You can tell when he’s not telling you the truth?
“Well, yeaaahhh …” says Dad.
“Most of the time, you can tell, if he’s fidgeting,” says Mom. “But there is still that sense that I have of walking around on eggshells, because you don’t want to [push him over the edge.] It’s hard to confront him about bringing in dishes, and that’s nothing. There have been times when that would be a huge blowup …”
“But if he’s got cravings,” says Dad, “that’s when you have to be … He’s been clean for four-plus months now, but you have to be careful, put out some feeler questions to see if he’s …”
People tend to judge the parents?
“I know, I know,” says Dad. “We’ve gotten a little grace because people know us …”
There are many different ways for parents to act and react.
“There’s something I read a long time ago,” says Dad. “An interview of the actor Carroll O’Connor, talking about his son who was addicted to cocaine and shot himself … It’s a famous quote of his [paraphrased] — ‘I wish I’d have violated my son’s civil rights, I wish I would have spied on him, I wish I would have gone behind his back to keep better tabs on him than just blindly trusted him …’ And that [has] always stuck with me. There were a lot of pills when I was a kid with my mom. So I’m very leery of pills in any form, doesn’t sit right with me.”
There have been conflicts with authorities and the school district.
“What I would like to see from the school, the community, that seventh, eighth and ninth grade, that there’s a little more check[ing] on the kids’ attendance and if they’re going to be a problem, you can still do something,” says Dad. “We found out that once a kid is 16, they’re an adult in New York State. I’ve very little rights … We didn’t file a PINS [Person In Need of Supervision] petition until after his birthday and once he turns 16 the PINS petition doesn’t really have a lot of teeth. But if you file it prior to 16, there’s a bunch of stuff they can do. We hemmed and hawed and let the date go over …
“In hindsight, we wish the school would have filed the PINS petition, not us. Then I go to court with Mom and the Kid and we’re on his side. Then we’re all in the one group. By me filing it, we’re going against him in the court. And his lawyer, could say whatever he wanted. It’s not the system against the family, it’s the family against the kid. So it’s an utter failure.”
And a bad experience with a social worker.
“The school social worker we had, who is not there any more, was an utter disappointment. Washed his hands of the whole situation,” says Dad. “When I said, if he continues down this path, he’ll end up in jail, he just snickered … Everything we said we were worried about happening has happened. All of a sudden, four years later, kids are dying and everybody is up in arms … ‘How are we going to save the community?’ We’ve been dealing with this for years and nobody wanted to listen.
“I’ve read several people the riot act at the school. Some deservedly, some not. The vice-principal there now is excellent.”
Dad makes a suggestion.
“The community should send some e-mails in support of the principals, in support of the guidance … It’s not the school’s fault that my kid did drugs, that any of these kids are dead … It’s not any of their faults. But they are afraid of the parents, afraid of being sued, of hearing a ton of shit, which they’ve gotten from me for four years now …”
The Kid has overdosed three times.
“If your child is under the age of 21, you’re legally responsible for them, you can’t deny them your home, shelter, food,” says Mom. “Yet if they OD and they’re in the hospital, they are not obligated to call you. I’ve had his friends call me. I stayed at the hospital for three hours one night waiting for him, and he went crazy and the judge put him in jail, sending him there. They gave him Narcan, then charged him and sent him to jail, and still nobody called me …
“This last time there was a bench warrant because he didn’t follow through with the terms of his probation. It was the time-out that he needed. At first I was feeling really crazy because he had this ten thousand dollars bail and we can’t afford that, and why is he in jail. He’s been doing well, but you know what? His friend had just ODed [and died] a week and a half before that, and I was getting calls all that day, and that was so horrendous. As much as I felt for that kid and his family, my stomach was just turning.
“Then when he was picked up on the bench warrant, I felt, well, this is not fair. And it took me a good week to realize that this is the time out we couldn’t give him.”
There are horror stories of the Kid being busted in New Jersey with an older kid who had moved up to the area from Brooklyn. Of him having “been in Spanish Harlem for three days and he had a huge knot [Dad gestures to forearm)] from shooting up. The narcotics officer said, ‘Good luck with this one.’ At this point he’s got tattoos up and down his arms, and the cop said to me, a decade and a half ago, you’d have picked him up and he’d have had his ass kicked. But we don’t do that any more.”
Dad goes on. “I’d like for law enforcement to know that I’ve gotten more done from the burst of reality of a good swift kick in the ass that really resonates. At the first sign of this, cops should lock the kid up, I hate to say it, when they can’t get their drugs … Parents are going to go bananas, but the judge is trying to do what he can do. Any parent that has this knows … The longer you can keep them away from this, the worse experience when they’re jones-ing, is going to be the only thing that jogs them out of this. Loving, caring, nurturing parents to a heroin addict doesn’t mean shit to them. And you think you’re doing the right thing, but they need a dose of brutal reality.
“I just want to put out there, that if you’re having trouble with the kids, I think a lot of people fear Family Court, CPS [Child Protective Services], DSS [Department of Social Services],” says Dad. “They’re all in your corner, really, unless you’re just a complete utter train wreck as a parent. If your kid is doing something that you’re going to come in contact with these agencies, don’t fear them. The last thing they’re going to do is take the kid out of the home, the last thing they’re going to do … They don’t want to do any of this. They’re going to help, but they need to be able to do it quicker than they were able to do with us …”
“And call their friends’ parents and let them know what’s going on,” adds Mom. “And tell them to keep an eye out for your kid and their own kids, because they all do sneaky little things, and they seem to be getting younger and younger, and it’s so scary. They’re hearing it and they’re all on social media. These fifth and sixth graders, some of them are really looking up to these middle schoolers and high schoolers, and some of them are doing really well, and some of them … well, it only takes one time.”
“And the shit can be ordered and brought to them, if you have a phone or computer,” says Dad. “If a dealer sells to a kid who dies, they’ll throw the book at him, that’s what’s going around. But a kid who’s using is also a dealer, they’re also a middleman, or the one that, if they don’t have it, they know where to get it … It’s so much different than pot or acid, because the drive to get it is so strong, they’ll do anything. The Kid came back home with a screwdriver to take his TV out to sell it, and threatens his Mom with it.”
Mom and Dad have never stopped fighting for the Kid. Through the heartbreak and the frustration, they still believe in him, that he can have a productive, good life. They are grateful for the progress that the Kid has made.
“I mean you see him now, you know, he checked in with me,” says Dad.
Mom agrees. “Right now he’s very remorseful, he says it makes him absolutely sick to think of what he’s done,” she says. “He says he would never dare tell me what he’s done, and really, I don’t want to know, to think about it makes my stomach turn.”
“But when they’re on the drug run, totally different,” says Dad.
“When you look at them, this is not your kid … Who are you? You’re not my boy …” says Mom. “The second you suspect all this, you have to tell everybody. Now everybody kind of knows, so it is going to be easier, but it’s still going to be horrifying to a parent … So much time has been lost. It seems like it’s not that much time, but it is. When they quit school they’re not to the capacity they should be as far as thinking and making the right decisions. Now it’s like retraining them to walk …”
–Brian Hollander
