Dealing with addiction. Now that’s not a topic I thought would ever be on this blog.
Why? The story is too personal. It’s too painful. And it’s too darn difficult to talk about. Yet here we are. What does this have to do with personal finance?
Plenty! Read on to learn how and why this is the case.
Why I’m doing this
My wife, Cathy, and I collaborated on writing this story.
Our story is about dealing with a son or daughter that’s an addict. I know some of you have likely had the same or similar experience.
Even if you haven’t, it’s likely that someone in your family, your job, or your circle of friends has dealt with the horrors of addiction.
I know how lonely this journey can be. When you talk about it with someone who hasn’t experienced it, it’s hard to know what to say.
Or, they may think they have great advice and offer it to you unsolicited.
One of my hopes in talking about our experience is to educate.
In the end, I’ll tell you what we’ve learned from our experience dealing with a an addicted son.
I also want to provide tools to help you or anyone in your circle to avoid making the mistakes we made, personally and financially.
And there were many.
It’s not a pretty story. Addiction stories never are.
But it’s a timely story.
Why?
There are more people addicted and more deaths from addiction than at any time in our country’s history.
Check out the stats from the American Addiction Center’s study,?Statistics on Drug Addiction.
According to the study,?21.5 million American adults (considered age 12 and older) struggled with substance abuse in 2014.
That number is much more significant today.
As hard as it is to tell our story, I want to let anyone who reads this that’s dealing with addiction know you are not alone.
With that background, here’s our story.
How it started
I’ll never forget the day.
It was Labor Day weekend of 2007. My wife Cathy and I always had our best friends from Indianapolis at our house for the week of Labor Day. This tradition has endured pretty much since we moved to Northern Virginia in 1998.
Our friends and I were sitting on our back patio enjoying the late afternoon weather when Cathy came outside, looking as if she’d seen a ghost.
She said, Freddy (her favorite name for me), I need to talk to you. I knew something terrible happened.
It turns out, Cathy had been having dreams about our son at night. I won’t give you the details of the dreams. Suffice it to say they were pretty bad. She never told me about those dreams.
Let me preface this by saying that Cathy and I are a?couple with a strong Christian faith. We believe?that Jesus is active to the infinitesimal detail of our lives.
On several occasions in the past, Cathy had dreams where she believed God had spoken to her about things that were going to happen. Several times, not just one or two, those things happened.
So, when she said she’d been having dreams about our son, I took her seriously.
In these dreams, God showed her that our son was likely using heroin.
Prior to coming downstairs, she called him to confront him with this. After first reacting in anger and denial, he called her back a few minutes later to confess that in fact, yes, he was shooting up heroin.
This began the journey through his addiction.
How it progressed
When Cathy confronted him in 2007, of course, Jason said he was going to go to the doctor and get help to kick the habit.
At the time, methadone was the drug used to help wean people off of heroin.
We thought he was clean. That is until April 2008 when we got a call from him after being arrested.
They found empty packets with the residue of heroin and paraphernalia associated with drug use.
The financial issues kicked into high gear then. Jason found an attorney who specialized in dealing with drug offenders. The cost ? $8,000, which Cathy and I agreed to pay.
That was our first of many, many bad financial decisions.
A seemingly successful outcome
The attorney did a fantastic job for Jason. He got two years? probation. At the sentencing, the judge told him if he so much as got a parking ticket during the two years, he would put him in jail to serve out the remainder of his sentence.
That fear proved a great motivator!
Every week, Jason had to call a phone number to see if it was his time to get drug tested.
He had a specific code that, if it came up, gave him something like 4 hours to get tested. If he was unable or if he failed to get to the test in the time allotted, he would go to jail.
He made it for the two-year period without incident and got released from probation.
We were very hopeful.
Rehab efforts
A year or so into his probation, Jason got the best job he?d ever had.
Unfortunately, he lost that job toward the end of the year.
The result? He started using again.
During the two-year period from 2010-2012, Cathy and I spent embarrassing amounts of money to help our son.
We paid for two recovery centers. He got thrown out of the second.
We also paid off car loans, student loans, and other sundry debts along the way. I know some of you reading this may be thinking, ?why are you paying off bills of your adult son??
And that?s very legitimate question.
All I can say is when you’re in the midst of it; it’s hard to think clearly. It feels like you’re moving from one crisis to the next in rapid succession with little time to stop and think.
Learning about addiction
We hear all of the time that addiction is a disease.
We had trouble getting our heads around this concept.
Even though we understand it, it’s still hard at times.
The symptoms of the disease are behavioral, which is why it’s so hard to accept and understand.
Addicts are desperate people. Desperate people do desperate things.
As parents, you try to prepare yourselves for the worst-case scenarios.
For an addict, that’s an overdose. We had talked about and, to the extent possible, prepared ourselves for that outcome.
Oddly, we felt better having our son in jail, rather than on the street. At least there we didn’t worry about an overdose.
Our education
Dr. Kevin McCauley, a doctor who became addicted to prescription drugs, decided if he was going to beat his addiction, he needed to learn everything he could about it.
The result?
A series of videos in which he lays out the latest research from scientist all over the world on the disease of addiction.
The title of the video series is?Promise Unwoven.? Click the title to watch.
These videos opened Cathy’s and my eyes to a detailed scientific explanation of what goes on in an addict?s brain.
Watch these videos?to understand what happens to an addict’s brain chemistry and why it’s so difficult to stop.
Pass them along to anyone dealing with an addiction.
The choice argument
Addicts make the choice to use heroin initially.
Once that initial choice is made, and addiction kicks in, the choice argument is no longer valid.
Dr. McCauley explains what happens to the brain once addiction takes over.
Once a person becomes an addict, the brain gets rewired. The longer they stay that way, the worse the rewiring gets.
The brain chemistry gets flipped upside down.
Because of the change in chemistry, the addict’s brain associates the drug with survival.
In other words, if I don’t get my drug, I’m not going to survive.
When you believe your survival depends on getting your drug, you don’t have a choice anymore. Your entire life is planned around getting it.
For further reading: She Went to Jail for a Drug Relapse. Tough Love or Too Harsh?
Characteristics of a disease
A disease has 3 elements to it. First is the malady. Second is the organ the malady affects.? Third are the symptoms.
Take diabetes.
The malady is the body loses its ability to produce insulin.
The affected organ is the pancreas.
The symptoms are things like poor circulation causing pain in the extremities. Loss of feeling in those extremities is another. Of course, there are many more.
Using this format to diagnose addiction, here’s how it would go.
The malady is the addiction. The organ affected is the brain.
The symptoms are behavioral.
Things like lying, stealing manipulating are symptoms of the disease of addiction. These are the things the addict does to get their drug.
It’s hard to see bad behaviors as symptoms.
That’s what makes it so hard to see addiction as a disease. When you’re on the receiving end of these symptoms, the last thing you’re thinking about is an illness.
It’s counterintuitive to look at bad behaviors this way. We’d rather punish them than treat them. For the most part, that’s how the system deals with it.
However, if we want to look at this from a 7scientific perspective, we need to look at it differently.
Financial lessons learned
Below are some of the lessons we learned (the hard way)!
Financial lesson #1
(I want to clarify something first. When I talk about a son or daughter, I’m talking about an adult son or daughter.
A teen or someone who is still your dependent offers you, the parent, the ability to have more control. That’s a different discussion for another day.)
Once you find out your son or daughter is addicted, I would advise not supporting them financially.
Why?
Once you start, it’s hard to turn it off. They are phenomenal at getting you to feel sorry for them. Their stories. Their logic. Even their excuses somehow seem to make sense.
Seeing your son or daughter suffer and not helping is one of the hardest things a parent will ever do.
I can advise you not to give them money. You probably will (obviously, we did).
If you’re going to help financially, my suggestion is to put a hard and fast dollar limit on it. When you reach that limit, stop the support.
Listen, this is hard. When we finally decided to cut him off, it was excruciating, especially for Cathy.
A mother’s connection to her son is special. He used that connection over the years in the times he was most desperate.
If you provide financial help with the expectation that this will speed the process to get your son or daughter better, you will likely be very disappointed.
Their recovery is up to them.
My advice, something we did not do ? protect yourselves and your finances above everything else.
Financial lesson #2
If we could turn back the clock, we would not have let Jason and his family move into our house.
If an addict is living with you, it’s much easier to be manipulated into helping them.
Here’s another reason ? they will steal from you.
Remember the disease and the choice argument.
Once the addict associates their drug with survival, they will do anything to get money for their daily dose.
If that means stealing. That’s what they will likely do.
Here’s a partial list of things they stole:
a gas power washer, a set of Calloway golf clubs, all of the inherited jewelry my mother gave Cathy. Inherited flatware (we found this item gone when preparing for Thanksgiving dinner).
The total value of these items was over $35,000! They probably got a few hundred for all of it at a pawn shop.
We never dreamed our son was capable of this.
Remember, drug = survival. Not having = death!
They will do whatever it takes to get what they need.
Financial lesson #3
Under no circumstances should you ever pull money from your retirement accounts to bail your addict out of trouble.
Look, I’m a financial advisor. I would never, ever advise anyone to tap into these accounts to bail out an irresponsible child.
But I’m going to be completely transparent about what can happen.
When you see your child in complete desperation mode, it is incredibly hard to not make emotional decisions to protect them.
How much did we put into them? It was well into six figures!
As I said earlier, we started over at a time when we were accumulating assets and getting closer to financial independence near retirement.
Relapses
Understand that in the best of circumstances, your addict is going to relapse after attempts at recovery. The recovering addict relapses on average 4 or 5 times.
That’s’ why it is important to protect yourself. Because of what happens to the brain chemistry, it’s difficult to stay clean.
I know this was a lot to absorb. Addiction is messy. And as you see, it can last a very long time.
Final Thoughts on Dealing with Addiction
- If you’re in the midst of this yourself, you are struggling mightily with difficult decisions. Forgive yourself when you make mistakes. (and you will). And maybe, more importantly, forgive your spouse when they do.
- Each of us has a different psychological and emotional makeup and deal with things in our own way.? Sometimes, we need to engage in the ministry of presence with our spouse, significant other or our sons and daughters. Just be there for them.
- The toughest decision you will ever make is to stop supporting your son or daughter. You love them. You want to help them. We did too. Please understand that the kind of help they need, you can’t give them. Watching them suffer, reel in shame, live on the street? I can tell you how excruciating that is.
- Don’t isolate yourself. There are a few support groups in place for family members of addicts. You can find some below in a list of resources Don?t let shame and embarrassment keep you from getting the help you need.
Please let me know what you think. I mean open, honest, gut-wrenching feedback, if necessary.
If you’re dealing with or have dealt with a family member who is an addict, please tell us about it in the comments below.
If you want to reach out to me or my wire Cathy, go to my?Contact Page. You can send an email, fill out a contact request, or schedule a call.
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For further reading
If Addiction Is a Disease, Why Is Relapsing a Crime??
Drug Deaths in America Are Rising Faster Than Ever
Other Resources
Find an Al-Anon Meeting
Celebrate Recovery
American Addiction Centers
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
That was incredibly well communicated. I’ve been guilty of judging people with drug problems because I associated their continued behavior with continuing to make bad choices. But the model that an initial few bad choices rewires an addict into a mode where the substance being abused becomes equal to their very survival, that explains so well why addicted people are driven to do things non-addicted people cannot explain. An addicted person is faced with no good choices, to not obtain the substance is to die, that’s suicide and immoral, or they can steal to get the substance, also immoral. There truly is no righteous choice because of how they have become mentally rewired. This is the first time addiction as a disease actually makes sense to me. I appreciate the considerable pain it has to cause you to share something so personal but I thank you for doing it. It helped me with my ignorance and I know it will help others. Thank you.
Steveark,
Thank you for your comments and your honesty. And please forgive yourself for feeling this way. I did too until we had to deal with it. And trust me, when you’re on the receiving end of the behavioral symptoms, you aren’t thinking about it as a disease
Please share this with anyone you think would benefit. We told this story to help people. It’s an epidemic that is, quite literally, killing our country.
Thanks again for your comments.
Hi Steve – I think we’re all guilty of judging others unfairly at times – I know I’ve done that. That’s why when I write I try to be mindful that we all have our “demons”, we all make mistakes, we all exercise less-than-perfect judgement, and sometimes life just isn’t all that kind. I think it’s hard for us to be empathetic when we haven’t been through what someone else has, so I try my best to give pause when I’m tempted to judge. I haven’t been through what Fred and his family have, but I see it happening all around. I feel blessed for the good things I enjoy in life, and ask for mercy for those areas where I’ve faltered. In the process, I’m getting increasingly comfortable with just being human. But I still have a long way to go. Fred’s experience is definitely an education for us all. If we at least come away with more humility, then we’ve somehow benefited from a very dark situation.
Maybe that starts when we start asking people “how ya doing?” and actually mean it.
Amazing article with great insights about addiction and finances. It’s a topic that needs to be discussed in the open more. You’re both brave for being on the cusp of this discussion. Thank you for sharing this.
Mike,
Thanks for your comments. It needs to be discussed. Too many suffer in silence and embarrassment. Pass this along to anyone you think would benefit.
I saw your article on LinkedIn. I?m truly sorry your family is going through this terrible time. Thank You for being brave and sharing your story. You are helping so many others that are experiencing similar journeys!
I?m also speaking publicly among my peers (the financial services industry) about my husband’s story to educate and raise awareness. #endthestigma
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/opioid-crisis-quickly-becoming-part-financial-you-canzanella-lutcf/
Cheryl,
I responded to your email, but want to also acknowledge you here. You’ve experienced the one thing every family member of an addict fears. Thanks for sharing your story.
Having dealt with an alcoholic spouse, I can sympathize with the agony suffered, because but helping the person addicted we are enabling them as co-dependents. I was fortunate to have access to a program at my work which enabled me to step back and see the situation for the destruction it was causing our family and gave me the strength to administer the tough love action. I had to totally remove myself and my small children from the problem, despite the agony of not wanting to hurt the addict but it was the only way to effectively take the destruction out of the family unit. Because of it, I had to become the head of household to support the family but knew my efforts would give my family a stable environment which made my efforts liveable (I had to work two jobs).
As for my spouse, I paid for a divorce myself, and when he came after me for alimony, I told him that he could get that when he paid back all the child support he missed for most of the 14 years of the marriage. He signed papers immediately asking for nothing. He was “rescued” by a woman who supposedly re-habituated him, whom he had met at the bar, who now controls all his assets.
Addiction is a disease caused by the substance which affects the body starting with developing a chemical synapsis problem with making the substance a chronic need. In some families, there’s an inherited tendency but only if the individual doesn’t learn defensive tactics to dealing with stress triggers. I believe the 12 steps of addiction programs teach this well but some have to reach the full bottom to realize that only by themselves can they achieve control.
I believe that the only help one can give a loved one who is addicted is the tough love reaction when they reach the dreg level of constant need. This present day of opioid addiction is merely another version of the disease of addiction.
Hi Maria,
Thanks for sharing your story. It sounds like you got great help understanding this before you got deeply into helping. Stories like this are so important for people to hear. You showed great strength and courage in standing up for yourself and your kids. That is one of the hardest things to do in life.
I pray God continues to guide and bless you as you lead your family.
I appreciate your willingness to talk about it. That’s not easy either.
No matter what point in the stages of addiction, there’s always a way to deal with the problem once you face your role. The hardest part is taking the first step by deciding to deal with the problem effectively. This story in this article helps emphasize the facts of addiction is a disease that affects not only the addict physically but all the people around them too. Changing tactics is never easy and the road to an effective way of dealing with the aftereffects is not smooth. But the path is easier once the stress effect is minimal. Help is available for all, even the co-dependents like described in the article. Re-couping funds/assets already spent is a gone/done deed. The path forward is one that needs to be addressed to the positive. I can only pray for all involved in any addiction situation to take the right positive path.
I have witnessed this more times than I want to admit. ( 25 year law enforcement career) Including my sister’s son. I have sat through 100’s of hours of these programs learning this stuff.
Great advice and well written. Nothing you say here is over stated. It is all real and very true.
I’m sorry this happened to you. Seeing it first hand I know how painful that must have been.
My sister and her husband divorced over this. I commend you for sticking together with your wife.
Tim,
Thank you for your service. We had visits from police officers looking for Jason frequently over the years. They were always gracious, and understanding. it’s a tough job.
And thank you for the kind words. We stuck together because we turned to God. Without Him, we would likely not have made it.
I once knew Jason very well and saw this happen to him firsthand. I have no idea where he is or what has become of him since some of the more severe incidents that he and M were involved with. I think about him from time to time and hope he has moved in a positive way in life. Behind it all he is a kind and pleasant person. God Bless you Fred and Cathy and thanks for sharing for story.
Hey, friend (whoever you are).
Sadly, Jason has not moved in a positive way. He was recently arrested and is back in jail awaiting a court date July 3. There are 7 new felony grand larceny charges added to the list.
He skipped a parole meeting last spring and was a fugitive in hiding. He started using again during that time. It always catches up to him eventually.
When he was released after serving 33 months, I was cautiously optimistic he could turn it around. That didn’t happen.
I’d love to connect with you privately if you care to, Reach me via the contact form, which has an email.
Steveark made an excellent comment, and I echo his sentiments exactly. You have helped me understand this process of addiction more than I ever have, and I am grateful. I send compassion to you and your wife (as much as can be communicated online) and thank you for sharing your story. As a parent, I know that I, too, would spend my last dime to help my child, but it’s an eye-opener to hear and now know that this is not a wise choice for anyone involved. I am happy that you and your wife found solace in your faith.
Hi Bev,
Glad it was helpful That was the goal. And as I told Stevark, be easy on yourself for not knowing. It’s one of the more difficult things to wrap our heads around.
Please share with anyone you think appropriate.