Category: Addiction/Substance Misuse

Drug addiction was never in our family plan

by Braxton Collier

Stephen Boyd Collier died from overdose
Stephen Boyd Collier

My wife and I were married in 1973 and started off with all kinds of dreams of how we were going to live our lives, how many children we wanted to have, where we would like to live and many other things just like most all couples in middle class America.

In January 1976, our first son, Stephen Boyd Collier, was born and we decided my wife would stay home and raise him. Then in May 1979 our second son was born. I would say we were a relatively normal couple, two kids, … Read more...

Colonial Heights Heroin Summit Presentation

I met so many dedicated and wonderful people at this event and honored to have been asked to do the keynote. Parents who’d also lost a child joined the event in support.

Join our tribe and get blog updates

“Mom, I have nothing.”

… Read more...

Energy Vampires

by Lynda Hatcher

I’m addicted to podcasts. They’re short, to-the-point and easy to access, boiling the meat of the subject matter down to the average attention span.

Karen Brody’s Daring to Rest podcast, where she interviews Dr. Christiane Northrup about her new book, Dodging Energy Vampires, is a must-listen-to-immediately broadcast. Especially for women.

Energy vampires do precisely what their name implies. They siphon another person’s energy to use for themselves, leaving their target empty, exhausted and literally sick. They know what they’re doing, and they do it because it’s been proven to work in their favor time and time … Read more...

Interview with Melissa Febos

Author Melissa Febos, interviewed by author, Roben Farzad

I attended a conference for James River Writer’s that hosts an annual conference in Richmond, VA.

The Executive Director, Katherine Herndon, of James River Writers happens to have been Charles’ English teacher. In fact, she was one of his favorite teachers.

As I was looking over the conference registration, I decided I might like to be a sponsor and Katherine thought the interview with author, Melissa Febos, was a good fit. She was right.

This interview was meaningful, soul searching, and I loved what Melissa had to say about writing memoir–basically that … Read more...

My beautiful daughter, Brenna LeFleor, died of overdose

Brenna died December 10, 2014

by Marta LeFleor- Board member, McShin Foundation

For me, this one word evokes a vast variety of emotions.

This is Brenna, my sweet, loving, smart, artistically talented, compassionate daughter. This is a shy little girl who was wiser than her years and a young teenager who, if the front door to her dreams didn’t open, always found a way around to the back door. This is the part of me that I grieve for every day. Her life has become my motivation.

The first college basketball game she went to introduced her to cheerleaders and … Read more...

What is a #carepackage to a teenager? Not what you think

Example of a #carepackage from Instagram.

To teenagers, a #carepackage is a package of drugs, something they ordered on social media like Instagram or SnapChat.

Here’s how it works. The “buyer” can go on social media and write that they are looking for a #carepackage.  Then a drug entrepreneur contacts them, gives them an address, they pick up the package and leave money.

Often the package doesn’t label the drugs. It just comes with notes that say, “Snort it,” “Swallow it” or “Smoke it.”

So about a week ago, a seventeen-year-old in Richmond ordered one, used the drugs and ended … Read more...

Why would you buy and read my book?

OK. I need your help.  Before you answer that question, I want you to know that you guys are the reason this book got written.

For the last three years, you have been asking me, “So when are you going to write a book?” Or, “Anne Moss, you need to write a book.” So I did. And when I needed encouragement to keep going, you guys were my cheerleaders. You are part of this book.

So while I’m not broadcasting the title, I can at least share the title with my tribe.

I’m calling it:

Diary of a Broken Mind

… Read more...

Addiction and the Wisdom Guide

by Mark S. Miller, Ph.D., LPC, CSAC

Rite of passage

Let’s make an agreement. Let’s all agree that we are an addicted society/culture. That every one of us is addicted to something. Everyone. So what are you addicted to? Some addictions we feel comfortable talking about and others, well, not so much.

Addiction can be defined as something you are doing in your life that undermines becoming the best person you can possibly be. In other words, your addiction is getting in the way of you living the life you were born to live.

About 4 years ago I was … Read more...

Why do we apologize for crying?

I was talking to another mom who has watched her child succumb to addiction which is equal to watching them self destruct. Do you know how hard that is? Your child is doing something you know is destructive and deadly yet there’s not a damn thing you can do to fix it or stop them.

All you can do is work on yourself and hope that setting those boundaries and working on how you communicate and express love will inspire a recovery effort. The truth is, we cannot do this for them.

So while we were talking about all this, … Read more...

Article in Sober World

See my latest article in Sober World on Addiction and Suicide.

How Could I Wish it Had Been an Overdose?

My husband and I had just had dinner at a restaurant when he got a call on his mobile phone. The officer who called said they’d meet us in the parking lot and didn’t say what it was about. When they did arrive, I got in the back of the car, my husband in the front passenger seat, and the officer said, “I am sorry to deliver the sad news that your son, Charles, was found dead this morning.”

I … Read more...

Mourning the loss of proud momma moments

Once Charles started down the path of drug addiction, I struggled with the loss of normal but even more than that, I grieved those moments in life that are rewards for having raised a child.

Who doesn’t love it when a child accomplishes something that makes us feel proud? After all, it’s those highlight reels what still dominate the Facebook feed.

There were moments I can now look back on that make me smile but as the drugs took over my child, they became rarer events.  Slowly, I had to adjust my expectations. With each police run in or failed … Read more...

All those gory addiction images

Every news story, every documentary, and even notifications about events that educate about addiction include negative and damning visuals of needles, shooting up, candles and spoons, powder, and people lying on the floor having overdosed.

So what’s wrong with having those images?

Those images could be triggers for those who are vulnerable meaning we don’t want to put images out there that could compromise those in recovery. What’s more, they perpetuate the stigma of addiction. And we don’t need more of that.

Heroin is already a word and disease dripping with shame and ugliness without all of the negative imagery.… Read more...

“Mom, I have nothing.”

That phrase weighed heavy on my heart when Charles said it over the phone on Monday, June 1, 2015. The feeling it inspires now is the same–my own despair.

He had pawned his computer and his bike. He especially loved that bike and he never rode with a helmet. Funny, how I worried about a head injury when what I needed to worry about was the enemy living in his head.

The bike was just a possession but it was his last possession and I felt its significance. How desperate do you have to be to sell your last possessions? … Read more...

Connecting mental health with the business side

I had the privilege of presenting to and consulting with Web RTC Ventures, whose headquarters are in Charlottesville, Virginia. They have a HIPAA compliant video communication product that could help us connect patients with behavioral health professionals and facilitate collaboration between behavioral health professionals.

What a great group of people. A lot of passion and empathy in the group. Thank you to my friend Ginger for referring me.

I started by sharing my story with this group and in so doing, I forgot something important. I forgot to add a trigger warning for vulnerable individuals. For some reason I … Read more...

Like heart disease or diabetes, addiction is a disease

by Bill Maher

Addiction is a disease that can fracture a family

It’s mind-bogging to me that families often try to treat the medical disease of addiction at home. Home made works for pies but it’s not an ideal approach when it comes to treating a complex disease process.

If your teenager broke his arm, would you set the bone at the kitchen table? If he had an asthma attack, would you lecture him about getting his act together?

Of course not.

Still, families grapple with addiction at home, in secret, by themselves despite not knowing what to do for … Read more...