Parents of local drug addicts met at Agassiz-Harrison Community Services ( AHCS ) last week to share their personal stories of frustration, anxiety and desperation. One mom said caring for her son, who has been smoking heroin for six years, has taken its toll on the lives of everyone around him.
"I have no life, no happiness," she says, solemnly. " He has taken everything with his decision. Everyone has suffered because of his wrong choice."
For example, her other young son, who has never touched drugs, smoked or drank, has not received as much attention from his parents as his troubled sibling.
The woman says she is exasperated by the pattern of lies, mistrust and worry that has enveloped every waking moment. When he is high, his behaviour changes, he holes up in his room playing video games or leaves the house at odd hours for long periods of time.
"One person is sick, but everybody is suffering," she said, adding when the 26-year-old is clean, he is social, intelligent and caring. "The drug is so powerful, it pulls them away from everything."
A father said his daughter's crack cocaine use has forced he and his wife to reorganize their own lives, in part to occasionally care for their infant grand-daughter. It isn't unusual for the 35-year-old woman to leave the baby in their care and then disappear for two or three days, he explained.
"We can't plan anything because we don't know what's around the corner," he said. "We can make plans, but more often than not we have to change them."
She can stay clean for months at a time and then suddenly relapse, he noted.
"You are taken up with it that your own life suffers; you don't do the things you normally do," he explained. "You go out and enjoy a social evening, you may bowl; now you don't do that because you ... feel rotten. So you just sit there and mope, say 'I'm not going out, there she goes again.'"
Both parents, who spoke to the Observer on the condition that their identities be protected, said they were blind sided by the revelation their children were drug users. The man said he grew up in a drug-free environment and was stunned to learn his daughter, who is a mother of three, had dabbled in soft drugs for almost a decade before turning to the harsher crack cocaine.
"We had never seen drugs and we are both retired," he said. "Suddenly we've got a little baby, a [teen] and an occasional [other teen] and we have a two-bedroom place that is really only a one bedroom place."
The woman said her son came to them and admitted he had a drug problem, but they suspected it was only marijuana until a medical clinic visit to treat his high blood pressure revealed his predilection for heroin.
"That night we found out," she said. "I knew enough. I knew it is the worst drug ever.
"God knows how many nights we [she and her husband] talked and cried without him knowing."
Both were also lost in terms of what to do, where to seek help, and how to help their kids slip free of their addictions. As the man pointed out: "you can try to coax them out of it, threaten them out of it, isolate them out of it, tie them up out of it ... but in the end they've got to do it themselves."
He said he has become accustomed to the lies that seem to come naturally and often from his daughter. He also wonders, should she lose her children, if she'll have the will, ultimately, to choose them over the drugs.
AHCS Addictions Counsellor Bill Turner said he often finds it more difficult working with families of users than with the users themselves. The biggest thing he can provide is hope.
"I think it is important to understand they [addicts] do not like where they are at; they hate it as much if not more than you do," Turner explains to the parents. "The person with the addiction is so lost in themselves, therefore people who love them lose sight of their identity ; all they see is a mess."
Turner has been working with both families and says things are looking positive in both cases. The young man was prescribed methadone , a synthetic form of heroin used to wean addicts off the drug, and two weeks ago managed to drop it, too.
"A lot of addicts have a hard time giving up the methadone, but he chose to cut it," Turner explained before addressing the dad. "In his daughter's case, she has not experienced the real devastating affects of what can still be in store for her [and] that is part of the process."
The father said he is trying to get her into rehab, but has become frustrated with the lack of public funding and resources to assist him.
The system makes you feel almost guilty, he opines.
He remains hopeful for her eventual recovery, however.
"I know for three months everything is fine, she's clean, and then its off on a tangent again," he said. "If she can do it for three months, I am sure she can do it forever."
Treatment can be an expensive proposition, costing thousands and thousands of dollars.
"I know a couple in retirement mode who spent better than $75,000 and got positively nowhere, simply because the individual was just so wired," Turner said. "They thought they could come up with the magic amount of money for the magic treatment for the magic cure."
He has also seen couples break up after 50 years marriage.
"One of the saddest things I see is the really elderly parents, 75 or 85 or 90 years-old who end up with their grandchildren being drumped on their doorstep and they have no clue whatsoever about anything and this nightmare coming in."
It's a nightmare that has slipped into the father's sleeping hours.
"I wake up at 3 a.m. wondering what's going to happen today," he said. "I don't have a chance of going back to sleep. I stare at the ceiling wondering what is going to happen today.
