasted for weeks and weeks.  Most of his coughing every day was between 8:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m.  He would start coughing in the evening and just would not be able to stop, so he was awake ALL NIGHT long.  No one in the house was getting much sleep, but since he was awake all night, and still coughing some during the day, he couldn’t go to school.  Nothing worked to get him to stop coughing.

He started to get REALLY depressed.  Being shut up in the house, after having been grounded for a month, just really had an effect on him.  He wanted to give up on everything that he ever wanted to do or liked to do.  He would just isolate in his room and play the X-box.  Eventually, he even didn’t want to do that.

I tried my hardest to find things for him to do and to help him get over this sickness.  I took him to 3 different doctors during those 3 weeks, trying to help him.  It was a long three weeks. 

Finally, he was able to go back to school.  I was so happy and thought that after spending 3 weeks with me trying to help him in every way that I could, that we had turned a corner on how things were going.  I thought that he hadn’t had any chances to use marijuana during that time, so maybe he would stay clean.

When he came home from school that day, I stood right by him at the refrigerator while he was getting a drink.  I couldn’t believe it!  He smelled like smoke and his eyes were bloodshot.  I asked him if was cigarettes or weed, but he wouldn’t tell me and wouldn’t talk to me.

I was SO angry!

His first day out of the house in weeks, his first day back at school, and the first thing that he can think of to do is get high?

Of course, we drug tested him again and it was positive for marijuana.

Later that night, my husband was talking to him and our son said this, “I have been so bored and it gave me something to do.  I like smoking weed. I have smoked it for a long time.  I am going to keep smoking it.  AND, there is nothing you can do about it.”

Oh really?

OH BOY!

What do you do when you find out that your child has smoked marijuana?  Ground him. 

I hate grounding.  It punishes me more than it punishes him.  Then, I get to stay home with him while he tells me that there is nothing to do and I should let him play the X-box or think of some miraculous new thing to occupy his time that no one has ever thought of before. 

He was grounded expect for going to school.  No more walking to school and no more walking home from school.  He got to have a free ride from mom or dad both ways. 

We also made him stay after school for one hour every day to get help from his teachers and to try to get caught up in his classes.  School had only been in session for a few weeks and he was already failing and behind in everything.

Some people would tell us that this was a red flag that we should have watched out for as a sign of possible drug use.  It is true that this is a warning sign.

But, our child has had problems in school since he was in 4^th grade.  For some reason in 4^th grade, the main source of learning was completing worksheet after worksheet.  Our son started to show a problem with getting the information from his brain to the worksheet.  When he didn’t get them done fast enough for the teacher, she didn’t help him, or try to understand what might be going on, she assumed he was a lazy slacker and berated him constantly.  He lost his motivation completely.

From that point on, no matter what we tried, school became a constant source of conflict and struggle.  Getting assignments completed and getting good grades just got harder and harder for him and for us as parents trying to help him and motivate him.

One day, during the grounding period, when I went to pick him up from school, I caught him  walking back toward the middle school from the high school.  I listened to all of the excuses about how there were no teachers there to help him in any of his classes, etc. 

I also looked at the red, bloodshot eyes.

“My contacts have really been bothering me today.” 

Another of our struggles.  Since he began wearing contacts, he would refuse to take them out every night because putting them in every morning was painful and time-consuming.  So, actually, he often does have red, irritated eyes from his contacts. 

But, at this point, his red eyes were another red flag that we had probably been missing.

That day, I was very suspicious because I had been thinking about the red eyes, the overwhelming smell of Axe deodorant at times, and the random showers in the afternoon (“because we sweated a lot in P.E. and I didn’t want to take a shower at school”). 

Now that I had caught him where he wasn’t supposed to be, it was time to use one  of my new drug testing kits.

He tested positive for marijuana.

I was so angry because I trusted him to stay at school and do what he was responsible for.  He was lying and sneaking around and smoking marijuana, instead.

Obviously, we knew at that point that we had been lied to about how much he has used marijuana, and we felt so stupid.  It’s crazy because We didn’t ever feel like we had any reason to suspect him.  We trusted him and thought we knew how he felt about using drugs, drinking, and smoking.  We were always so proud of the way that he seemed to be a good example for his friends and told everyone how he would stand up for his beliefs and that his friends wouldn’t even swear around him because they knew he didn’t like to hear it.

We knew we had a bigger problem than we thought we had a few weeks before.