Your son was a star football player in high School varsity and you were proud to attend all of his games. His scholarship to state university allowed him to play college ball and his grades during that time were even more impressive there than his grades in high school. He was on track to get a masters in biology by graduating early and was respected by his fellow students and teachers alike. Graduating with top honors, he took a job at a biotech firm starting at six figures as a researcher working on new techniques for healing broken bones. You were pretty sure at some point, he’d be mentioned in an article in Time, he was that smart and talented.
And then you got a call from him. He was in jail.
Confused, you asked the obvious first questions like is he okay, is he hurt, was he in an accident but there was no real answer, just a denial of anything being extremely wrong. You finally got to a question that extracted a little information out of your star son. When you ask what he did to end up in jail, he hit you with a sandbag wrapped around a wrecking ball; he was arrested while trying to buy Heroin.
At first you couldn’t believe it. You thought maybe he was trying to buy it for a buddy or some girlfriend, and you tried to press him to admit he was not buying it for himself. Slowly, he denied it. You had no choice at that point but to ask the hard questions you never thought you would ask your own flesh and blood, whom you know is ‘better than this’, who was exemplary of excellence in every way; academically, athletically and as a person. How could stand up citizen want to buy, much less use heroin?
The first question you can thought of to ask was ‘how long’. It’s here that you realized you have been wrong about everything you ever heard about addicts. He told you when he was just 14 he would pop painkillers like oxycodone and Vicodin at parties, sometimes after school before doing homework. During his football career in high school, he’d buy off his friends who had parents they would steal it from. Sometimes, he took it because he really liked the way he felt on it, other times it was legitimately for pain from particularly hard hits at practice or games. He admitted he’s not even sure how he ended up finishing college because he had already graduated to heroin by his 3rd year. He was actually fired from his job three months ago and didn’t tell you because he was ashamed that if he asked you for help, you would’ve shut him out of your life.
You were then left wondering if you did anything wrong. If maybe talking down about ‘junkies’ in streets and ‘losers shooting up’ might have turned your son away from helping you for fear of being seen as that low in your eyes. ‘Addiction is a choice and those people deserve to be there in the gutter’ you’d say. But it was now your son and he had laid out how he had become an addict and done everything you thought a good person does.
Addiction can happen to anyone and affect anyone. It’s not always a choice and it’s not ‘just street junkies’. If you or someone you know is suffering from addiction, addiction help chat can help find out treatment options. Northbound’s free addiction helpline serves Newport Beach and the greater Orange County and is staffed by professional counselors who understand the illness of substance use disorder. Call our addiction help centers at 855-858-6803.
