THE MOTHER OF AN ADDICT PART II
Part I was in Recipes for Living Volume IX, 2004

I am, as the title suggests, the mother of an addict and I am back to add more to the story. In 2004, I asked for an opportunity to tell it, hoping that some reader might be touched by it and able to avoid the agony of living with and watching the results in a family member victimized by addiction to meth (methamphetamine). I introduced readers to my son as a child — perfect, normal, innocent, adorable, who in his late teen years became a violent, totally unpredictable monster. As that part of the story ended, he had been in and out of rehabilitation programs, in and out of the hospital after a jar of meth he was making exploded, and was in prison for the second time. It is now 2008, and even though there have not been the changes I hoped and prayed for in Jonathan's life, there have been some in mine. I have now met and married a wonderful man who I will refer to as Kevin. He is helping me through all of this.

But as far as Jonathan's life is concerned, I wish I had a different story to tell. We are going onto a 12-year addiction. Jonathan will be 30 this year and he started when he was 18. He is now in a different prison, his third.

He was out for a year. He was released in February 2006, and completed a work release program at a half-way house in Des Moines. This is a good program — a stepping stone between a maximum security prison where they have no freedom to 100% freedom. He had been in prison for two years before he went there, so there weren't the withdrawal problems he had experienced previously. I think it is a wonderful way to ease them back into society without just dumping them on the street.

The Des Moines facility is similar to barracks at a military camp. They share rooms but there is probably a community bathroom. They give them a little freedom, and if they do well, they continue to give them more. It is still a locked down situation, but they have freedom during the day. The inmates pay to live there. The officials help them find jobs, but they have to find their way to work. They must be in bed at 10:00 every night, but if they do well, they get weekend furloughs. In our case, Kevin would pick up Jonathan on Friday night so he could spend the weekend with us, but there were thorough background checks on the people he would be staying with. During the weekend, if or whenever they called, he had to be available on an installed phone, not a cell phone, to prove he was where he said he would be and with whoever checked him out. They are strictly monitored but they have the opportunity to prove that they can be functional members of society. Occasionally someone will escape from the Des Moines facility because they are so close to being free.

Jonathan was employed at a manufacturing company in Des Moines, and was promoted to shift leader or line leader, making a very good wage. We had found him an apartment in Des Moines. I paid his deposit and first month's rent. He had a full-time job. My dad bought him a van. He had all the tools to become independent and live on his own. A perfect opportunity. Some prisoners are dumped out on a corner and they have no way to make it. No family support. They have no choice but to become a criminal again. That was not the case with Jonathan. He had all the tools. For the first time in his life he was financially able to take care of himself. During ten months, I saw progress. His counselor is a customer of my brother's in Des Moines. He said, "There has been progress. I have seen it. I've never seen it before."

Kevin is sure he wasn't ready to get out when he did. His mindset was that of blaming everybody else — it was the cop's fault they got him, or someone else's — never his fault. That has become such a characteristic with Jonathan. I don't remember him being this way before he started doing drugs. I had a letter from him two days ago and in paragraph after paragraph he was saying, "If I didn't have bad luck, I would have no luck at all. There is a black cloud hanging over me and I can't get from under it." I think addicts develop that attitude. I've seen it in customers who have had an alcohol or drug problem, and I hate it, but I don't think Jonathan will ever get over it. Kevin remarked, "I don't believe they ever overcome that until or unless they realize that they are making their own destiny. They have to decide they are going to kick the habit and it is their fault if they screw up."

For ten months I had high hopes. For ten months he was doing really good. The longest he had stayed clean before was eight months. A lot of people reading this might say I was crazy for hoping, but I did. This time more than ever I thought possibly Jonathan would turn his life around and be free of drugs. But there was another young man who was one of his playmates from Osceola. There was a warrant out for his arrest, and they found him at Jonathan's apartment. I didn't know they even knew one another. The arrest came about through a young lady in Osceola who was supposedly dating this man. The police took her to the station and had her text-message this boy. That was how they found him, and they arrested Jonathan for harboring a fugitive. But they also found drugs in the apartment. He admitted that he let the guy stay there because he had drugs and Jonathan didn't have to use his own money to get them.

When I got the phone call in January that Jonathan had been arrested again, I had to admit that I knew at Christmas he had relapsed. I didn't share that with my parents or children because I was so looking forward to the holidays when we could be a whole family again. I did tell Kevin, who also knew it, but we kept it to ourselves. The pattern becomes so predictable when he relapses. The phone calls are fewer and fewer and he makes excuses for not coming home. I knew it was just a matter of time until he was arrested. This time he was sent to Fort Dodge which is a maximum security facility.

We believe that if he could just have stayed away from his former friends, he might have made it. The saying is that you have to change playmates and you have to change playgrounds. That is crucial if you want to turn your life around but there is no doubt in my mind that you can find those same playmates anywhere you go. He continued to go back to the former ones, but it is possible to find new playmates that are just like your old playmates. They are everywhere. I've been told over and over again that Clarke and Decatur Counties of all the counties in Iowa are the worst, but I am convinced that other counties are just as bad. I see it. By now I recognize these people. I know so much about the addiction and how the drug affects even their physical appearance. This is a group of people who hang with each other. They become paranoid. They think everybody is out to get them. There are other addictions to alcohol or various drugs and all addictions destroy, but meth destroys faster than any.

I don't want to be pessimistic about Jonathan's recovery. I am not by nature a pessimistic person. As I told in the first part of my story, I love my life. By far, most important to me is my family. I'm married to the greatest guy in the world, my other children are thriving — I'm very proud of them, but there will always be an emptiness because of Jonathan. At our wedding and reception there were lots of pictures taken and I have them displayed on our wall — there are four of us when there should be five. I'll never get over that. It is a roller coaster ride when he is out. It is from day to day that we never know. He'll be doing well and all of a sudden he's back into it. When he is clean, even if he is five minutes late on his phone call, I am immediately suspicious that something is going on. I just go nuts. I suppose it is the mother in me and what I've been through with him. I want so much for things to go well.

I have a customer whose son was stealing anhydrous ammonia. He burned his eyes and was hospitalized. She was present when the cops were there and they told her, "As a mother you just have to be resigned to the fact that your son is so far into the whole meth world, he is too far gone to come back. You might as well accept the fact that is his life and yours because there is nothing you can do. He is too far gone." I feel that with Jonathan. I want so badly to be hopeful but it has been going on so long and he's had so many opportunities.

As with education and some other facets of our government, there have been so many budget cuts that there is almost no rehabilitation in prison. They simply say they can't afford it. I don't want Jonathan to live his whole life in prison. That is where he has lived the majority of it. This is his third time in 12 years that he's back in. He will be 30 in August. He had a wonderful childhood, but I have a lot of fear for his future.

We have been to see him three times since Christmas — about once a month. We get letters from him. We have told him he has to stay away from people that have put him where he is. He's got to try to make a life. He can't keep going back to the same people or the same type of person and expect to stay in society. His whole mind frame seems to be figuring how not to get caught but that is not the issue. It is not a matter of how not to get caught, but of not doing the things he is not supposed to do.

He is very vocal about his life. Jonathan has a huge amount of respect for Kevin. He expresses that so much in his letters and you can see it when we are with him. The 10 months that Jonathan was clean, we had so much fun. We worked together, watched movies, and he goes on and on about that. I felt he enjoyed the great time we had together. So when Kevin tells him how disappointed he is and what he's done to his mother, his grandparents, and to himself, I think maybe he absorbs it better than what he hears from his blood relatives.

I know Jonathan appreciates his family and he misses out on so much when all the family gets together. I know he kicks himself for being in prison. On one visit, Jonathan looked at Kevin and said, "I can tell you are mad at me." Kevin said, "You're damned right, I am mad at you. Your mom and I got married and you should have been there but you weren't. You should have been there for the rest of the family. You should have been there for us. You should have been there for you. We had a reception. and you should have been there. I am mad at you. I can get over this but you need to straighten your life out and be part of your family and celebrate with us." I am so proud of my husband, who has no children but he has joined me in raising mine and has been an amazing husband. You never stop being a parent. It is daily life event. You worry about them, you celebrate with them, your heart aches with them.

Kevin seems more optimistic than I. He thinks Jonathan is much more ready to get out now than he was previously, and we are going to try again. He was sentenced to 65 years and they plea bargained down. However, he has to serve three years mandatory before he can go before the parole board. That will be 2010. He will be incarcerated until then. If he is approved by the board, he will go to a half-way house again. We are going to try to get him into the Marshalltown half-way house instead of Des Moines. It doesn't have nearly as long a waiting list, it will be much nearer to where I will be living by then, and we are going to start a life with him a part of it. Kevin has a group of really good kids who work for him and hopefully he can relate to them.

It is really hard for me, as a mother. I try to figure out why. How did this happen? I wonder what Jonathan would have been like if he had never touched meth. I wonder where his life would have gone. I don't think he would ever have been in trouble with the law. I don't think he would ever have turned to alcohol or another drug. I don't think I am saying that just because I want to believe it. I truly do believe that from the bottom of my heart. I just think this drug is so powerful it invaded him But I'll never stop asking myself that question.

I wonder what I could have done differently. Did I in some way contribute to his problem? Kevin does not agree that I should be asking myself such things because he is sure there is nothing I could have done differently, I didn't do anything wrong. There are other people who agree with him. There are times that have been so hard, like after Jonathan had just been arrested or when we were going through one of the middle-of-the-night crises. My dad and I would get to the courthouse as fast as we could get there to commit him before he might kill himself or kill somebody else. Friends would grab me by the shoulders as though to shake some sense into me and say, "I know you. I knew you when you were going through those times, and you didn't do anything wrong. You always did the best you knew at the time. You did a better job than most people could have done and you have hung through this and stayed strong. I realize at certain times they are right and at other times I go back to, 'Was there anything...?' I put him in TaeKwondo, I put him in Boy Scouts. I hear about 4-H. Jonathan loved animals, and I think maybe if I had pushed him into 4-H. I see families of these boys and how they bond together and I think maybe if we had done that, maybe we could have been strong together. I'll never stop wondering such things. That will never go away.

I absolutely know that my other children will be okay, but I sometimes wonder what part I have had in who they have become, while Kevin has no question about that at all. He is convinced it has nothing to do with what I have done in raising them. We will probably never know the answers to any of these questions but I care so much. Being a mother is my most important role. When I am dead and gone, I hope I won't be commended for having been successful in my career but I hope they might be able to say, "She was a wonderful mother."

Kevin says that I am and have been, that my children will find themselves and I'll be proud of them. Look at Jonathan. All the times he's messed up and all the trouble he's been in, all the bad things, I am still proud of the good things. Kevin tells me, "All you can do is sit back and be a good role model, but the children have to weigh their options and decide for themselves which they choose. We can't force anybody to do anything. That just makes them rebellious."

The older I get, the more clearly I see things. Answers come easily now. I don't even have to stop and think hard or long what is the right thing to do. It is black and white. Yes or no. It took getting older for me to figure that out, but I expect my children to know that now. My sister said one time, "I think we expect our kids to be grateful too soon. That takes time and wisdom. They will figure it out but not now."

What I want my story to say most loudly and clearly is that the most important thing in my life is my family and I would give anything to have it whole. I feel blessed every single day to have what I have. To complete that would be to have Jonathan back. I'm fearful but I am hopeful and I will never give up that hope. I have to be realistic but I want that more than anything.

(The origin of the following is unknown but it has been circulated on the internet for some while. It was written by a young Indian girl while she was in jail on drug charges. She was addicted to meth. As you will read, she fully grasped the horrors of the drug, as she tells in this simple, yet profound poem. She was released from jail, but, true to her story, the drug owned her. They found her dead not long after, with the needle still in her arm.)

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Last Revised October 15, 2014