Chapter Two

The Beginning for Mom

It started for me almost 4 years ago when I received a call from my, at that time, almost perfect son.  He was a teacher in an elementary school, and all of his students loved him dearly.  He is the father of three wonderful children, 2 boys and a girl.  He is married to a very sweet girl, and they seemingly had a good and stable, typically American middle class home.  I don’t know what happened to him along the way, but somehow, he got off track.  It is easy to place blame and even to accept the blame, and to feel that somehow you could have prevented this if you had just recognized the signs.  However, guilt is a wasted emotion, and understanding what the cause was is not as important as standing together as we make our way to whatever end this addiction takes, and praying it will end with happiness, not death.

I was at work and he called on my cell phone asking if he could come and talk to me.  “Of course”, I said, “I will be able to leave for home in about three hours, can you meet me at the house then, or do you need to talk to me now?”  Oh how I wish I had just said come now, and we will meet wherever you need to  (there is that guilt again).  “No”, he said, “It can wait, I’ll see you then.”  

How many times in our lives do we say to ourselves "if I had only known then what I know now, how different things might have been.?”  Would it have made a difference or not if I had just left work then?  Maybe, maybe not.  Eventually, the same things would probably have happened.  I might have delayed it, or even stopped it, but something worse might even have happened, so again, I had to let the guilt go.  It cluttered my mind, and I can’t function and make good decisions with my mind cluttered with guilt.  He needed me, and at the time, I didn’t know how badly, so I made a natural decision to meet him after work.

There, no guilt!! He came to my house, and immediately I could tell he was in a bad way.  He was fidgety, unsure of how to begin, and very nervous.  He began to cry and tell me how he wished he had just asked me to meet him as soon as he called.  He said he had decided to just ride around while he was waiting for me, and he ended up in a nearby State Park.  He parked his truck, and ended up with a law enforcement officer arresting him for finding crack cocaine and drug paraphernalia in his possession. 

He had never been in trouble with the law with the exception of some minor traffic tickets when he was a teenager.  Now, he was facing going to court and possibly jail.  He began, between sobs, to tell me how he had made a very poor choice one night several months before, and now was addicted to crack cocaine.  He wanted to get off of it, but he could not do it.  He said he told his wife that morning, although I know she suspected earlier.  She was at that time on her way to my house so we could all discuss this as a family.  Once she got here, he began to have a panic attack with chest pain, stiffness of his upper extremities, and difficulty breathing.  I called 911, against his protests, but I was afraid for his life.  I knew he had that drug in his system, and I did not know enough about it at that time to know if he was experiencing a life threatening overdose or not.

My worst nightmare had just started, I was facing losing my child. One night, after months of worrying about him, and in desperation, after a terrible nightmare about my son dying, I wrote this poem, trying to express on paper what I could not say in words.  It was right after I had received an E-mail from my son, basically telling me he felt he had nothing left to live for. I never showed it to anyone, it was only for me.  I had to find a way to cope, and a way to get out the feelings of panic that made me feel as if I were drowning or suffocating.

My Little boy and his New Friend

My little boy grew up in haste. He seemed to think he had no time to waste.
He worried and worried about what he would be once he grew up, and had responsibility.
He made up his mind, that he would work hard, go to school and got his degree.
He became a teacher and we were all so proud, his wife, his kids, his mom and his dad.
But one lonely night, while he was home alone, he found himself bored with the life he had chosen.
Trying to break the boredom by looking for something new, exciting, or fun, he got in his truck and went on a search. It didn’t take long until he found a new friend who made his life seem fresh and new.  He was exciting and daring and gave him a rush,  but as time went on it took more of his time, his life and his soul.

The soul that was so precious, honest and true, soon became tarnished, dishonest and scared.  His life became dark, along with his soul.  He tried and he tried to break away from his new friend.  The friend became his enemy, constantly chasing and stalking for only a little more.  No longer did he seem fun, exciting or new. Only disgusting, revolting, and sticking like glue. Run, run, away from this friend.  Escape is not easy, but must be done.  Hide in the house, don’t let him find you.  You will never be free if you let him in again.  He seeks to destroy  you, and take your soul.  His name is cocaine, and his aim is death.  He is strong, but you can be stronger.  Look to God, and release will come.  Break the ties, and cut him loose. Seek a better path, and you will find it. 

Life is too short  and you must make the best of it.  Learn from your friends, enemies as well.  Don’t let this control you, you’re still a good man.   Get back the respect you deserve, and love that you have lost.  It is all waiting for you, to reach out and take.  Just remember that problems can’t be solved in the same mindset that made them.

As I said, my son still has his “new friend”, but he struggles every day to be rid of him.  It sometimes seems there is no escape from this friend, traitor, enemy, devil, soul taker, family destructor.  He has been running with and away from his friend for almost 4 years now.  He feels he is walking a very lonely path, and I feel the same.  No one truly understands the pain he feels of trying to escape or the pain I feel of standing helplessly by, watching his struggle and the destruction of a precious family. Whatever happens in  the future, I will never let him walk this path alone.  I will be beside him no matter what, and I know it will be either to a new and better life or to death.  I stand beside him because I brought him into this world, I love him unconditionally,  and I will see to it that he has every chance there is available to him to escape this demon that is consuming him. 

We have had many ups and downs over the last 4 years, and hopefully by writing this as we struggle with it, it will help someone else as it is helping us. After his introduction to cocaine, as he described in Chapter one, his life slowly began to self-destruct.  What follows is "our" story of the horrors of crack possession.