my room is a mess

I realized a long time ago that my bedroom is a physical representation of how things are in my life. And it's a mess right now.

My daughter was stepped down from Residential treatment last Tuesday to Partial. In Partial treatment, you go to the treatment center eight hours a day, six days a week. (For more information about how the mental health system works, see this posting.) The treatment center is about 50 miles from my home and with traffic, can take three hours one way. After the first day of driving out there to pick her up, I knew this was not going to work. So I packed up and stayed in a hotel out near the center for four days. We are hoping to step her down to IOP (Intensive Outpatient Program) tomorrow, which is three hours a day, three days a week and, hopefully, at a facility a bit closer to my home.

During the month or so that my daughter was in residential treatment, life returned to "normal" for me. Actually quieter than normal since my son is no longer here during the week. I finally cleaned up my room and closet, paid the huge stack of bills that had been sitting untouched since all this started, even finished a couple of projects that I had not been able to get to before. I did not feel the need to go to Al Anon meetings and stopped reading my daily meditations. And I stopped blogging.

Both kids were home this weekend, the first time in a month. My bedroom has become our "hub." We watch our Saturday night movie in here while eating pizza, as evidenced by dishes left behind. My daughter has been working on some craft projects at my coffee table and all the supplies are still out. Laundry is mounded on my bed, waiting to be folded. File folders that I ransacked earlier in the week are piled high on my desk.

My room is a mess, and not for negative reasons, but it is still a mess. It still needs to be cleaned up.

Today, while my daughter is gone most of the day for her last Partial treatment day, I will work on cleaning up my room both physically and metaphorically. As I clean up after my kids, I will think about how to teach them the discipline to clean up after themselves. And as I put away the laundry and the files, I will work on a plan to bring discipline back into my own life.

Time to establish a new "normal."

enjoying the freedom that comes with knowing your child is safe

I woke up this morning feeling refreshed and energized. It is so freeing to know that my daughter is in a good place. Part of the admission process to the residential treatment program was that she went off with a therapist and her dad and I also sat and talked with the program director/therapist for an hour or so. When we left, my daughter handed me a letter listing out her drug activity for the past year. I cannot express how grateful I am. 

I was so frustrated with the hospital and partial hospitalization program where she spent her first three weeks after the suicide attempt. I had been an RN at that very hospital system for 5 years but I totally was unprepared for the mental health system. They told us nothing (unless we asked, mind you we had NO IDEA what to ask), I saw very little progress or changes. I was shocked and extremely frustrated by the lack of information they provide parents.

It was not until I spoke with a friend of mine who is a psychiatrist that I began to understand the process. The lack of information about my daughter's treatment was mainly due to the law and patient privacy rights including those of minors. Progress is slow in mental health. It's not like you can take an X-Ray and make a diagnosis. These are not problems that will be fixed by pills or a few therapy sessions.

Hospitalization in a behavioral med unit is not about "fixing" anything. Drug users (even those from nice, middle class homes) are out of balance nutritionally, physically, emotionally.  Hospitalization is about determining a diagnosis and getting the patient back into balance so that they are at a point where they can just begin treatment. I now realize it is like calling an ambulance in an emergency. The goal of the paramedic is to stop the bleeding and get the patient stabilized for transport to a hospital. This is what the psych unit does.

Partial Hospitalization (spending 7 - 8 hours a day in an outpatient setting) is also not necessarily about "fixing" anything. It is about keeping your child in a safe and controlled environment in the aftermath of crisis. While they did some therapy, it was mainly group which is helpful but does not allow the individual to do the real and personal work needed to begin getting better. My daughter came home each day telling me about other kids in the program, about how bad the food was, what movies they watched that day. Nothing about herself.

So you can see why I am so excited to get that letter. In just one hour, she has come clean, opened up, about so much.

I am not expecting miracles or that my daughter will come home "cured" in one week. We have a long road ahead of us rife with the possibility of relapse. But for today I am grateful that my child is safe and in a place that will help us all.

don't bother me i'm watching people's court

Tonight it is beginning to dawn on me how tired I am. Part of it may be due to the extraordinarily busy weekend but I think that the stress of being "on" these past four weeks is finally getting to me.

My daughter is packing to go to the residential treatment facility tomorrow. Even though the facility has thoroughly reviewed her history and medical records and accepted her, and we have preliminary insurance approval, there is no guarantee that she will actually be admitted. And we have no idea how long she will stay - it could be just a few days, it could be up to a month. I am looking forward to, hoping for, at least a few days of  at-home solitude.

On the one hand, life with my daughter has been blissfully peaceful the last week. The medication is working and helping her sleep and keeping her mood steady. She has resumed some of her favorite hobbies (much to our family's benefit) such as playing piano and singing, cooking, and crocheting. We have actually enjoyed the last few NA meetings and had good conversations when they were over.

But it has also been incredibly stressful... Monitoring what she is eating; wondering if she is throwing up when I am busy in another part of the house. Checking several times during the day to see what she is doing when she is too quiet and occasionally making sure she is still in bed in the middle of the night. Ensuring she is not too bored for any length of time (which is usually how trouble begins). Trying to not overreact when she does something stupid, like spilling a half gallon of blue latex paint on the tan carpeting. Giving her the medication, planning our lives around NA and Al Anon meetings, constantly checking to make sure that I have my phone (so she cannot use it), and that all medications and other dangerous substances are locked up.

And fighting the desire to believe that she is fine now, that today it is ok for me to go back to living my normal, oblivious life.

So tomorrow, after I get back from the residential center, don't be worried if you don't hear from me for a while. Hopefully I will be in my room, the door locked, phone turned off, curled up in bed, mindlessly catching up on four week's worth of People's Court and Matlock reruns (yes, I DVR those shows).

excuses to be in denial

I was looking over my last two postings and noticed that I used the words "our" and "us" totally without realizing it. Of course the first two words that popped into my head were "co-dependent" and "enabling." In Al Anon meetings, they tell you that the disease of addiction is the addict's disease and not to make it yours. But most of the time, people who say that are dealing with adult addicts. You are allowed to disengage from an adult who is destroying themself. I struggle from the other side. I have no problems saying "This is your problem, you deal with it." I've said it to many people over the years (maybe not out loud but by cutting myself off from them). As the mother of a minor, the law forces me to stay engaged.

Early on, I found myself saying it was "her" problem, that "she" needed to be fixed. But when a child becomes addicted, it is a family problem. I started forcing myself to use plural posessive pronouns to counteract my denial, to remind myself that we are in this together. And now I really believe it.

But talking about denial... It was a real struggle those first few days after my daughter came home from the hospital. We were supposed to go to three NA meetings a week. It was so hard to walk into a room full of hardcore addicts - people who had used cocaine and heroin for years, many who had been homeless, their bodies ravaged by the disease - and think that my beautiful, smart, talented daughter belonged there.

The first night we went to a meeting, we "suffered in silence" through it. The second night I was determined to find a meeting that felt more comfortable for us and we drove to three different locations, walking out of the first two even before the meeting started. The third one, conducted at a church in a quiet, middle class suburb, ended up being tolerable and that is where we go now for most of our meetings. Most of the people who attend here are still hardcore addicts but now I find them to be our best teachers.

Another excuse for denial is the words that were used. We couldn't go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting because alcohol was not her substance of choice. We couldn't relate to people who used cocaine and heroin because she didn't use those substances. (That statement is pure denial because she "did" try the harder stuff and more than once.) She wasn't an addict because she stopped using and said she didn't want to use any more. Besides, it was "just" marijuana and everyone knows that marijuana is not addictive.

But at every meeting, they end with the words, "Keep coming back. It works if you work it." And so we did. And when my daughter tried to tell me that she didn't belong in those meetings, with those people, I gently reminded her that she WAS an addict, even though I didn't really believe it either.

So last night I was thrilled to see my daughter stand up on her own when they asked people with 30 days to come forward, totally excited to be going up to get her chip. It was wonderful to see the other members crowd around her at the end and tell her how proud they were of her. And I thank God that in this moment, we are where we are supposed to be.

30 days

Tonight my daughter got her 30 day chip (actual count is sober 35 days). The best part of the whole thing was that she was excited to go up and get her chip and her hug.

Yayyyy for us!