The Collapse

[pan]

OK, I'm an idiot - how do you upload video?

Watch this

[hannah j]

So sorry to hear this.  You must be devastated.  Though to tell you the truth, there is nothing like a death in the family but a death in the family, and right now, you have hope, your son can live in the car, and you don't have to imagine him on the street.  His taking the car is actually a good sign.  Let's hope he won't drink and drive.  I hope he will find a soft landing somewhere, cool off, and make contact.  Could he have gone to a kid friendly place like Bellingham?  or even Port Townsend, where kids used to show up from other Puget Sound towns.....good luck.

[BO]

He's been in contact with us, but we don't know where he is. My guess is he's staying at a friend's apartment complex where he has access to alcohol and god knows what else. 

Have a friend who recently lost their daughter in similar circumstances and I'm deeply afraid of facing a similar outcome. Drug culture has a powerful pull and it's taking many kids' lives. It's like living next to a troll that will come in and steal your kid if you aren't vigilant. We were vigilant as hell, and he still got our kid.

[BO]

Ironically, I went to the grocery store yesterday, where an idiot in a Seahawks shirt was protesting a proposed treatment center being built in the/his neighborhood. Almost stopped to confront him, but I probably would have ended up in jail for assault. 

[hannah j]

How old is your son?  has this been an underlying problem for awhile?  or kind of hit you from behind....

I said the thing about a death in the family because I lost my son suddenly when he was just 16.  Not to drugs or cars.  He had a seizure, we were trying to get them under control, he didn't have a lot but they were scary.  Then he had one and aspirated.   You still may get your son back, i surely hope so, but i know i won't.  
If he's been in contact with you that is good.  Just don't lose it on the phone.  He's got to feel he can always return.....

[BO]

So sorry Hannah. If you mentioned your own son before, you have my belated sympathies 

Mom is handling communications, by text.

Problems with pot and alcohol started earlier this summer. We finally grounded him last week after we got a call he was too drunk to drive home from a friends apartment...night before SAT exam's. Son's 'friend' is a little criminal who has access to alcohol and pot and lives with his widowed mother (husband was shot) in one of our local apartment complexes where the poor are warehoused and criminality runs rampant. 

I think our son has a cognitive issue that has yet to be diagnosed. Maybe ADHD related. Maybe something else. we're working on it.

[Cal]

I don't know if this will cheer you up but I was undiagnosed ADHD (without the H in physically noticeable form except I fidgeted a lot) until age 52 - comorbid severe depression.  Severe enough that the psychiatrist said he was pretty amazed at what I had managed to accomplish in life (like not being dead for a start).  I got lucky with a father who encouraged my strengths & the odd teacher who did the same ..... and went off the deep end in my 30's to everyone's great alarm.  Fortunately by that age I had a tertiary education & coping mechanisms by that stage otherwise no telling if I would ever have emerged from all that.  I was a chain smoker (would have swum the Atlantic Ocean to get a cigarette), & in my "off the deep end years" it was ganja, cocaine, ecstacy, benzo's .... whatever stopped the pain. And I managed to live a dual reality - two completely different worlds.  One where I earned a living & managed "normal" more or less & the other one where I did my search for truth, meaning, god, oblivion.  I survived - somehow my formative years kept me tethered enough that I didn't float off into the ether or an asylum as I watched many do.

The most interesting thing for me looking back on all that is that once I was on the right medications I did not have to try to stop drugs with will power .... I simply wasn't interested in taking them anymore.  I still chew nicorettes but notice that I no longer break into a sweaty panic if I leave them at home by mistake.  Turns out all my substance abuse problems centred around self-medicating a faulty dopamine circuit.  Wellbutrin & Ritalin sorted that out so I was functional in the corporate world & after two years of "post-corporate-trauma-disorder" I am considering managing my life more according to my own rhythms now I understand them instead of the meds that enable me to be a good punctual, predictable corporate sheep-slave.

A really good psychiatrist & the right medications sorted me out & I'm not tempted to abuse or stop them. 

My boyfriend at the time was not ADHD - he had an as yet undiagnosed psychosis that lead him into a ketamine addiction to name only one of more substances than I can remember the names of & ended up with a messianic complex followed by bankruptcy & being struck of the medical register (he was a GP medical doctor).  He never returned to the person he once was although he is still alive somewhere - very charismatic & found a rich lady who found him fascinating & bought him a fancy car .... and has no idea that she only knows about half his life - he's still got a subterfuge one going & managing to pull off the charade.

Fortunately I'm not bipolar like my ex-husband who hated being on medication because it cut his connection with immortality & omnipotence & he ended up in an asylum as a state presidents's ward having to plead insanity to get off criminal charges for doing strange things like driving his car through a fancy luxury car show room window & destroying the cars on show as a protest against the rich (in ancient times I suspect he would have been canonized as he behaved rather like Francis of Assissi).  He was that way without going off the rails on drugs at any point in his life.

So mental disorders or whatever one wants to call them come in all shapes & sizes & disguises .... and lead through interesting, but highly dangerous territory.

The one most important thing I've seen that pulls people through is strength of family & friend connections - some place safe where you are not condoned, but are not condemned or judged either - just safe with every opportunity available to find a way out of it all that works for you & that is so different for different people.

It's a tricky world & challenging as hell for the person off the rails & the ones who have to watch it.  And it can take a long time to find what works & what doesn't - it's so different for different people. I hope it works out ok for you guys Bo.  As much as you can (ignore the cliche here) - be as kind to yourselves & to your son as you can .... Safety, unconditional acceptance of the problem, willingness to try all available paths out of the mess & kindness .... the people that kept believing in me saved my life & so did my dog who had so many issues of his own he didn't notice mine & loved me to bits 24/7.

One of my very straight friends made an interesting comment to me recently (the world famous grade A climate change scientist) - that on reflection he realized that despite my current situation (and dodgy travelogue in the deep end years) my life style was exponentially more sane than his own.  It was my coping mechanisms in the face of the tsunami of consensus reality insanity that went into failure ... and once I got a handle on that I've been able to learn how to manage around that better.  Most of those 50 years I thought I was the insane one which added a nasty spin to the whole vicious cycle of trying to escape.

[BO]

Thanks, Cal. We have a therapist appointment tomorrow, so as long as the kid agrees to getting help, I believe there's still hope.

But I could write a lengthy diatribe against America's youth culture which I believe is at least half to blame for our son's problems. Hopeless kids who have no reason to 'make something of themselves' but have found an alternative identity by becoming thugs. As if being a drug-taking, violent sociopath is something to be proud of.

I won't get into describing the problem further other than it's born of hopelessness and totally related to the collapse. A topic I fully intend to broach  with my son's therapist tomorrow. Don't want to pass entire blame for my son's problems on American culture,  but as long as he belongs to a cult of thugs, I'm not sure how he's going to get better. We'll see.

Thanks for relating your personal experiences and for your support. It means a lot.

[waldopaper]

I got a low opinion of most shrinks.  But ya might as well give em a shot.  There are good ones out there.  But bad ones can do some serious damage.  Kinda how doctors sometimes fuck  you up worse than you already were.  

I get annoyed with the ones who have you make lists,   

[pan]

I'm all for non-chemical solutions - nutrition, sleep, meditation, exercise, and therapy - but sometimes the brain chemistry needs some assistance.  I am wary of pharma but - sometimes - it does help.  As I don't know the situation at all this isn't specific to your family. 

My dad had undiagnosed depression for years.  Got suicidal after my mom died last year.  They fixed the meds and he is much happier - even has a new lady friend.

[waldopaper]

dude.  i'm an old hippie.  got no problem with drugs at all.  gobble all kinds of scrip pharma every.  the psych dope is ok... but nothin close to good herb.  for me, most psych dope is better than beer... but not as good as grass.  

and nobody who is a veteran black dog handler is ever gonna say, "my black dog is bigger than your black dog."  That shit's for amateurs.  And speaking of shit...  and amateurs... 

[BO]

We're all built differently. There's no single solution for everyone.

Anxiety runs high in my family. Mother developed schizophrenia, father was bi-polar, and brother has had episodes of OCD. I think I suffer from an omlette of mental disturbances containing all three, in milder form. Antidepressants have helped a lot.

Had a couple of good times on pot, but after that it just made me flakey and paranoid. Alcohol was my drug of choice. It helped mitigate the anxiety.

My son has major cognition problems, as a lot of teenagers do. Pot makes things worse as teens are developing the executive function in their brains. I have no problem with people who smoke pot. But for kids, I think encouraging its use -- as the state has, by legalizing it -- is a terrible idea.

Endorphins work best and are free. Was never happier then when I was a board head. I only had to think about going boarding and my mood would be elevated. Pavlov's dog. My brother runs for the same effect. Now, I just try to keep moving. The hardest part at my age, is overcoming the inertia.

The US health care crime syndicate is a whole nuther story.

[waldopaper]

They always return.  Kids hit as close as it gets, I guess.  We have  a death in the family every day... usually the closer it hits, the more it hurts, that's all.  

What always returns is what no body can take away!