Client Information: The AIR clients are the parents of a 17 year-old boy who was abusing Ecstasy, psychedelics, and cocaine.
Can you tell us what was going on with your son prior to coming to AIR?
Father: “Our son started smoking marijuana when he was 13. We didn’t suspect drugs until he was 15, when he began isolating himself from the family and spending frequent time away from home. His grades dropped and he flunked two classes at school. When we confronted him, he vehemently denied any drug use.
That summer, he developed nosebleeds and was rubbing his nose frequently. We checked his room, phone and computer. We found Ecstasy in his room and evidence through messages that he was not only doing Ecstasy, acid and cocaine, but dealing to support his habit.
We confronted him. He finally admitted to a problem and agreed to treatment. He spent one week at a rehab--all the time our insurance would cover-- and remained clean for 6 months after his return. He was happy, took up his guitar again, and spent time with the family. But that following summer, it became clear that things were going downhill again. ”
Mother: “The last straw came at the beginning of September when he and a friend took acid in our house. The friend was spending the night and they had sneaked out during the night. We came downstairs at 8 o’clock on a Saturday morning to find the police and the paramedics in our kitchen. The friend had called them and his parents. I guess he had never taken the stuff before, and he was hallucinating and began biting himself, completely freaked out. It was awful. The police said we could have our son’s friend arrested but I guess I wasn’t ready for it yet, and I asked them not to.
Our son, somehow, managed to just blow the whole thing off. He pretended it was no big deal, that it was a one-time thing, and that it wouldn’t happen again. Our son’s friend was okay, thank god, and they are friends again. The friend hasn’t used again. I actually trust him more than I trust our own son.
We came to AIR in the summer of 2007 as a last resort, really. Things had gotten really bad. He was doing acid, Ecstasy and cocaine, and I’m pretty sure he had to be dealing to get the money for it.”
Can you evaluate how the CRAFT workshop worked for you?
Father: “It took a lot of our disembodied anxiety and focused it on constructive action. There was a coherent, consistent behavioral approach that helped, and helped quickly. It’s provided us with support, not in some vague way, but concretely, with names, contacts and referrals that have proven very useful.”
Mother: “As a family, I’d have to say that we are getting along much better. We’ve loosened our grip on our son, and stopped repeating ourselves so much. My husband in particular had trouble with negative feedback and staying brief, and he’s really changed that.
He’s a sensitive kid, you know, he gets it the first time around. Repeating ourselves just makes him feel like he’s no good, and feeling no good makes him want to use.
I try to be more conscious about how I’m interacting with him. I actively look for things he’s doing that I can praise. Before, I was always on his case. Now, I try to be careful, think about what I say before I say it.”
Can you compare the level of your son’s substance abuse before and after the CRAFT workshop?
Mother: “I don’t really know. I wish I did. He’s stopped smoking cigarettes for one thing, which is good. He struggles with depression and is willing to take meds for that now, whereas previously he was frequently non-compliant. That helps. But he’s started smoking marijuana pretty regularly again. That may be a form of self medication. I don’t know about the acid and Ecstasy. I’m pretty sure he’s not using cocaine. I’d like to think it’s getting better, but we may be headed for another crisis.
I do worry about unstructured time. He’s a senior applying to colleges, and that’s a whole other level of stress in itself. He’s planning to defer a year, so we’re working hard to find internships and jobs that will be satisfying and keep him busy. The psychologist that AIR found for us has the ultimate goal to get him completely clean and sober.
Can you compare behavior & stress levels before and after the CRAFT workshop?
Mother: “The fighting in the morning used to be like World War 3 breaking out. During the day, when the phone rang, I never knew if it was going to be the police or the morgue. There’s still a high stress level, but its decreased somewhat and there’s greater equilibrium. The improvement of interfamily communication is most noticeable. We’ve tried as a family to focus on honesty and openness. There a new level of hopefulness…”
Father: “Obviously, this situation has taken several years to reach this point, so it’s not likely to be undone in a few weeks. The therapy has opened up channels of communication within our family that weren’t there before.
How effective was the treatment plan that AIR researched for you?
Father: “The referrals were terrific, one of the most positive aspects of the program for me. The psychologist is a very good, very sharp guy, with a lot of experience dealing with adolescents and substance abuse. By a long shot, he’s the best we’ve seen.”
Mother: “We clicked right away with the psychologist. We see him once a week, sometimes as a family, sometimes our son sees him alone. Our son likes him a lot, trusts him. The sessions bring up a lot of feelings, which can be unpleasant, but that’s good. He’s still angry with us. But we’ve been able to talk about things with our son with the psychologist’s help that we couldn’t approach at all at home. It’s helped us tremendously, and given us a lot of hope for the future.”
How would you rate AIR’s CRAFT workshop?
Father: “It was specific and very action-oriented which really appealed to me. There was a tangible criterion, a set of guidelines, for how you could make your interactions more effective that was helpful. I was able to measure my behavior against those guidelines, to see how some behaviors had not been helpful in the past, and wouldn’t likely be helpful in the future either.
I liked that we were there to develop a program of action to deal with the addiction, not just some random undertaking. It was ‘What can we do? How can we be effective?’ All within a relatively short order of time.
Mother: “Just coming to the group every week gave me a break from the stress of dealing with an addict. I knew that I would be involved in doing something that was constructive for me and for him. The small size of the group was good.”
As a recovering alcoholic myself though, I would have liked to see a little more role-playing… practicing specific situations, how to be brief, for example.”
Father: “It was a supportive place to go. There’s a measure of comfort to be taken from a group, from hearing people describe similar situations and how they’ve coped with them, their successes and failures. You tend to think your experiences are unique, and of course when you’re in a group, you realize they aren’t.”